I was so excited to seem cool. Mission not accomplished.
Our desks were arranged into groups of four to make a table, the lopsided wooden tops knocking into each other in the center every time a desk would wobble. Zack was directly in front of me. Quinn was to my left, displaying the new Beanie Baby she had just acquired—a flamingo, I think, the little heart-shaped tag dangling from its hot-pink wing. I don’t remember who sat next to Zack, diagonally from me. Sorry, Diagonal Person.
“Zack, that sweatshirt looks wonderful on you.”
Our sixth-grade teacher, Mr. D, fed the compliment from his desk in the corner behind me out into the room with his decadently buoyant, rich voice.
“It really brings out the color of your eyes.”
The class snapped their own eyes to the eleven-year-old boy in front of me, who looked flattered yet slightly mortified. Looking up, I could not agree with Mr. D more. Zack’s sweatshirt, blanketing him from the slice and chill of the New Jersey air, was a light, powdery blue, and it made his eyes pop like a wolf’s glowing against a forest night. Zack’s eyes were an icy azure; a shield to the outer world, hiding his thoughts.
I had attended Apollo Elementary School since the year prior, but this was the first and only year Zack was in my class. I thought he was cute from that first autumn day. His eyes stunned me, freezing me in place even without that powder blue sweatshirt enhancing their glow. He had a nest of curly brown hair and smooth, alabaster skin. He was one of the cool guys, and I thought I had won the lottery of class seat assignments when I was to sit at his table for the year.
Somehow, Quinn was even nerdier than I was. She was nerdy in a cool way, though. She knew she was a nerd right down to the glasses that sat upon her oval-shaped face, but she didn’t give a shit what anyone thought about it. She was a confident nerd before being a nerd was cool. I could tell even then that Zack respected her for this, for being smart and for being confident. Her waist-length brown hair that laid smoothly atop her white sweatshirt was tied half-up with a scrunchie.
I sat there with my big, black frizzy hair and bangs, probably also nuzzled in a sweatshirt, but it was likely too big for my little preteen body. There was nothing really wrong with my body, but I thought that hiding it in an oversized top would cover everything up, not realizing that it only made me look less put together and larger than I actually was. It wasn’t hard for me to see that I was much chubbier than the other girls my age. This was unfortunately the era of the crop top, a trend that I never thought I could follow because of my figure. I actually tried one once when I was on vacation in Hawaii, because at least I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew. I loved the print, a neon orange, navy and white stripe.
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