“And I’d give up forever to touch you
‘Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be
And I don’t want to go home right now”–
I’d waste all my time so I could be close to him simply because I think something might happen. I think he’s the closest to true love I’ll ever find, which is a mistake. And when I have to leave him, I feel sad. When I watch him walk away from band practice, a part of me walks away, too.
“And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
‘Cause sooner or later it’s over
I just don’t want to miss you tonight”-
When I’m around him, I’m very self-conscious and I pick up every little detail about everything he does. But, sooner or later, I have to leave him, and I’ll be stuck thinking about him all night. And I feel bad because I could never date him without Katie murdering me. And she could never date him without me feeling especially desolate.
“And I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am”-
I don’t want everyone to see me when I’m thinking of him, or when I see him and blush or giggle. They wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t see why I like him. To them, he is just another guy in the background. At the same time, when hearts are made to be broken, I don’t want him to get too close to me. I just want him to know my name and not hurt me.
“And you can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything feels like the movies
And you bleed just to know you’re alive”-
He doesn’t know me, so he can’t cry over me. And he doesn’t know that I see truth in what he says even though it doesn’t mean anything. However, when everything is so dramatic around me, I keep hurting to know I’m still living in the present.
I love this song! It’s so amazing. One of my favorite songs. It’s extremely meaningful. Check it out!
Not in a thorough way. Just a chunk in the back. It’s brassy, bottle blonde. Blonde because we left the highlighter in too long. Blonde because we left it in for forty minutes and the rest for ten.
So I play with it. I move it to the side, front, back, other side, this way and not that. If I move it all to the back, I’m suddenly punk. If I scatter it around, I’m nice, classic, natural. If I lift the chunk above the rest of my hair, the change is startling. Bright, orangeish blonde and light brown.
I’ve always wanted to have blonde hair. Roxie Hart blonde, with a bit of a curl to it. Short and neat and classic. But I have short, brown hair that I hairspray every day. It’s not bad. If I take time, it can look great. But I’ve always longed for another color.
My brother has red hair. My grandmother has red hair. My father had a red beard. And I got stuck with brown, a brown that pops out of nowhere. My mother has dark brown, a brown so dark it looks black. And I have light brown hair that goes lighter in the summer and is now very light because we left the highlighter in for too long.
When I walk into the living room to showcase my new hair to my brother, he says it looks nice. My brother who says that my hair looks best when I don’t do it says it looks nice. And my mother compares it to Billy Ray Cyrus’s hair. At least there’s someone else with fake blonde hair.
I wonder what people will say when I walk into school tomorrow. Kaleigh will likely give me an odd look. Meghan will smile and like that I’ve gone punk, or so my hair says. Another will insult it, and another will compliment it. One will even say delicately that my hair is different.
But I wonder what the others will say. Not the people who are extras, not the people in the background. But people I know and care about. People like my section, or my fifth period class. People like band nerds or people like the Aca-Deca crowd. Or what my Bio teacher, who let me out of class when I had a nasty pen mark on my cheek, will say to me. Will she send me to the bathroom? And what about if I tell her it’s permanent? And my Lit teacher, who loves my writing and has a lot to teach me about analysis. What will she say?
It doesn’t look that bad, I note. It’s versatile, like my mother says. And if I play around with it enough, it looks punk or classic or even intentional.
Either that, or I’ll have a heck of a time explaining it to everyone.
My friend and I have just trekked the distance from the visitor’s bleachers over to the home’s, and she’s just located her friends. We navigate through the small crowd, body heat radiating off the metal. The home side is much more crowded than the lonely visitor’s, which is just filled up with parents.
We sit down and she starts chatting with her friends. I will allow it, so I look at the football game. I notice then that the guy next to me is staring. I look for a second at him just because I’m a little freaked out, but I turn back to the game and he resumes conversation with his friends. He reminds me of someone I knew a while ago, but the name isn’t coming to mind. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t remember.
He asks my friend if he knows her and what her name is. I try to pretend like I’m not interested in their conversation, but I guess I fail, because he then turns to me and asks me if he knows me. I tell him I’ve never met him and he asks me what my name is. I tell him and I also say that he looks just like someone I knew but their name isn’t coming to mind.
I tune back into the game, as much as I can, anyway. I’ve never liked football, and the timer never goes off when it’s supposed to. We’re in a small cluster of her friends and I let her talk some more. Then she takes me to the concession stands. He reminds her of someone, too. Tip of the tongue there, too. So we get our food and head back up the warm, noisy bleachers. It’s Homecoming Night for them.
