Crushing on Jesse

Every day the final bell rings at 3:35. Jesse will be at his bike 3:40. So if I want to see him, I have to have all of my books and everything I need with me in my last class, which is History with Mrs. Douton. Actually, the first semester it was Social Studies, and now it’s History … American History. I love Mrs. Douton because she tells it like it’s a story, and I remember it because it’s interesting. I had a Social Studies teacher in a different city a couple of years ago named Mrs. Stevenson, and she was horrible. If I was doing something wrong she would come up to me and grab my arm and start screaming at me with her teeth clenched and point her brown, fat, crooked finger in my face. In front of everyone. I have never been screamed at by any teacher or anyone in my whole life, for the most part. I mean, yes maybe my mom or dad once or twice, here and there. But I’m kind of a quite and shy person and if there is one thing I hate, it is being yelled at. Especially in front of other people. So if Mrs. Stevenson had just come up to me and said, “If you don’t stop acting bad, I am going to yell at you in front of the whole class,” I totally would have stopped doing what I was doing and would have been as good as any kid could have possibly been. Mrs. Douton is a great teacher and I love her class. Best of all she has us take essay tests instead of question and answer or multiple-choice tests – where you have to remember names and dates  – and I love that. I love essay tests because I get to write about what I know. She taught us that the best way to write an essay test is to start with what you want to say in the first paragraph, then follow it up with paragraphs where you go into more detail about what you said in the first paragraph, and then write a final paragraph wrapping it up. So if the question were, “How did the civil war impact the south socially, politically and economically,” I would say something about how the South was negatively impacted socially, economically and politically by the civil war, and then I would write three paragraphs on each of those areas, and then I would write a final paragraph summing up what I said. I do very well on these essay tests. In fact, I have the highest score in the class. The only reason I know that is because there is another girl who wants to be Mrs. Douton’s pet, and she wants to be the best in the class, and when she thought she had the best score on an essay test, Mrs. Douton told her that, actually, I was the one who had the best score. Ever since then she compares her scores to mine. I always seem to get one or two points more than she does every time. It drives her crazy. I don’t really care, but I do get a little satisfaction watching her get so irritated. She is really pretty and has big boobs … like really big boobs … and all the boys like her. One of the reasons I like Jesse is because he doesn’t pay attention to her. But he doesn’t pay attention to anyone. I have this fantasy that if he would get to know me, that maybe I could be the one person who understands him and maybe he could be the one person who understands me. The other day I was walking to my locker and this really popular girl named Michelle, out of nowhere, yells my name. I don’t think she has ever spoken to me, so I was a little freaked out. Kids don’t really hurt each other at this school like they did at my last school, so I didn’t think she was going to hurt me. But why all of a sudden would she want anything to do with “the new girl.” I stopped and pretended like we chit chat every day in the hall and said, “Yeah?” And she says, “Are those your favorite pants?” And I say, “Yeah.” Because they are my favorite pants. My grandmother bought these pants for me right before we moved here and they are really cool. They were expensive and I never get expensive clothes because my parents can’t afford it, but she bought them for me as a going away gift, so I could start school with some new clothes. I love them because they make me look skinny and the part around my ankles is pegged the way I like them. I couldn’t believe she was asking me that question, because, yes, indeed these are my favorite pants. And then she smiled and said, “I thought so because you wear them all the time.” There were two popular boys, Tim and Sean, standing with her and they laughed and went back to ignoring me. I looked over and Jesse was sitting reading at a picnic table near by. I don’t know if he heard what she said. I can’t decide if I wish he heard her and hates her and therefore likes me because of it, or if I hope he didn’t hear her because it was really embarrassing. I mean, not all of us are so rich that we can buy enough pants that we can wear a different pair every day. All the things I could have said in that moment… none of them came to me in the moment. Later that night I kept going over and over it in my head. I decided that the best approach would have been head on. Instead of coming up with an equally nasty response, I would just call her out on being mean. I would say that my family is poor and that we don’t have the money to buy lots and lots of clothes, but that I wash my clothes and do the best I can, and then I would thank her for taking the opportunity to humiliate me in front of others and tell her that I hope being mean makes her feel really good about herself. I just want to say that I really love these pants and even if I did have 20 pairs of pants, I would still wear these pants a lot. Maybe if Jesse did hear her, he knows that I, too, do not have a lot of friends, and that because I didn’t say anything back he knows that I am quiet and shy like he is, and that because we are both that way and have very few friends we would be perfect for each other. I don’t mean we have to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe we would just be best friends who understand each other. But we are only in one class together, and I never get to see him. So at the end of the day I take all of my stuff with me to history class and sit by the door, and as soon as the bell rings, I race out the door and pace myself to arrive at the bike racks right about the time Jesse does. I walk by, paying close attention to not pay attention to Jesse, and then time my steps to be halfway down the hill as Jesse rides by. I make sure that there are no other kids around me so that when Jesse rides by, he can clearly see me. Alone. Just like he is. I wonder if he even knows my name.