Middle School Crush--Cartoon Edition!

  One of my few acquaintance-friends in middle school was Wil. One "L", that was very important. He was a genuinely nice, funny, and smart guy with red hair and the customary freckles.

  Looking back, I think he's the reason I immediately liked and trusted red heads as a teenager.

  We had a few classes together. One of them was computer class, and we sat with our backs to each other. Or at least, we were supposed to. A lot of our time was spent with our chairs turned so we could chit-chat. At least, that's how I remember it.

  Finally, a girl next to us asked us if we liked each other.

  But we totally did.

(Also, from here on out, I forgot to give Wil freckles in the cartoons, and I'm too lazy to go back and re-load all the pictures, so just pretend Wil is covered in orange spots, k? Thanks)

  At the end of middle school, I expected to never see him again. He was going to the Smarty-Pants High School With Really Hard Homework, while I was going to The School With Shooting Threats Every Few Weeks.

  High School was actually a great time for me. After puberty hit EVERYONE, I was actually a pretty normal height, not the freakish giant I had been in middle school. My acne cleared up. I figured out how to make my hair not as lame. I even figured out make up to a degree. Boys had crushes on me. My confidence had never been higher.

 My senior year of high school, I visited the Smarty-Pants school to watch a friend in a musical there. I was perusing the program when I saw it.

  I immediately whipped my head toward the band area (the play was put on in a cafeteria, so there was no band pit), and I quickly spied him. At least, I was pretty sure it was him. He had changed, too. His hair was longer, and he'd grown quite a bit.

I immediately pointed him out to my friends, unable to contain my excitement. I kept asking if they thought it was him, if they thought he would remember me, etc. Finally, one of them said, "Julia, just talk to him during intermission, geez!". Intermission! Brilliant! I could hardly wait. I kept watching him during the first half, seeing if he laughed when I did, eyeing him while he played drums during the musical numbers.

Finally, intermission arrived. Suddenly shy, I meandered over, taking my time. I imagined our meeting would go something like this:

 

  After that, we would talk and laugh for the whole fifteen minutes, and we would groan when they announced that the second half was starting and we needed to take our seats. Then maybe, who knows, we would exchange numbers, maybe email . . . we would start hanging out, maybe become best friends . . .

  But that's not what happened.

  I didn't know it until then, but Band Kids are scary. They're like their own nerdy gang, ready to beat you into pulp with their retainers if you mess with one of theirs. In fact, in my head they looked something like this:

 It wasn't that bad. But it was close. Anyway, back to the story. . .

  I was crushed. My depressed state wasn't helped by the fact that everyone in the play died in the second act.

  A year or so later, I saw Wil again. It turned out he was in a band with a few of my friends, and he was at a party they were throwing.

  I'm not sure why I thought it would go better this time around. I guess I hoped the last time was a fluke. Maybe he was embarrassed to talk to me in front of his band friends or something.

 It was not a fluke.

  For some reason, I was desperate for the boy who had been so nice to me in middle school to like me again. I laughed louder, joked more, and flirted outrageously with the other boys, hoping to get his attention.

So, basically, I was the epitome of an annoying teenage girl. I can't imagine why my scheme didn't work.

  Not being mature enough to just simply ASK Wil why he was now repulsed by me, I never did figure it out. Most likely I said something stupid the last time we saw each other in middle school and conveniently forgot about it.

  Whatever the case, red heads suddenly didn't look so great anymore.

THE END