Letters

Epic Fail

"I don't know man. I don't think I can do this." I starred at my half-filled soda can, looking anywhere but my best friend, Bryce's, face. There was no way I was going to be able to do this.

"C'mon Zeke, what is there to possibly be scared of?" I stared at him in disbelief. He continued. "I mean what's the worst that could happen?"

I glanced over to where Mia was sitting and for the first time really considered it. Asking her out. Asking her to homecoming.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe public humiliation and rejection?" I knew my comment was biting, but I didn't care. All my other friends had dates to homecoming and I knew they expected me to have one by now to. I was terrible at this kind of thing.

"She's not going to reject you," Bryce pressed. "You're on the JV football team, get average grades, and aren't horrible looking." He shrugged. "I mean, what else are girls looking for?" I sighed and said nothing, looking over again to where Mia was sitting. In my mind she was way out of my league. She sat next to me in my math class and I would always ask her to help me understand whatever we were doing. She was pretty, asian with long brown hair and chocolate colored eyes. Just approaching her made me feel like someone had removed my stomach with a chain saw.

From beside him, my other friend Nathan chimed in. "If you want we could help you. Nudge her towards you or something."

I shook my head struggling to keep from flushing. "No, let me think about it. I can do this. I really can."

Both Nathan and Bryce turned to me and gave me a very skeptical look. I put on the confident Zeke smile.

"I will, I promise. I can do this." They exchanged a look.

"All right. I trust you. Sort of," Nathan said after a minute. "Anyway did you hear that Molly and George are going to get together. Why the heck would someone like her want to get together with someone like him?"

I breathed a sigh of relief. The conversation had drifted back into safe territory. I went back to eating my french fries and listening to the conversation, adding in a comment here or there and looking at Mia out of the corner of my eye. Could I really do this?

The rest of the day went by in a kind of uneventful pattern. I went to biology, where Mr. Hans went on about the process of protein synthesis and attempted to make it interesting. He wasn't terrible, but I couldn't focus on anything but what I was going to do about homecoming. From there I went to History which as usual was incredibly dull. History was just one of those subjects that wasn't ever interesting, no matter how you taught it.

When school was finally finished at 2:05 I grabbed my backpack and headed down the stairs to football practice. The junior varsity (less good) team, the one I was on with Bryce, had practice all week after school from 2:30 to 4:30 and games on Thursdays and Fridays. I was trying to push my way through the crowd of people when I heard a voice behind me.

"Hey Zeke!" Oh crap. Mia alert. I turned around to see her striding towards me. My stomach did a somersault and I wondered if I should ask her to homecoming now.

"Hey Mia. What's up?" She was carrying her book bag slung over one shoulder and her hair was tied up in a high ponytail.

"Nothing much, I'm headed to field hockey. Where are you off to?" I shifted from one foot to the other. "Football practice. I'm on the JV team." Why did I tell her that?

"That's neat." I could literally feel the tension in the air as I struggled for what to say. How should I have been expected to ask this girl to homecoming, then dance with her if she said yes and spend most of the night with her, if we couldn't even hold a two-second conversation?