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“I’m not letting her take the bus at night. She’s stupid enough to wind up dead somehow.”
“She’s not going to take the bus, Alex. Her parents will pick her up. If not, I’ll drive her.”
Suddenly, I had an epiphany.
Alex was trying to…
Wait for it…
BE NICE TO ME.
He just didn’t know how to do it.
This was his attempt at chivalry.
It was backwards, and weird, and a total fail—but it was important for him to drop me off at home.
My chest filled with so many butterflies I became slightly nauseous. If this was my reaction to him trying to be nice to him, I was pretty much bound to puke in his lap if he ever tried to kiss me.
“Fine,” I groaned, before giving him my address. “But when you get to my house, keep going.”
“Um, why?” Ryan asked, confused.
“Because I have a German shepherd that barks through the gate every time a car stops by my house until his throat stops working, so my parents are going to know someone is at the front door.”
“Are you not allowed to, like, hang out with guys?” Ryan asked, and I pinked in the backseat.
I noticed Alex was silent. Did he care? Did he want to know the answer?
“No,” I rushed to say, even though my dad would have had a heart attack if he found out I was hanging with two guys older than me alone. “It’s just that…he barks really loudly so we wouldn’t be able to even, like, say goodbye.”
This was not a lie. That German shepherd’s name was Tuco, after one of the characters in the western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with Clint Eastwood. He was an awesome dog, but man, was he loud. Hysterical, too.
Alex stopped a few houses away from mine. I unbuckled, feeling the total loss of him. The mix of pleasure, happiness, and disappointment swirling in my gut.
“Thanks, guys,” I said, pushing my kilt down my legs before swinging the door open.
“Sure thing.” Ryan gave me thumbs-up, and I leaned forward to kiss his cheek, because back then, being a teenager meant going through a complex ceremony of kissing everyone’s cheek when you saw them. Double kiss their cheek if they were your BFFs.
I refrained from even looking at Alex from fear I would explode.
“Thanks for the ride, Alex.”
He nodded once, looking straight ahead.
I got out of the car and ran home, took a hot shower, and had a massive grilled cheese with creamy tomato soup I felt oddly guilty about, because I wasn’t vegetarian anymore. I was supposed to be vegan.
But on the other hand…I mean, come on. It’s cheese.
Veganism could wait one day. It was best to start diets and ideological ways of life on Mondays, right?
The day after, at school, Ryan acted like the demonstration never happened.
He didn’t mention Alex. Or Tom. Or Jadie.
I was dying to know what Alex thought about me, but of course, couldn’t ask.
The day after, I found a website with a few grainy pictures of their band playing, and I was so happy I thought I was going to cry, because now I could look at Alex whenever I wanted, even if the picture was taken in a darkened room, and about fifty feet away from him.
Three days after the demonstration, I got a message on software called ICQ.
To those who don’t know—ICQ was the early 2000s Messenger. Only without all the cool stuff. We used to do emojis with brackets, exclamation points and hyphens, and GIFs were something we didn’t even know how to pronounce (side note: I still don’t know if it’s Gif or Jeef). Each person was assigned a really complex, totally unmemorable number, like your social security number, but worse, and you could see who was online or not by the color (green, red, or black).
The message was from an unknown number.
209898179: Hi
My initial instinct screamed “predator”.
Wasn’t I old enough for pedophiles?
My other guess was someone from a foreign country who would try to convince me he was a billionaire prince who was involved in a car accident and needed me—yes, fifteen-year-old me—to help manage his bank accounts, and if I’d give him my parents’ credit card number, he’d transfer all his funds to us.
But after a few deep breaths, I decided there was an unlikely chance it was someone I knew.
Maybe someone from school? Maybe even Jadie?
Me: Who is this?
The answer came after a few excruciating minutes.
209898179: Alex.
My heart.
My poor heart.
If this was a prank, I was going to strangle someone. But who would prank me? No one even knew I liked him. Not even Ryan. Not that Ryan would ever stoop this low. I told all my other girlfriends about the demonstration, but mentioned Alex only briefly, and with open disdain, because again: rejection. Hurt feelings. Shattered heart. I didn’t want to deal with all of that.
