4) Infatuation

Part Four
(This is chapter four of my personal accounts, "-Liking-: Refractions and Infractions" )

There are so many chances in life, just waiting to be taken. Sometimes, you think you can catch one and it seems like it could just be your key to happiness. But the worst fate by far is missing one of those chances and not knowing how magical it could have been. They can be in your grasp, and yet you can still manage to lose them. The most tragic of life's jokes is that the great mistakes are so much easier to see after they have been made. Every way in which something went wrong is so abundantly clear.

Anything can happen. It just usually seems to happen wrong, is all.


Run Summer '98

I was supposed show up more often. To go to the 'runs' -those informal gatherings of vaguely related circles of friends I had inherited from my sister. I had been told on numerous occasions, and from people that I admired. But something had changed recently, in my sister's circle of friends: HOUSE. Someone had bought a house, and several of them moved in together. This house became the new hangout, and it had been named simply HOUSE. It also happened to be located only a block away from my own!

There was something about this house that made me reluctant to attend the gatherings so much anymore though. The biggest reason probably was that the people there were seeming even more old than they had before, and I did not feel like I was catching up. All of them were by now college students, and many of them were now also drinking. Before then, there had been a nearly complete absence of substances from the gatherings, but it was changing. If ever there were a situation that I felt the most uncomfortable in, it's a late night gathering where most everybody else was drinking.

One of the gatherings I preferred to go to that summer was 'Tag'. Just a game of tag -you know, running around- with several college students and various other friends from the circle. There was a group of them that were 'tag connoisseurs', knowing the perfect parks in which to play tag, which had the best structures to climb and leap between, which parks had too many 'gromits' (small children), and which ones kicked people out past a certain time. I think the reason I liked tag was because it allowed me a social outlet without specifically requiring me to be social. It was structured. I was also invited to it many times, and I ALWAYS had felt that I needed invitation for nearly every social event I attended, so I was most happy to come when called upon for such a regular and specific activity. Tag gatherings were organized often; and all I really had to do was run, no super pressure for conversation.

Coincidentally, I had started some running of my own that summer. Running the real way, for distance and speed. It wasn't exactly as easy as I had always expected. I guess I'd just assumed that since I wasn't good at any other sports, I would be good at the un-sport: long distance running. The plan was to run a couple miles every day, and I would be ready for Cross Country that fall. But then I might miss a day or two, and then it would just get harder to run the next. I probably ended up running only a couple times a week on average.

In addition to my own running, I had signed up for a summer training program at school, which Mr. Hohn had encouraged me to attend for the upcoming Cross Country season. The summer training would be taught by my least favorite of physical trainers: the ninth grade health teacher.

Eva

The day before the summer training course began, my sister was having over some friends to watch an animated show that EV had borrowed, entitled Neon Genesis Evangelion (or Eva). EV said it was really good, so I snuck myself into my sister's room with everyone else to watch it. Julie and Laura stopped by, and it turned out that they were also going to the summer training the following day. Funny coincidence. Everyone got settled in and the lights went off before the show began.

What played that night (and the following night) captivated me in a way that few things had before. The show had drama, mystery, humor, great characters, intense battle sequences, apocalyptic threats, and the plot accumulated on itself building to a fascinating conclusion. In short, everything I could have possibly wanted in a story, spread out over many episodes.

I only got to see about most of Eva those nights, because not all of it had yet been released. Thus, the suspense and wonder kept my imagination busy when I was running. It was a nice healthy geek obsession, I think.

Summer training was pretty intensive. The first day was the most exhausting experience I had ever had at that point. But for the most part, I really got something out of it.

I also took a summer animation class at a nearby college that summer, and learned some great techniques to help my presentations. There was a girl there that thought I was cool, but only because I listened to Soul Coughing. It was a two-week session, and instead of joining up for the program-wide planned events after lunch, I took an extended walk and only returned for class. During these walks I would go pretty far, thinking about various things, some of them simply wondering about the conclusion of Eva (I'm a geek). Inevitably I would find a nice tree to lean up against. Though that isn't one of the most comfortable of things to do, I've always felt there's just something about sitting under a tree that invokes a sense of... sympathy, perhaps.

