“Do You Want to Walk Home With Me?”

“Do you want to walk home with me?” The words still remain clearly etched in my mind. Scared there, like a white hot poker had branded them to the inside of my eyelids and I could not stop thinking about them. I glanced about as I walked down the school hallway. There it was. His locker, number 1438. I wondered if today would be the day, if today I would finally get an answer after all this waiting. Would he say yes? I had no idea. He had given me no information to go on, and I had no idea if he was remotely interested in me. I wanted to know what he would say.

It was two weeks ago when I had daringly emailed him the question. I had expected him to corner me at school and demand to know what it was about, but no. In fact he had hardly said a word to me at all in the last weeks; it was as if there was a constant war raging in his head. Urging him to avoid me, not to talk to me, not to even make eye contact. Every day I checked my email, preparing myself for utter disappointment, for utter rejection. But, still no response. After a couple of days I was making up excuses like “Oh, maybe he has too much homework. He’ll email me tomorrow”. Or something like, “He has RSM tonight, too much stress. Maybe in the next couple days.” Finally after a week I received a reply. I braced myself for the news but all it said was,” I’ll think about it, though I’m pretty busy during the week.” Nothing more. I asked myself again, and again, “What am I going to do?”.

Each day in school was completely torturous, given that my crush wouldn’t look me in the eye, much less talk to me. I gazed at him as he talked to his friends, but he never seemed to notice me, never. Or maybe he noticed me, but was too freaked out from the email to even look at me. I was not the most “happy camper” those days, and my best friend thought that I was suicidal (don’t worry; I wasn’t even thinking about it). I tried to catch his eye in the hall, but he just stared right through me as though I wasn’t even there at all.

I glance at him longingly today while he is grabbing binders from his locker, but then I force myself to move onward to my next class. I hear him talking to one of his best friends animatedly about the new Math Team meet next Thursday and think, “Why am I wasting my time? It’s clear he has no interest in being with a girl who doesn’t like math.” The boy is just a part of my life, nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary, no reason to like him more than any other perfectly reasonable boy. “There is no point in staring at the boy like he’s a painting” I scold myself. Then out of the corner of my eye I catch the movement of his red sweatshirt coming in my direction. Confused, I try to imagine why he is going this way, because his next class is upstairs, nowhere near my Math class. My instinct tells me to turn around, but I fight it and continue on, the question of the boy’s movement weighting on my every step.

I hear a voice calling my name, “Ellie! Ellie!” It’s loud, but it’s almost drowned out by all of the locker doors slamming and the kids screaming in the hallway so I wait to figure out if it was all a figure of my imagination. Nope, there it is again,” Ellie! Ellie, Are you deaf or something?” I roll my eyes and turn, scanning the throngs of kids to see who the mysterious voice belongs to. OH MY GOD! It belongs to Chris! The guy I have been obsessed with for three months! I call down the hall to him, “What do you want Chris?” I stop by the door to Math and wait for him, as he jogs toward me around kids. Finally, he says between breaths, “I wanted to answer your email. So it won’t be awkward if I do it online.” I look at him incredulously, and ask, “Well...” His reply is a simple and short “Sure, It’ll be fun. Email me about when.” The boy smiles at me before realizing that he’ll be late for History. “Shoot! I’ll be late.” He turns,” See ya later, Ellie” he yells over his shoulder as the bell rings, signaling that he is indeed late for his class. I stand there, motionless and think over what just happened. Okay, I just might have gotten asked out. Wow! This has been an interesting day.