I’d never text two boys at once before— in the flirtatious sense— so for the week-ish that I was texting both Seashell Luke and Jamie McMean, I felt like quite the scandal. Though as things between Luke and me cooled down, tensions between Jamie and me rose at a slow (but steady and awkward) pace. We were texting regularly, but our in-person interactions were minimal. We didn’t talk much at all in Biology Class— I was too busy being edgy and weird with Julien (whom I’d maybe-too-quickly forgiven for his romantic indiscretions against my friend). In Intro to Engineering, he and I sat on opposite sides of the room, a sea of Sophomore and Junior buys with matching cropped haircuts between us. I mostly kept to myself, doing everything to complete my assignments quickly, in order to enjoy my well deserved twenty-minutes of silent reading at the end of the day.
Jamie made use of the five minutes at the very end of the day, when everyone was talking and standing and the teacher had given up on wrangling them. He would approach me and ask about my thoughts on our teachers, or he would ask how my other classes were going. Sometimes, he would approach with one of his wire headphones stretched out to me, the other affixed to his ear, and he would play some skater-punk anthem by Sum 41 or Good Charlotte for me and ask if I’d heard it. Sometimes, even when I had, I would say no anyway, and say it was so cool. He told me his favorite artists were Eminem and Blink-182 and I thought I can work with that.
On maybe an occasion or two, he would inquire about my weekend plans, whether or not I had any that is. I am sure that I outlined my availability like a server looking for shifts, afterall, I was kind of waiting on him to make a move.
It wasn’t exactly privileged knowledge that he liked me at that point. The rumor had circulated our grade quicker than the Cheese-Touch just a couple weeks earlier. Yet as time went on, I started to have my doubts.
Jamie was promising in terms of my list— or at least— I was giving him a lot of room to be promising:
- Dark hair
- Pretty enough eyes
- Potentially at least 5’8”?
- Good enough music taste
- Shaggy hair
- An at-least-not-Guy-Harvey-and-Sperrys wardrobe
All he needed to have was two of the remaining five qualities:
- Play an instrument
- Sing
- Good grades
- Left leaning politics
To be fair, I was giving him a lot of credit on account of him— allegedly— liking me. I was interested in exploring the relationship further, but in order to do that, he needed to ask me out. Until then, we were stuck in Limbo.
As I’ve mentioned, this school had an inordinate amount of pep-rallies. I must have gone to at least ten throughout that year alone.
Everything about a pep-rally day was great, except for the pep-rally. All the classes were shortened, and everyone’s lunch periods got changed, which made for new, interesting and never-before-seen social dynamics. The pep-rally in question was something like our third pep-rally day in September.
I was sitting at an unusual table on the side of the cafeteria with Jannette and Wesley (although I knew they were friends, it was my first time seeing them together). I knew Jamie was in our same lunch period, because I could see him at my two o’clock, and I wondered if he saw me, and if he would take advantage of the situation.
I glanced over in his direction periodically, hoping to catch his eye instead of the smirks of his table-mates. About five-minutes before the end of the period, not Jamie, but his gaggle of friends (Zachary and Wyatt and a couple others), began to approach the table and close in around me.
The best case scenario for how things were about to go down was:
As soon as they had the table surrounded, the boys started singing in fourpart harmony. Any Bruno Mars song of time would have been acceptable, or otherwise, any other romantic serenade. I would have been especially blown-away if they had gone as far to incorporate a modest amount of choreo or movement of any kind.
Though it is not unheard of for teen boys to go to such lengths when acting as wing-men for their homie (I knew because I was in my era of watching super-theatrical prom-posals on Youtube), this is not what happened to me.
The boys huddled around my corner of the Lunch table in a semi-menacing semi-circle. They were so excited that the jitters spilled from their mouths in drooly chortles and childish giggles. As they got their nerves up to say what they were going to say, I grew more and more mortified with each passing second.
I knew what was happening, I just couldn’t believe it was happening to me in high school. I thought, or I had hoped, that the more-mature environment would have fostered more mature behavior from my peers. I thought that such childish activities, like having one’s friends court the girl they like on their behalf, were in all of our pasts. I was embarrassed to find out that I was wrong.
If I possessed the level of maturity that I expected from Jamie, I would have said Thanks, but no thanks, fellas. This is all really nice, but I would really prefer if Jamie asked me himself. But just like Jamie, I lacked the courage. In turn. my response was a lack of a response.
I was opening my bag of Snyder’s Mini-Pretzels as I watched the boys approach. When they asked me if I would want to go out with Jamie that weekend, I put one of the pretzels in my mouth instead of answering. Each time another one of them pressed the subject, in went another mini-pretzel, until the entire contents of the bag had made its way into my mouth, and pretzels had become a sticky-floury-spitty glob— impossible to talk around.
Finally, when they asked me what I thought, yes or no, I simply held up my finger to signify Hold on. Just a minute. I’m chewing.
The bell rang as I swallowed the last bit of the pretzel-glob, and everyone dispersed before I could get my non-existent-answer out. The only person who stayed around me was Wyatt, who must have been able to read the stress in my eyes, because he got busy showing me his funniest pictures of his English Bulldog on his phone.