After the class I rejoined summer training to find the numbers had dwindled considerably. "Well," I thought to myself, "those football players just don't have the endurance." I continued with the program, running and stretching and lifting weights and jumping into tires and everything you'd expect.
In the middle of the summer there was a great gathering of many of my sister's friends at the house of one 'Skippy', the guy who owned all of the anime. The final volume of Eva had been released, and he was holding a marathon of all 26 episodes comprising the series. This would be an all-day event (more than twelve hours), and while I was one of the first people to get there, by the end there were many dozens of them.
The last episode was so very surprising and intriguing, it left a magical punctuation mark at the end of a fantastic series. It was a time of great nerdy joy.

My sister and I were both captivated with the show, for we had both downloaded the theme music and left it playing throughout our house for much of the summer. We didn't even talk about it very much though; there was a mutual understanding of its goodness.

Cross Country

Shortly after the summer training ended, I was called up by the Cross Country coach, Mr. Hohn: it was time to start practice. And so, while I used to be going to summer training a couple times a week, I was now off to practice every weekday morning.

There were already five or so guys on the team, who had been there since the previous year. It took a while breaking the ice, but when you're all running yourselves to death together, it's hard not to be on good terms. Over the next couple of weeks, I really familiarized myself with the geography of North Minneapolis, as we ran all over the place. There were so many runs of varying courses. On a given day it would be the flagpole run. Or the parkway run. Or the 'river run' which was also the make-up-where-the-heck-we're-going run. There was also the dreaded Calhoun run, which was the eight and a half miles from Henry to Lake Calhoun. I remember running that route. The first few miles were bad, but miles four and five were the toughest. Then after that, it just turned into the same thing and running was just the natural state of existence.

When I was running, it really helped to be in a new place so that I could admire the scenery. My least favorite place of all to run was the track, which is just endless repetition. If I couldn't admire the scenery, I would end up just putting myself into an odd trance. Already I had to get some weird rythmic breathing for tough runs, so that was halfway there to hypnosis-land. Like I said, it all starts to blend together, and it got to the point where I would start a familiar run, I would think about one or maybe two things, and then I would be done and out of breath and ready to almost vomit. It was like a time warp.

That was pretty much the end of summer. Getting up early to run more than three miles everyday really consumed a lot of energy, and it pretty much came to be the only thing I did on a given day.

There is something great about a nice exhausting run, I learned once I had finally gotten in shape. They travel the gamut of human contentment all in a short period. It is at first torturous and tedious, sometimes triumphant. Then it is scary and exciting, but hopeful. When the distance is covered, pride and accomplishment. But it is a bittersweet end, because then you have to learn how to breathe again and you feel like suffocating and your muscles are tight -the pain catches up with you. Finally, that pain is gently replaced with the most perfect reward. Often accompanied by a refreshing breeze, the feeling encapsulates the whole body: elation. Love those endorfins. When they subside much later, you once again return to normal.

The running would get harder and harder as we approached the first day of school.

Sophomore

I remember I was very nervous once again, the first day of my sophomore year. Not because of school stuff, but because that was the day of my first Cross Country meet.

I had some new classes. Driver's education was my first class. Like the year previous, Spanish was my second class, and had the same teacher that was far too energetic early in the morning. My third class was Chemistry, and I was somewhat worried because the seating arrangement was simply many two-person tables. I got there first, and to my amazement Kelley from my biology class freshman year walks in and sits down right next to me, making with the friendlies. And the rest of the day was pretty plain, history and math analysis and English.

With the school out of the way, it was time for the race. It was, as one may guess, pretty intimidating for me. It was the first time I'd seen such a thing: teams from all over the state were there, all camped out together in their uniforms and their tents, blasting their rev-up music as they did warm-up stretches. And this was all in a huge park, grass all around, and flags placed around the allocated running course.

Until that point I had only heard tales of the cross country meets. Hohn told stories of how physical the races can get, and one in particular was about how two guys from one team were running together and not letting anyone pass. Well, they were beaten when one guy bravely ran up down the middle of them. Before they could knock him back he sprinted forward, lifted his arms, and elbowed them backwards -propelling him to the finish line. What an amazing image! One story that my teammates told was how a guy wore cleats one year, and on one particular section of this course there is a length of paved path that the guy went straight for. The sound of his clanking was a psychological tool to freak out the other racers.

