1We danced around the question for an hour that night. I myself had been dancing around it for weeks, months. Ever since the summer in the mountains with her grandparents, when we shared the couch fold-out bed. Too easy, too hard. I would later regard the whole things as one of the stupidest things I ever did.
I met him in the park next to my boarding high school. It was a Saturday, and my friends were out of town. The autumn was bright and sharp, so I wore layers, a scarf, boots, gloves. And also because it was a clear, colorful day, I had a notebook in my hand and pencils in my totebag. It was natural for me to curl up on the bench nearest the coffee shop and try to get some thoughts down on paper. And it was apparently natural for him to come poking around to try to sneak a peek at my writing.
There's a moment in my mind
I've scribbled and erased a thousand times
like a letter never written or sent
- Ben Folds
It's true that everything happened only in my mind, and I'm glad it did. How creepy would it be if some of the things I envisioned actually came true? Well, very. It's really for my own amusement. I don't remember now why I ever was THAT into older guys. Is this a good sign? Probably. I always said that I needed to start liking people closer to my age. It just happened quicker than I thought it would.
I guess it started when our groups of friends meshed in the first months of high school. Before the year was out she'd taken the book out of my hands, stared me earnestly in the eyes as she crouched over my reclining form, and asked me if it bothered me that she had a crush on me. It didn't. Good thing, too.
He was too easy to like. Girls fell into his lap out of the sky: and we were hardly exaggerating whenever we exasperatedly used the old metaphor. He was too fluid- he was always leaving, always going off somewhere else, if he ever even showed to hang out with us. He was too pioneering with his business straight out of high school. He was too perfect, too convenient, too easy to lose...
She likes sailing. I never knew. She blushes so easily. She believes that women are as strong as men. She's deeply religious... She plays every sport she can try out for. She's pretty as hell, though I'm sure most of the guys can't see it yet. Her shirts always look so soft. She's someone I wish I could be more confident for, to be friends with her. To see if she could like me.
Once I started doing my homework at the tables by the windows in the library, I began to notice that he frequented the study area as often as I did. He was undoubtedly older than me, by a grade or so. It was only after five months of it, on a steely-skied January day, did he introduce himself to me. He was sixteen, a little older than me, as I expected. That day we sat at the same table for three hours. He offered to help me with my math homework, which was two grade levels above me, and I told him that I didn't need much help. But we stayed together anyway, to become the most efficient studying force the library's upper-levels had ever seen.