The Story of D

I have to leave for my meeting soon, and I am not sure how long this will take me to write, but I will start, because otherwise I might never write it.

The first time I ever saw D was on the first day of 7th grade. My town had three elementary schools that housed grades K-6. In seventh grade, kids from all 3 elementary schools went to the town's one jr/sr high school, which held grades 7-12. For many, it was our first time meeting the 2/3 of the kids our age in town who had gone to the other elementary schools. The first day of seventh grade, I was walking alone down one of the front hallways in the high school (I think I was out on a hall pass or something). I got a few steps down the hall, when I saw a guy (or boy I guess) walking toward me in the opposite direction. We were the only two people in the hall. I remember feeling tingly and almost electrified. The attraction was instant. Looking back, it seems kind of funny now. He was a tall, lanky kid with brown hair, cut in a bowl cut, and he had blue-green eyes, and braces. He was definitely the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. We walked past each other in the hall, glancing at each other, but not saying anything.

The rest of the day was spent getting used to hopping from class to class every time the bell rang, trying to get used to using a locker, and meeting a ridiculous number of new people.

For one of the last periods of the day, I had math. I walked into the room, found a seat, and waited for class to start. It had been an exhausting, exciting day, and I was pretty spaced out. Class started a few minutes later and the teacher started calling attendance. I looked around as people raised their hands and said, "here," trying to remember the names of at least some of my new classmates. The teacher called another name, and like I had done with all the names before it, I looked up to see where the "here" was coming from. And I saw the guy from the hallway. Now I knew his name--D. My heart jumped. From that moment forward, I couldn't get him out of my head.

The next couple of weeks were filled with classes, new friends, and standardized testing. One day, I learned that I had scored well on a particular standardized test and was going to be asked to take the PSAT's later in the year. In order to prepare for the math section, which included a lot of math that we would not learn for several more years, my math teacher held a class after school once a week for me and the nine other people taking the test. When I showed up on the first day, I saw that D was there. I was too nervous to talk to him much, and week after week I barely managed to choke out two or three words to him.

One week, on the day of the math meeting, my best friend from elementary school, S, and I were talking at lunch. We had plans to hang out that afternoon after my meeting, but she had learned that day that she had to do a group project for science class, and had to go to the public library that afternoon to make a poster board with her group. She asked if I wanted to go with her and then hang out after the poster session. I agreed. She said, "Good! Well, D is in my science group, so you can just walk to the library with him when your meeting ends." Oh. Dear. God. I was nervous as hell, but it was just the opportunity I had been waiting for.

TO BE CONTINUED