Then there were the very basics of the sport itself. It's not simply a race against yourself. There really is a lot of thinking involved. This may just be because there's not a whole lot to think about in the first place, and you inject thoughts into everything. When you're running, you hear exactly how the guys behind you and in front of you breathe. If you hear a guy starting to lose his rythm, it's time for you to step it up and make him feel like he's slowing down, so that maybe he'll give up. Of course, you've got to watch out about losing it yourself too. And in the end, you ALWAYS sprint, because everybody else will and because you have to do SOMETHING before it's over.

But do you start before them, or do you wait to react?

This was one of those integral paradoxes of work/payoff calculations that I always ended up suffering through in my mind. I'm an over-analyser, an over-calculator. But I am most especially one of these when it results in more time for me to think. Voracious for one more bite of contemplation.
So I'm an excellent procrastinator.

And not so excellent at running races. Sure, I did okay. I never came in last. I added to my team's score, though we had few members anyways. I just never really got to the point of pushing my limits.

During the running season, it only felt like half of me was at school. The other half was busy at cross country practice. Thus it was with surprise that I was a month into the year and halfway through the trimester of classes without realizing it. I was sitting on the city bus on my way home from practice, and I found myself halfway through The Lord of The Flies without knowing how I had gotten there, and I could recall everything fine. The 'time warp' I experienced when going out on a run was manifesting itself on a larger level.

Looking through my recent memories, I realized that I was feeling great. Is it that time flies when you're having fun? I was in the best shape I had ever been in, I was doing fine in school, I was an essential member of a team, and...
...And somehow it turned out that I had been sitting next to a girl for the last month! And we were talking! And she smiled!?

There I was, alone with Kelley. There was something about the seating arrangement in that chemistry class -with the two-person tables, and our location near the back- that made it comforting. We had only known each other slightly the year previous, but we were bonding immediately this year. The way in which she could spontaneously create fun -and often absurd- things to talk about had me enjoying every minute. Though I would falter in 'serious' conversations with most people, I could play her silly games with candor. I could respond to her brainstorms, expand upon the material, and send her my own spin. Back and forth we would pass notes and doodles and gestures and remarks.

A more playful friend I could not have imagined.

And at lunch time, I was alone. There were two lunch rooms now: a private one reserved for the juniors and seniors, and another for the rest of the school. All of my lunch friends from the previous year were juniors. I did not even know that some of them had my same lunch hour until I had developed my own habits in the 'animal' lunch room. I would sleep. Sometimes I would play tetris on my calculator, sometimes I would work on potatoes and doodle. But sitting at a table by myself was just too depressing, too embarrassing. I could not take it, so I would usually just put my head down on my fuzzy trapper-keeper and close my eyes. I might not have always really slept, but I would listen to my surroundings, listen to my own thoughts -And then the bell would ring and it was off to class.

Back at cross country practice, exercises were getting tougher, faster. It was also getting colder: the Minnesota climate would bring in blizzards before the running season was over. There was the meet up in Duluth on the golf course. Then there were three meets on Lake Nokomis. The running was getting tiresome, on the whole. During runs I now found myself thinking about things instead of focusing.

Between my lunchtime nap and my running, I was thinking too much.
After awhile, it changed from thinking to fantasizing because I would end up thinking about one thing: Kelley. More and more she took over my train of thought. It was curious thoughts:
Did she maybe like me?
Mightn't she perhaps consider the possibility of us two maybe doing something together?
And then: Did she have a boyfriend?
It was just curiosity at first. I really was so busy with cross country that the thought of dating a girl was just too much.

Kelley Wanner

I was noticing more things about her all the time. She had braces this year, and they seemed to enhance the slight puffiness in her cheeks to be more endearing. Also, the way in which her voice subtly lisped and slightly squeaked when she talked about the silliest of things and when she was giving me something; it made me smile. Her hair was a gorgeous brown. Of all things, I think her eyes haunted me the most: deep and dark, with a slight hazel tone. Maybe it was because she was the first girl I ever talked with who really looked me in the eyes, but I thought they were so pretty, dark and glazed and full of optimism.