We sit back in our seats and it hits me then: He looks like Chris, Chris who I knew in middle school and who had a crush on me. Chris the science geek who I liked, too, but was a year younger than me and taboo. Chris who used to make me blush, who asked me if I liked Poe and who I bored away because of his puppy dog face. Chris from middle school.
He has the same beautiful eyes, light blue things that seem somewhat spectral and haunt your mind for hours afterward. Haunting eyes that seemed like they didn’t belong on Earth, but some far away world. Mystified eyes. And he has the nose, the prominent nose that comes out straight at the top and slopes after that. A strange, angular nose for the faint eyes.
And it would seem there are two Ethans who can’t remember my name, and neither are my age. There is Ethan the senior who I see every day, my drum captain. And there is this Ethan, the Ethan who looks like Chris, who is a seventh grader.
I don’t know why he is at the football game, but he looks just like Chris and he asks me if I want to be his friend. I tell him no. When I am walking with Kaleigh and Salvador, he asks me if I am lost because I grip Kaleigh’s bag with my fist so I don’t get pulled away. I shake my head no. Because he looks like Chris, Chris who had a crush on me last year and who I liked back but would never admit.
I drape it over my eyes every week for five days, sometimes six if I need to. And my head pangs with guilt and my stomach turns with unease. I’ve had the shroud for a month. It is a beautiful shroud, something you wouldn’t notice unless it caught your eye at a flea market. It would cost ten dollars at the most, and you’d walk home and wear it every day. When you were away, you wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it. You fantasize about going back home and examining it, searching for a trace of something someone else would consider valuable. Whenever you show it to someone, they shoo it away or curse you for loving it so much. But you go home and wear it anyway.
Some other thing caught my eye yesterday, though. It is a screen, a dirty, average-looking screen. It is sturdy, though, and reliable, and it keeps the bugs away. And I bought it. I have no idea how to install it, but I admire it at the back of my mind. It’s a funny little screen, all black and old and worn. And someday, I will put it up in my doorway and see it everyday and admire it for what it is.
As soon as I can clear my infatuation with the shroud, I will embrace the screen. Once I rid myself of that beautiful, entrancing garment, I can stand up and be free to this. And I can put that screen up in my doorway, and watch it as so many things unfold around it.
Through a shroud, you can only see a face caught in pain. Through a screen, you can watch the world.
He is good for me. He is nice. He is funny. He is outgoing, but not too outgoing. He’s the right level for me, if only I could get over my fear of not being myself. The instant I can get over my fear is the second I can say something to him other than “Thank you,” or “Yeah, I’m in band.”
He’s nice. My friend doesn’t befriend people who aren’t. He lets me go first when we’re crossing the bleachers, even though I walk into people when I do and even though he was going to follow my friend and even though he can’t hear me express my gratitude over the sound of the commentator.
And I feel like I should be feeling something. Something should be pulling me, pulling me hard, but it doesn’t. I feel strangely at ease in his presence. The instant I met him, I felt calm and warm and comfortable. Not stressed and nervous like how I feel in front of the other one, the one I’ve had feelings for for about a month now. With this guy, I feel nice, like someone’s paying attention to the wallflower. I can stop lurking in the shadows when I’m by him, though my words shake a bit as they fall out softly. He has to ask me to repeat myself, and I do a few times. I’ve never been into yelling.
But he is comfortable with himself. He doesn’t slouch like the other one, and he isn’t a jerk like the other one. When we go up to the top of the bleachers and look across the field to the home team, he can wave the rippling gold streamers without fear. I am a bit jealous of his ease at doing so. I try shaking my hips, though I’m still a little nervous. Not tense, though, like what I feel like in front of the other one. Just nervous, and not because he’s watching. Just nervous because others are watching. No, I’m not sure what it is about him. I just feel comfortable.
On the bleachers with the others, I feel a bit odd. But he makes me feel like I fit in completely. He’s in the marching band, too, just not at my school. He’s at the home team’s school, with their bright red shirts. And though my color is blue and his red, the second for both of us is the gold, the same gold color of the streamers he pulls across the field, waving to his friends.
Usually, around guys, I’m tense and nervous and just uncomfortable. I feel like I’d rather be anywhere but with them. But he is different. I see his face for the first time and we are old friends. I can relax around him. I stop shaking and thinking about whatever I’m doing. I just go with the flow.
I’m just pushing the chimes into place when my friend’s stepmother tells me to run off to the rest of the band. They’re standing in multiple circles, seniors in the center, pit, auxiliary, and battery after them, and then in order of instrument. I feel bad because I’m sweaty and have to grab onto their backs, but I do so anyway. The guy next to me drops his arm after a minute or two and it is done in silence, despite the fact that we’ve spoken before. We’ve even given each other the thumbs-up sign, but we do this without words.
