She was in 8th grade and she never had a boyfriend. In fact, she was downright afraid of boys. They made her nervous whenever she was around them, so she just stuck with her plethora of girl friends.
In 6th grade she had a crush on a cute guy with a bowl cut, something about him just got to her, but she never, ever said anything to him because he made her so nervous. She just was silent.
People thought she never talked... until that 8th grade year. She began to be interested in fashion and fixing her hair in the morning. She started shopping for cute outfits, although she barely got to wear them because of the strict dress code at her school.
The only problem was... she was so insecure.
In science class there was this one boy that sat in front of her. He hit on all the girls and probably already had about 10 different girlfriends. He was really good friends with one of her best friends so she started to talk to him. Actually, she just made fun of him while he quipped right back at her, like how many junior high conversations go. Something about him made her so intrigued. He always made there boring earth science class so much more vibrant.
It was her first crush, and that’s exactly what it did, it crushed her to pieces. She desperately wanted to talk to get to know him better, but outside of science class he noticed all the other flashier girls before her. It was like she was the best out of his science class so he used her to entertain him, but outside of class, he dumped her like a month old birthday present.
At the school’s special Christmas dinner party that year, Pam was so excited because she got to sit with her best friend at dinner; her best friend who had just been recently asked out by her science class love interest. Of course her friend turned him down, she knew exactly the kind of guy he was and she didn’t want to just be another one of his girls. It just so happened that this science guy was sitting at their table also. He spent the whole night flirting with Pam’s friend and gazing desperately at his current love interest, in her red sweater and black slacks. Pam wished that he was admiring her instead.
Over Christmas vacation she decided it was time for a change. She decided to get thin-honey colored highlights mixed into her warm, chocolate colored hair. They really complemented her money-colored, green eyes; her beautiful, but sad green eyes.
Then one of her boy-crazy friends called while she was having Christmas with her family. She said one of the guys in their class, a guy named Chris, wanted to ask her out.
“No way this is possible!” Pam thought to herself and she played it out on the phone. Her heart had begun to beat faster as she realized that a guy liked her, or at least thought she was pretty. She never even talked to this Chris guy, she didn’t even have a class with him! How random was this?
However, when she arrived back to school from Christmas vacation, she found out that her friend had tried to get Chris to ask her out, but he didn’t agree. Even though she didn’t like Chris, she felt let down and depressed. “Maybe I’m just not pretty enough,” she feared as she got that same lump in her stomach as when she saw her science room crush crushing on someone else. Oh well, it wouldn’t be any different from how her life normally was, although it was thrilling to learn that someone liked her, for the short time that she actually believed it.
Since her mom had paid a good sixty bucks on her new copper-streaked hair, her mom maid her wear her normally austere, pony-tailed hair down at least three times a week. She was a pretty big tomboy, and having her hair down bugged her, especially when it kept sweeping in front of her eyes as she was taking a test. She was pretty annoyed about this, but she just learned to sweep her hair out of her face and go on with what she was doing. All her girl friends commented on how beautiful she looked, but she just thanked them politely because she knew they were just being nice, because they were her friends.
Later that week as she was making s’mores in her toaster oven, well actually she just liked to melt the marshmallows without the chocolate and the toaster made them the perfect fluffiness and texture. The phone rang as she waited for the toaster to melt her marshmallow snack. She hesitantly picked it up, thinking it was probably one of her friends checking to see what homework was due the next day. Instead she heard a guy’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Hey Pam, this is Roy.”
Oh my goodness! It was science class boy that she had her eyes set on. She realized it was probably a question about an upcoming science project, she got many calls like this because she was very meticulous in her work and had pretty high grades and people could trust her. Still, she couldn’t hide the excitement as she said,
“Yes.”
“What’s up.” He asked casually, as if he called her everyday. She knew he was just working up to the part where he would ask her something like how long the science paper would be so that he wouldn’t seem so rude to just blatantly call her to get the homework from her.
They continued their discussion of junior high topics like complaining about the teachers that gave too much homework and who was ‘going out’ with whom (if they could even call it that).
Then out of the blue he told her she looked really pretty with her hair down.
‘No way, this must be a prank he was playing on her. There was no possible way he actually could have thought that,’ she pondered to herself as she timidly forced out the words...
“Thank you... I guess.”
Then he asked her out and she said yes and they said goodbye, it was kind of awkward. She knew that she really shouldn’t have said yes for many reasons. The major ones being that he was probably just messing with her head in the first place, and even if he really was asking her out he would probably just dump her when the next pretty girl caught his eye. Also his motives didn’t seem right since he didn’t notice her at all before she fixed her hair and wore it down, it was purely physical. But what could you expect from a just-turned-teenage boy?
Still she could keep her joy inside as she leaped around in joy as the timer for her toasted marshmallows dinged. It was her marshmallow dance.
She loved this new ‘gravity-less’ feeling that surged up in her stomach. She never better felt better.