It was her visage that I looked at on the horizon as I finished cross country season. I'd tried to be reasonable, to not be swayed by my complicated fantasies. But every day I encountered 'evidence' that this girl liked me. She was such a good friend, and when I thought about the possibility of her liking me I became flustered. Little old me?

At the end of the trimester, I was faced in history class with the opportunity for a presentation. I'd done my research paper on some war in feudal Japan, so it was perfect fodder for an entertaining piece. As was becoming the usual procedure, I locked myself in my room the day before it was due. I had a video camera, a commodore 64 monitor, some cardboard, and various colors of clay. I set the Soul Coughing music blasting as I worked for hours into the night. When I finished the video, it was around five in the morning, and it was at last time to dub in the soundtrack. I decided on "Bus to Beelzebub", probably the oddest song.

When it played in class, I was surprised myself at it. There was direction, there was a set, it had slight historical ties, and it had a cool samurai fight. And the deliciously incongruous accompanying music serenading the room of classmates gave me a twisted pleasure. Mr. Damm asked me after class if he could show it to the rest of the classes, and even wanted a copy to show it to future years. Oh yes, I was now a superstar director.

Hot off of this feat, and with the new freedom from cross country ending, I returned to my dealings with Kelley full of a new confidence. I could be witty. I could be self-deprecating. And I had oh so many statements of meticulous subtlety to give her.

We talked with renewed invigoration: about turkeys, about her job at Target, about driving (of which I now had behind the wheel instructions), about what the teacher did when he left the room, about poodles, about anything and everything, zany things and cute things. I slipped in subtle compliments at every opportunity. Maybe they were too subtle, perhaps, but better less than more, I thought. I didn't want to come on too strong.

Here was the thing: I liked her more and more, because she was liking me more and more.

In the hallways between other classes, I would greet her with a face: a lift of one eyebrow at first, but it evolved into a tilt of my head and kind of puppy face. And she would smile back at me, even mimicking my ridiculous gestures. With each, I felt that I was injecting some kind of signal, some message: "I like you but I'm too afraid to say it out loud." I didn't go around tilting my head to just any old girl. It was all for her... If only she knew.

She was my best friend. I didn't really talk to ANYONE else that year. I had no classes with Vu, who I had talked the most with freshman year. I talked to Nate sometimes, as we shared history and math classes. That was about it. So you can bet that intensified things for me quite a bit. There were great things at stake.

By the end of November, I was pretty well assured that there was no boyfriend in the picture. That excuse was gone; I had nothing to lose, right? But just as I would decide that it was time for me to make a move, I'd see her say or do something unusual as if she were planning the same thing. That would make my stupid logical mind decide to back off slightly. It was just like running a damned race. I couldn't make that last sprint until it was absolutely time, until I'd held out for a little more.

My mind would jump ahead of me sometimes, imagining myself in potential situations in which I'd already asked her out. Maybe this was a way of helping me deal with the great amount of related stress, but for the most part it made me forget about what I really had to be doing to make such a possibility happen.

When winter break approached, things were getting hectic. The first day of that last week of class, I went home convinced, absolutely convinced that she liked me and all was going to be smooth. The next day, I would return but she would say something small, or give me the slightest look that would completely polarize my confidence and make me go home convinced -absolutely convinced- that I was out of my gourd and she didn't really like me at all.
But then the third day I would return and soberly strike up conversation, and it wouldn't be bad. But then later in the day, maybe she didn't see me in the hallway. Or maybe I would have a bad day of class and not get to talk to her, but I would see her in the hallway at the end of the day and she would give me a big smile.

UP and DOWN it went, and the whole situation was making me sick. Then it would make me happy, then I would be depressed. Much like a good run, I was going through the whole range of emotions.

For the last day of class, she was drawing my portrait in colored pencils. I was busy trying to remember the lines I had come up with the night before, the perfect lines to break the ice and tell her how I felt... and she was drawing me. Why didn't I ask to draw her portrait? Tell her how beautiful she looked? I was too busy trying to analyze things, and I completely missed the perfect opportunity.

And of course, I had no chance of telling her, and I went home for the holidays mad at myself.