He brings his arm back up in a few minutes, when the drum major begins to conduct the band. I don’t know if I’m holding onto the guy next to me the right way. The other person beside me is a girl, so I know she won’t take it the wrong way. But he’s tall, taller than me, and I can only reach a little above his waist. It’s not like I’ve had much practice, anyway. My eyes dart around the circle, wondering where to look, resting for the most time on the drum major, but looking away lest he get the wrong idea. They fall on his face and look away, and I scan the crowd for people I know. I’m worried that if my head moves too much, people will stare, so I stop and resume looking at the drum major like we are told to do on the field.
The notes rush, and I miss the traditional hip shaking. I always do. Then it slows down and a blush spreads over my face because I’m afraid people saw that I didn’t move and don’t think I forgot. I realize I’m way too concerned about it and nobody even noticed.
The final note is blown and held out. People drop hands and embrace each other. I stand alone in a writhing sea of arms and backs, glancing around nervously and wonder if someone’s going to hug me like they did at the first football game, when everybody wanted to see everyone else and figure out how the whole hugging thing went. Was it like this or this? How does he hug, how does she hug? My friend steps forward when she notices my awkward position and hugs me for a full five seconds. I’m not much of a hugger, but figure this is all the hugging action I’ll get for tonight, so I throw myself into it.
I look around but can’t see the pit. I get the sneaking suspicion that they’re avoiding me. I am A Wallflower, someone who Doesn’t Hug, who Doesn’t Play Dirty Games. When I hug, I stand next to someone and pull in close for three seconds and there’s always an awkward aftermath when I’m wondering what I should say and they’re wondering if they can leave. I say goodbye and they leave right away.
Most people hug like there’s no tomorrow. They pull another person close into their chest and do so quickly. They laugh or say they had a great game, and walk away to hug someone else, walking past me as if I had suddenly become a rock in the road or a sticker on the trailer. In times like this, I’d rather become a chime than have to endure the awkwardness.
Most people are comfortable in their bodies and are able to do almost anything without worrying. I’m not. When I get nervous, I shake and twitch so much it looks like I have a problem. When someone tries to get close to me, I wonder why and my mind always falls on the physical experience. I get nervous and I shake and I don’t hug right, so people never come to me looking for one. I am there for them when they need me. I can listen to them cry and make them feel better, but I can’t joke with them. I can’t play dirty games, and people don’t come up to me looking for a hug.
I don’t know why my teacher did this. Everyone knows that if you pair a writer and a window, you get lots of zoning, daydreaming, and plotting. And when it’s your math teacher, well, forget class.
Maybe it’s because she thought I was especially focused. That was true before she moved me. But now, all I can think about are, well, un-geometry-related thoughts.
But it’s nice, too. Every day, I watch the bass drummer from the battery walk past me, smiling and waving. And I try to smile and wave back. And every day, in the last five minutes of class, I watch my friend walk over and sit on the bench across from the window, flipping through book pages like it’s going out of style.
But, every day, I have to watch as my classmates from my honors classes walk into the advanced math class, grinning with a spring in their step, while my classmates trudge into class as if walking through wet cement. And the advanced students’ classroom is right across from mine. I peer nervously out the window every day like I’d soak up their knowledge from past a window, a door, and ten feet of gum-speckled ground. But I never do.
Every day, I have to limit how much my eyes wander to about three times for intervals of five seconds each or my teacher will get suspicious and make me move. Sometimes, my eyes snag on the collection of strangely tame graffiti on the filing cabinet before me. I wonder if my teacher was the one who wrote it all, as the sayings are all math-related, without the usual stream of swears.
There’s a vent by my feet that opens when the door closes and shuts when the door swings open to reveal a teacher’s assistant or USL officer. My seat is easily the coldest, but I don’t mind at all. I have a nice view, anyway.
Those people I see walking into the competition. The ones pushing the xylophones, the gongs, the chimes. The players from other schools. The people selling concessions, the person driving the bus. The people I see every day.
Do they simply exist or is there more to them?
Of course, if you talked to any one of them, or saw one cry or pound the earth with their fists, you would notice the hardships, the struggles, that they’ve fought through or crumpled down under for. If you see one and your heart pangs with guilt, you know that they are not simply a blade of grass in a vast field.
But, of course, they probably do not think of you as something all that important. They see you in second or fifth or sixth period and are gone, and so are you. Most think of you as someone who exists only for them to see, not to feel with. You are someone who is seen and not heard.