Swiping rapidly through the pictures, he said “This is crazy, but someone told me that you had a crush on me!” He said it like it was a joke, but his voice was still apprehensive at the end.
“That is crazy. I don’t know who started that rumor,” I answered, already walking away from Wyatt and towards the gym.
After school, I texted Jamie. I told him that I did want to go out with him that weekend, and that I felt too awkward at lunch to give an answer.
Of course, we were both embarrassed by the whole thing. “I asked them not to do that,” Jamie insisted, “I wanted to do it myself.”
While I appreciated the sentiment, I wondered if he ever would have done it on his own.
We decided on a movie date for the following day. We were going to see a matinee showing of If I Stay, starring Chloe Grace Moretz. I thought it was a good choice, because it was a romantic movie.
I dressed up a little more for the occasion (certainly more than I had for Seashell Luke). I was still wearing a Doctor Who t-shirt, but I was wearing my coolest Doctor Who t-shirt (A red and black shirt with text reading “The angles have the phonebox”) paired with the light-blue overalls I’d begged my grandmother to buy for me just a couple months prior. I’d cleaned up my sneakers with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, so the rubber on the soles and toes was the whitest it had been since they left the box. I straightened my hair again, and I wore the ONLY beanie I owned to complete the skater-girl aesthetic I was going for. I topped it all off with a pink glitter-gloss (you already know, I was preparing to smoooooch in that theater— just in case).
Melissa drove me to the theater. As we pulled up, I saw him already waiting for me outside.
“Is this a date?” Melissa asked.
“No,” I lied.
“It’s okay if it’s a date,” she paused. “You can tell me if it’s a date. I know that you are dating-age.”
I didn’t want to get into it. I didn’t know if it was really okay or if she was just saying it was okay. And even if it was okay to her, I didn’t know if it was okay to everyone in the house, and anyway, I didn’t even know if I liked Jamie enough to take those kinds of risks for him. I insisted, “It’s not a date.” Though I have always wondered what might have been different if I had told the truth.
I dashed out of the car, and stomped up to Jamie with a big, out-of-breath smile. “Hi.”
“Hey,” he said, expressionless, “I like your overalls.”
“Thank you.”
I fished my wadded up cash out of my left sock as we waited in line.
“That’s okay,” he said, barely holding up his hand to stop me. “I got it.”
I was impressed by his chivalry. When I was dating Blaze Huckabee, he never paid for my icecream or anything— as a matter of fact— I more often paid for his. I was expecting to go Dutch, so Jamie offering to get my ticket was a nice surprise. He even bought me a large popcorn— talk about princess treatment.
We were early to our movie, so the auditorium was empty when we got to our seats, and all the lights were on. We did not talk at all. As Here First played, we sat in our seats like dwellers of Plato’s Cave. Our necks were locked and our eyes were glued to the behind-the-scenes footage that played on the screen before us. We waited for the lights to dim and go completely dark while the real previews started to play.
Movies are not very good locations for first-dates and anyone who has been on a movie first-date knows why.
Because you do not have an established dynamic with the other person, it is impossible to know the correct way to proceed. There is no established rapport, so nonverbal communication of any kind is essentially impossible, and there are no established boundaries, so making a move is risky-bussiness. On TV, teens in movie theaters just need to sit down before they can start making out uncontrollably. Although I was looking for something a little more romantic for my first kiss, I would have loved to know the right protocol to initiate a light make-out.
I turned to playing games such as how far to his side can I move my leg before he puts his hand on my knee? and how much space on the arm rest can I take up before he tries to hold my hand?, but none of my experiments garnered any results. By the end of the movie, I still had most-of my large popcorn, and entirely-unkissed lips.
I didn’t like the movie that much, I thought it was pretty corny, so I imagined Jamie probably hated it. Nevertheless, I asked what he thought as we excited the auditorium and he nodded politely and said “Yeah, it was good, I liked it.”
I figured he probably thought I liked it, so I thought it was a nice thing to say.
We walked in silence out of the theater and into the still-hot September sun.
“My dad is waiting in the lot. Is your ride on the way?”
I’d just texted Melissa that the movie was over, so I knew it would be at least twenty minutes before she would arrive. “Not yet, but I’m fine waiting.”
“I can wait with you,” he offered.
“It’s really okay. She won’t be here for a while,” I tried to wave him off, but he wouldn’t hear it. He was already sending an explanatory text off to presumably his father, to whom I immediately felt like a nuisance.
I didn’t like anyone knowing anything about my family. Even something as small as waiting with me for my ride felt like it could open a window and allow them to see a small amount of the general chaos that surrounded my homelife. People always had questions: Why is your ride always late? Why do you move so much? Why does your dad have a girlfriend? All questions I’d gotten tired of, but used to shrugging off. Jamie insisted that I let him wait with me, so we hunkered down on the bench outside the theater. Finally, we talked. All the nervousness that had been building between us over the weeks past began to melt away. We did not kiss after all that, even better, we became friends. Not boyfriend and girlfriend, just good friends and confidants. Jamie became another person for me to talk to in class and another person to make the scary world a little safer.
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