That break I did another video, my Othello project. Just like last time, I locked myself in my room the day before it was due and I blasted some music. This time it was all Tool's Ænima. When it came time for the audio dubbing, the choice of song was obvious: "Eulogy".

When I came back from break I was still disgusted with myself for being such a lazy and weak excuse for a human being. What a wuss I was, unable to even express the strongest of my feelings to the person I was the closest to. And yet, when I came back Kelley seemed to like me even MORE. I was glad to return the favor.

For a lab, we were connecting all of our molecules to make little doggies which we then played with. It was classic and pure and charming and I just wanted to take her in my arms and squeeze, to forever have her endless well of cute spontaneity.

We doodled together. She made a marker poster that, in big huge friendly letters, said "HAPPY DAY". And it was a happy day. But I was still convincing myself sometimes, on those 'down' days where she seemed less enthusiastic, that she didn't like me one bit.

She would go through my folder and mark on my papers, leave little surprises in my planner. She would pick dates and write things in them, like 'bring Kelley a present'.

And one day she made possibly the most transparent yet subtle action. She found a printout that had on it all of my information: my schedule, my address, my phone number. Under every item of information, she wrote her OWN in red pen. So there was her phone number, there was her address, there were all of her classes, there was her locker number. It seems so very obvious now, but I was getting very very good at not noticing things. See, I was too busy trying to think of the perfect way to ask her out to be able to see how easy she was making it for me.

At lunch one day, I was tapped on the head. I shot right up, and she had just passed through, and she was telling me to rise and shine.

She sat in the junior lunch room. And I was still napping in the other lunch room. It would have been so easy to just walk over there like many sophomores, and just sit there with her. But I didn't. Out of habit, or just out of a slight fear of breaking the rules. Wuss.

Another day Misty talked with me at lunch. She must have noticed how distraught I was, and she offhandedly mentioned that she knew someone who liked me last year. I so very much wanted to strangle her, to make her tell me that it was Kelley. But part of me knew that it was anyways. It was just obvious.

I knew everything, but I was stuck with this inability to take action.

And then Kelley went to Germany. It was just vacation for a couple of weeks with her family. That classroom was excruciating and lonely for me, not because I was alone but because where she sat was empty. There was an empty hole where this wonderful person had once sat. Chemistry was boring without her.

It was February, the very heart of winter.

Clubs

Though I had been focusing most of my thoughts each day on Kelley, I'd also joined a couple of clubs. I rejoined Quiz Bowl, which now had only the minimum four members on the team, and I felt like much more a part of it than before. I also began answering questions. EV and Brian and other familiar people were on the team as well, and practices were very fun.
I'd also joined the Math Team -and that was fun too by golly.

With all of the extracurriculars, I was taking the city bus home each day. But even when I didn't, I was riding home in a city bus, because the district ran out of buses. They had replaced my school bus ride home with a city bus. I liked it because the seats were more comfortable and because not many kids rode my bus route anyways.

At the suggestion of EV and my sister, I had also started to attend the meetings of the University of Minnesota's Anime Society. The president was Skippy, who had first shown me the delightful Eva. So on Thursday nights I would walk on over and watch some Japanese cartoons, and a lot of them were pretty good (And some of it not, of course. But it was a hobby).

The anime club one day had the scoop to beat all scoops: the movie that concluded Eva, appropriately titled "The End of Evangelion". I told EV about it and she accompanied me to the much anticipated screening. Though it was a rough copy, the movie nevertheless shined through. It was dark, it was disturbing, it was mind-altering, it was full of revelation and poetry. Even the next day, it was all over my mind: the imagery, the dialogue, the conclusion. As EV and I both got on the bus for home, we talked to each other about how 'out of it' we both were that day, because the movie was so haunting and affecting. It was so great that its power got me to briefly forget about Kelley and how much of a dufus I was.
It was only very briefly though.

Awkwardtude

When Kelley returned, her hair was cut short and highlighted blonde. It somehow made her even cuter. My first remark was that she had cut her hair, but she must have taken it the wrong way. I really did think it was cute.
She had brought back many things, but the only item she had for me was a beer coaster that said "Mencken".

Up and down. She loves me, she loves me not. Good day, bad day.

On one streak of 'good' days, she dropped the bomb:

"My mom is so weird sometimes."

