The History Class Guy

In the fall of 1998, my sophomore year of high school, I developed one of my most serious high school crushes on a guy in my history class. Tall and black haired, he sat across the aisle from me. We didn't talk much, but each of us frequently caught the other staring, which made our few awkward, inane conversations all the more strained. I would never have been able to sustain a decent conversation anyway since I spent the majority of the year clinically depressed. My childhood had caught up to me, and I quit talking to my mom's side of the family. This on top of my shyness rendered me useless in talking to boys, especially ones on whom I had especially large crushes, such as HSHCG. I remember once our teacher had written something on the board about it being the one hundredth day of school.

"How could he possibly know that?" High School History Class Guy (HSHCG) asked me. I started and failed to think of a witty response.

"He probably counts," I croaked, my voice nearly cracking on the last word.

"Yeah . . . way too much time on his hands," HSHCG mumbled, trailing off. Briefly fearing he stopped talking due to my idiocy, I realized that he couldn't think of anything to say either. Besides, I knew he didn't really think I was an idiot; he asked me about homework once or twice.

The school year wore on. HSHCG casually mentioned in my hearing that he had an after school job in a local restaurant. To my excruciating embarrassment, it was a restaurant my dad and I favored. Not wishing to run into HSHCG at his place of employment, I refused to go there anymore. I knew that HSHCG probably mentioned it half hoping I would drop by and visit, but I knew—I just knew—that it would be an apocalyptically awkward disaster, and we would never be able to look each other in the eye again. Later on, to my chagrin, I found out some other girl also had a crush on him and went there all the time to spy on him. I reflected that my strategy was probably better since anything was better than staking out a guy's workplace. If it had been a retail establishment where I could have dropped in quickly or made it look like an accident, that would have been one thing, but I refused to demean myself by so obviously stalking a guy, no matter how much I wanted to.

Despite the awkwardness of his brief conversations with me, HSHCG was quite a talkative guy normally—too talkative, in fact. The teacher frequently lost patience with him and occasionally made him sit outside until class had ended. I remember once I received a summons to the counselor's office during class, and when I returned, HSHCG was standing outside the classroom, leaning against the wall by the door. I didn't say a word. I tried really hard not to laugh and failed, causing him to laugh as well. I got a hold of myself and entered the classroom. I suppose it was unfair, but it put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. Laughter will do that.

The school year drew to a close without HSHCG making any romantic overtures in my direction. All summer, I fretted about whether I would see him the following year. I knew it was unlikely we would share any classes since he was a year ahead of me; we would probably have to resort to seeing each other in the halls.

Unfortunately, I was right.

My junior year dawned with me in a much better mood than I had been the previous year. I was rid of my mother's side of the family and out of the English class the year before which had made my life a living hell: Taught by a Mormon Republican woman who singled me out for being an outspoken left wing atheist, the other kids in the class saw nothing wrong with teasing and ostracizing me. I told them I was Satanic, which scared most of them silent. Luckily, the following year, I did not see any of them. Besides, I knew my dad and I would likely be moving to Austin sometime during this school year, which would afford me the opportunity to start over, or at least leave those particular bullies behind. In the meantime, however, I had other problems to contend with.

A few weeks passed without me seeing me HSHCG at all. Disappointed, I worried that he might have moved away. But one day, I was shocked to see him outside as I walked to my tech theatre class. I could tell he was equally shocked. Around the same time period, I saw him in the hall on the way to lunch. He saw me, and he and his friends wound up sitting near me at lunch without actually including me. That would have been nice seeing as how I sat by myself junior year. Ah well.

Conversations between HSHCG and I remained minimal; most contact was . . . eye contact. A lot of awkward, longing eye contact, coupled with numerous instances involving one of us "accidentally" brushing against the other.

I gave HSHCG quite a start one day when he saw me in the halls wearing a tech theatre shirt. All tech theatre students had to wear show shirts on opening and closing nights, and I faithfully wore mine on opening night of the first show of the year. HSHCG saw me wearing it and visibly started, craning his neck to double take. I wondered, snickering to myself, if he would go to see the show, expecting to see me onstage—I had never mentioned that my involvement in the theatre department was strictly behind the scenes. He figured it out when he saw me disappearing backstage to read the call board during lunch a couple of times. My love of tech theatre was readily apparent; it was a laid back class with mostly guys and no bitchy girls. It was the drama department, and those involved backstage wanted the drama to remain onstage, which made a huge change from the previous year. I, for once, fit in. Or maybe I just loved it because I got to beat the living crap out of inanimate objects without joining an athletic activity.

Meanwhile, I saw HSHCG almost daily at lunch. His group of friends, led by him, carefully sat close to me but not too close so I could overhear their conversations easily. I overheard, more than once, remarks by both him and his friends that he was single. I took the hint but refused to make a move, insisting to myself that if he really liked me, he could be the one to embarrass himself: God knows I did that well enough already.

He never got the chance, though. During Spring Break, my dad and I moved to Austin. I hadn't known for sure we would be moving until about a month before. We had in fact only located our new house the week before we moved. Even at that, I did not tell more than about five people I was leaving, which did not include HSHCG—what could I possibly have said? We barely knew each other; I certainly couldn't possibly have blurted out anything idiotic about a date the night before I left town, not with our history of awkward non-conversations. Besides, I didn't want anyone other than a handful of close friends knowing I was leaving. Unpopular as I was at school, I didn't want any Carrie style going away pranks, so I opted to play a prank on my classmates instead and drop off the face of the earth.

I missed HSHCG at my new school. Regrettably, I soon began dating Stalker, and the excitement of dating, really dating, somebody made me forget about my crush on HSHCG, but not entirely. I still wondered about him and what might have been, especially as my relationship with Stalker grew worse. I wondered if HSHCG would have been equally abusive and doubted it. I never found out, of course, but in retrospect it seems clear that if I had dated HSHCG in high school, nothing would have happened, but if I had dated him in later years, it would have gone very badly indeed. It turned out that HSHCG had moved himself right around the same time I did, but he apparently did not welcome his own move as I did nor handle it well. The full story is in the post college section, but it could be best summarized as "Within five years, I grew my hair out and developed a nice figure; meanwhile, he gained weight, grew an awful neckbeard, and went crazy." So it's just as well that nothing happened.