"Oh ya?" I said, smiling.

"Yes, she's weird. Yesterday, she was chasing my boyfriend around the house."

Gulp

I wanted to die. But I still smiled, letting her finish the tale.

I went home, and I immediately jumped in my bed and buried my face in the pillow, calling her name out through the fabric.

Over the next few days, I enquired about the boyfriend. She didn't really like to talk about him much, opting instead for silly games.

I tried to forget about her. I had lost. There was no coming back. Just focus on the schoolwork. Maybe next time you'll do better, so forget about it. It was so hard. And then, every day she would be there ready to taunt me with some new cute game of hers.

I focused more on my other classes. We were reading Gulliver's Travels in English. I sat behind a girl named Molly, and she seemed that spring to be continually taunted by the stoner valedictorian, Jesse. He would snap her bra and be all over her every day, making jokes about groping her or whatever. It made me sick to my stomach. How could assholes get away with it? They could taunt all the girls they wanted and they would be loved for it. I was witness to other similar situations as well, and I just could not handle it. I wanted to vomit.

Nice guys finish last?
Whenever I caught myself thinking that, I realized that there were a lot of guys out there who thought they were nice guys, but they were only nice guys because they hadn't had the chance to be bad guys. Surely, I concluded, there were too many people using it as an excuse for the world being unfair. So I would tell myself not to use it. I was simply a wuss, and that was the reason I didn't have a girlfriend.

Then I would see Jesse, right in front of me, snaked arm around Molly jokingly. She pushed him away, but she smiled. She would fight him most of the time, but she still smiled sometimes.

How the HELL could guys get away with that and receive SMILES!?

Still friends, Kelley and I continued to talk. She would even write me notes in other classes and hand them to me when she came to chemistry. Friends, I thought. Good friends.

She came one day with a copy of "A Streetcar Named Desire". She wanted to practice lines with me, because she had to act it out in her English class.
It was so disturbing and lovely, running through those lines. Everyone else in the class seemed to look our way, but we didn't care.

After the little drama, we talked some. When she said something, I casually remarked about what her boyfriend would think.
"Oh, I dumped him a couple weeks ago," she said.

Up again. The ball was in my court. But, I thought, I've heard there is a mandatory wait time for these things. I couldn't ask her out right away.

It was then the middle of April.

The ups and downs grew to extremes at this point. The day that she gave me a slight frown or didn't listen enough was HELL. And the day that she smiled and gave me super attention was HEAVEN. I would come home nearly every day and lie in bed imagining her face, and I would call her name into my pillow some more. I was smitten; I was dangerously smitten.

Maybe what I loved most was the variety, the way I would go from happy to sad in one glance. Maybe I was addicted to the emotional rollercoaster.

I struggled more and more, and I would often try to come up with stories to tell her, try desperately to entertain her. And at the same time, I would try desperately to come up with the perfect manner of divulging my desire.

It wasn't working. All of my canned stories didn't seem to impress her. Whenever I TRIED, it just didn't work. But when I didn't think about what I was doing and was just natural and friendly, everything was great, though I would be so natural as to forget about my need to tell her how much I liked it, liked her.

On one very frustrating day, I just put my head down sideways on our desk, staring into space sadly. As if she knew exactly what I was thinking, she placed her own head in front of mine and stared directly at me with those gorgeous eyes. She didn't say anything, and I didn't either. She knew I was sad, I was frustrated. I wish that moment had continued forever, with her really knowing at least part of what I was feeling.
And maybe she hoped she knew why. And maybe I'm just trying to remember things that way.

The sad fact is, I was still a wuss and I wasn't changing. I accompanied her to the lunch room once, but I still said bye and went to sleep in my own lunch room. It was a small step, but I didn't follow it up with another.
I also caught her at her locker. I'd by then figured out where it was, and intentionally walked around the school to pass it on my way to the bus at the end of the day. A brief exchange, but just that.
On one day, I said outright, "I'm SO stupid."
She asked why, with a great concern. I should have answered that I was stupid because I wasn't telling her how I felt, but instead told her a retarded story about how I had fallen while running to catch my bus. I had, and that stupid story was what I'd planned to tell her. But why couldn't I have changed it in a moment of clarity to reveal those emotions throbbing just beneath my skin?

She talked sometimes about her guy friend Joe. I immediately hated his guts. She was trying to set him up with her friend, I think. But all I could think of was how threatening he was. Joe. I hated him, though I had never talked to him.

The IB awards came, and I once again won the 'best presentations' for my stylistic abominations. Why did I win with my recycled crap when other people with more unique presentations didn't? I felt like a piece of garbage, on account of the Kelley situation.

It should be noted that while Kelley certainly took up the most space in my mind, I was still a very competent, diligent, and knowledge-hungry student. That was all second nature to me by then. What had changed was that it didn't make me happy. The only thing I had passion for was Kelley, and she was the only thing that determined how I felt.

And then there was the last week of school, and I prepped myself so much. But I didn't memorize anything. I just wanted to START telling her.
It didn't work for the first few days. The chance just didn't come up. It just didn't happen right.
The last day of chemistry. The clock was ticking. It kept ticking. I wasn't moving, and I couldn't either. I had her sign my yearbook. She was the only person I wanted to sign it. The class bell sounded, but I followed her out.
"Look, Kelley," I said agitatedly, because it was so difficult for me to say, "Can I see you sometime this summer?"
It was out there, but she was still walking fast. I was trying to keep up with her, through the crowd of the hallway.
"I'm kind of busy this summer," she said, "I'm working a lot."
And then she was gone.

I went home and cried some more.

Stalk Summer '99

That summer, I biked around a lot.

I also decided to get a job. I had been called by some company, Midwest Publishing, and had been told there was a job available. When summer came, I looked it up in the phone book and just biked there. I submitted my application, and I came back for training. I was basically hired on the spot, after watching a training video.

Telemarketing. I was signed up as a soldier in the phone-sales army. It was my first job.

Basically, I got a station to work at: it had a computer, a keyboard, and a phone. The calls came through automatically, and on the screen was a script to read from (with some blanks to fill in). This particular company focused on selling 'donations to non-profit organizations', like the firefighters association of wherever, and maybe the veteran's order of someplace else. So you would try to get the people on the phone to donate money to these nice non-profit organizations. It's all about talking them up, saying all of the buzzwords that had been so perfectly arranged on the pitch on the screen. The big scam was, of course, that only about six percent of all of the donations actually made it back to the organization. The rest of it was 'fundraising costs' -this big fat calling station and my big fat bosses.

It didn't take me long to figure out that this was totally immoral and disgusting. But it was my first job. I liked money too.

You could make a game of it -you HAD to make a game of it. I was calling 80 people an hour. In time, I got a feel for it, knowing which old grannies would fork out cash, and which people would torture me for calling them during dinner. In time I learned that you sometimes had to use buzzwords, or cut to the chase to get people to deal: "It's only twenty dollars" was one desperate plea I repeated to a certain type. The more aggressive you were, making sure they didn't hang up, the more sales you got, and the more rewards the bosses gave.

While I was working this job a couple days a week, I was in my free time taking great huge bike rides. I found myself going to a certain Target store more often than usual, on the off chance that Kelley was there. What's wrong with that? I tried very hard not to think of the word 'stalker'. Very very hard.

I was also biking all around the city, learning finally where uptown was, and how I could get places from St. Paul, and where I could get to the many lakes around the Twin Cities. I was finally discovering where I lived.

But I was still crooning for Kelley. I was looking through my school stuff one day, and I found the printout. This was the piece of paper on which Kelley had written her phone number and address.

I considered calling Kelley immediately. I reasoned it out. She HAD given the number to me. Part of me felt that she had given it to a different me, but another part of me told that part to shut up and start dialing.

I've always been bad with phones. More than anything, calling someone on the phone is probably the last thing I would do to contact them. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Besides, I had learned some 'phone apathy' skills from my new job.

After writing myself out a careful script (Another trick I had learned from my job), I called. I just got the machine, though. That scared me into not calling again immediately.

I went out on another bike ride. This one to a special location in Northeast Minneapolis, which is where her address happened to be located. I biked by fast, glancing briefly at the windows of her house, with this insane hope that somehow I would bump into her and everything would turn okay.

I was invited to Tag a couple of times. I finally had a story to tell, too, because I was currently working for Satan. I felt like more of a grown up, with that new job of mine. That depressing and immoral new job.

As the summer dragged on, telemarketing was getting less funny and more torturous. There were some funny times, like when I called a place where a guy answered "Gary's house of porn." And it was always fun when we did something called 'random dialing', which meant we would call unlisted numbers and cell phones. That was great for a hoot.

Dead people. I called my fair share of dead people. Whenever you called those old people, you had to be careful about asking for the misses or the mister, because they would likely be deceased.

Also, I once called a house where a child answered the phone. "Is your mom there?" I asked.
"No, she died," the kid replied.
Hardened, I simply said, "Sorry to hear that... so is your dad around?"
"No," said the kid, "He's dead too."
I hung up. Even if the kid was making up things, I realized that I needed to quit.

I'd set up a little gathering that summer. I'd managed to acquire all of EVA, and I wanted to show it to two of my friends who hadn't seen it: Brian and Nate. So I held a huge marathon one day when they could come, and we watched the entire EVA series from around noon to early in the morning. After that, we started talking about girls. Not really talking, but just the 'who do you like' bit. Nate always seemed to bring that stuff up. I admitted that I liked Kelley Wanner. Brian, who had many classes with her and had, it turned out, sat next to her during lunch, remarked: "I don't really see it. She's pretty, but she's kind of... not all that deep."

I had adored all of the time spent with her, making up silly things. That that might be the extent of Kelley was something that hadn't crossed my mind.
It was true, but I was still infatuated with her. It didn't matter. I had to play this one out. It was a matter of correcting my mistakes.

The summer had gone by quickly. I had tried calling Kelley's house once every couple of weeks, always getting the machine. I called again near the end of the summer, and her brother answered. I asked him when she's usually home, and he told me.

It was a few weeks before school started that I called and she answered. I nearly fell over, trying to stay calm. I told her it was me. And then I nervously went right into talking about what I'd been doing that summer, and I went into my story about telemarketing briefly. I realized she wasn't talking much. I kept talking very fast, in the way that I had subconsciously learned to keep people from hanging up on me. She said she kind of had to leave for work now, and I felt hot. I asked her when a good time to call her would be. Too busy. Then I said I would talk to her sometime, or at least when school started. Sure, she said, sounding like a disinterested customer. I wasn't making the sale.

That was the last time I talked to her, that disaster of a phone conversation.

Goodbye

I started cross country practice again, and my mind was at a given time either completely blank or entirely consumed with Kelley. I gave up carbonated beverages this year to run more efficiently. The running kept me going, though I felt like I was just getting more and more depressed. Junior year officially started, and I tried to find Kelley.
I saw her in the hallway, and I tried to give her a raised eyebrow. She didn't make eye contact.
I ran some more. Running kept me sane.
But then I started seeing Kelley's face in the new girl who had just joined cross country. She had similar cheeks, and all I could see was Kelley.

After being ignored the few times I saw Kelley over those first few months of junior year, I started showing my sad face when I saw her. The least she could do was tell me why, what of all the things I had done, that made her totally close communication.

Even if she didn't want to have anything to do with me anymore, I wanted to at least show her my great regret. I wanted to show her how deeply sorry I was -for everything.

I wanted to apologize for not noticing her enough at first. For not telling her how pretty she was. For not following her to lunch. For not responding to her at the right time. For missing the window that she gave me. For not showing her how she had so completely and magically captivated my entirety. I wanted to say sorry for being such a damned coward. And sorry that I had creeped out and gone stalker on her.

I wanted her to know how she had filled my days with so much happiness and so much sadness, how she brightened my spirits and how even the smallest disappointing look from her would have me crying when I got home. I just wanted her to know something, anything, just a hint at how much she had meant to me.

For an entire year of my life, she was the only thing that I wanted in the entire universe.

I just wish she knew that.

I saw very little of her junior year. And after only briefly seeing her a few times in the hallway, she disappeared. She'd moved away, I found out later. I didn't get the chance to say "goodbye", or even "I'm sorry."

Goodbye, Kelley.

I'm sorry.




(This was chapter number four of my personal accounts, "-Liking-: Refractions and Infractions" )
(Next chapter: "Invalid Item" )