Untouchable

Do I Have Enough Time?

"In another universe I had one more day with you." —submitted by hidingfrompast 


Throughout September, time passed slowly. The time left me wondering what would happen next. So far, I only told Brooklynn about him. I have a feeling Nia was catching on. Kayla has no idea, and Jessie, don't get me started. She was much too detective-like, which is a positive thing, but not necessarily in this situation. Could the hints be too much? Should I tell Nia? She's the key to getting closer to him. What would I even tell her? Oh sorry, somehow I have a crush on your brother's best friend who's 18 months younger than me? These worthless thoughts only made it more difficult for me to come up with a reasonable argument.

Brooklynn, as clever as she was, helped me find his schedule. With this, bumping into him and changing my routes was easy. I may or may not have been the stalkerish type, but what I was doing is honestly just funny to me. I don't think I've tried hard like this before.

I've always believed love was something subtle, something you were supposed to share in secret. So why did I find myself in such a dilemma?

"Do any of you need water?" Nia asked our group. In the time I had spent observing my last year, I noticed a pattern during lunch. Sometimes it changes, but most commonly, Oli finishes lunch, walks by, and I stare. Then he proceeds to walk into the middle school building. Nia, as if scheduled and designed to ask at the perfect moment, will ask if we need anything from our classroom. At this point, I'm excited and giddy. Someone, whether it be me, because no one else wanted to go, or Brooklynn, will say yes and our whole group migrates to the entrance of said building and walks in. We walk to the steps where the second floor is and low and behold, there he is. From my knowledge, he will either be with a friend, coming back from the bathroom, or getting a drink from the water fountain. His reason for being in the hallway didn't exactly matter to me. As long as he was in my peripheral vision and I got to see him, it was fine. I was only able to look at him for periodical moments before he would look back and I'd have to look away.

Finally, the day which I dreaded came. I was unable to cover up my secret and Jessie, Nia, and even June knew. A few weeks back, June had said she would rather not be friends anymore.  I knew she wouldn't tell anyone, so it was fine. Since Nia knew, and her being the closest person I knew to Oli at the time, she helped me out. She made excuses so we could go into the building and into the holy ground that I call the hallway. Once we'd made it there, he would be walking towards us. She would call him over and talk. He even hugged her once, and you know what she told him to do? She said to hug me too. He stood there and looked at me. Would he really hug an utterly complete and random stranger who's friends with his best friend's sister? The moment I thought otherwise, he wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. I don't know if it was just me, but I remember that point in time so clearly. It won't even be an exaggeration when I say time stopped because it did. It stopped for me and him. If this world was a simulation, and nothing was real, that hug was. It was just a hug, and he was just a boy. He shouldn't have been a big deal. But somehow it was, because of Oliver. One thing I learned was that he had a very big presence. When he was in the room, I could instantly tell. Not only that, he made things funnier, more hilarious than stand-up comedy. That's what made him so enticing.

I took note of every single detail that includes him which is why I remember this day so well. The day before, we were in the hallway once more. He gave me a hug, which turned weekly almost, for whatever reason, and I asked what his favorite candy was.

"Hm? Oh, I like Trolli! Like the gummy worms." He told me. I liked his voice so much. I got so used to hearing it that when he said my name, it replayed in my head like a lovesong. Will you ever understand the effect you have on me, Oli? If you were sad, I was too. If you were happy, I was too. As he waved goodbye, a sense of calmness but also yearning washed over me like a wave. This might have been the definition of now or never. That night I distinctly remember begging my dad to bring me to Target so I could buy him the biggest bag of Trolli I've ever seen. I'm surprised how much effort I was putting into my not-even-close relationship with Oliver. Not once were we ever going to date, and I'm pretty sure that younger me knew that. Nevertheless, I bought the enormous bag of candy which most likely was why he got braces a few months later. That bag was a total of 7.49. The next day was Halloween, and all of my friends were in my homeroom. I asked them to accompany me while I gave the oversized bag to him. Nia knocked on the door closest to his seat and gestured for him to come out. Looking back on this, I shouldn't have let Nia do everything for me. It reflected my shy demeanor, which wasn't that good of a look. And there he was, sticking his head out of the door for me. How I wished that look was only for me. I was selfish.

"What?" He playfully asked with a smile.

"Um..here.." I said unsure what to do.

He gasped. He smiled. He looked back up at me. And it happened all over again. That same feeling from a month ago resurfaced and found itself back in my nervous system. How did this happen to me? Did fate just choose the most random guy and say "Oh! He's perfect! He's my next victim,"? Could that be what happened? Or maybe it was a curse passed down from generation to generation. I'm snapped back into reality when Oli grabbed me and pulled me into a hug once again. How could someone be so comfortable with a stranger, maybe even an acquaintance now, they just met a few weeks ago? When I deeply thought about the possibility that he liked me in the way I did, it seemed possible.

He pulled away, said thank you, and we stare at each other for a good couple of seconds, smiling. We were interrupted by his homeroom teacher yelling at him to get back inside and he went back into his class, leaving me stranded in the doorway.

A few weeks back, we had a Halloween dance. I arrived at the school and ended up waiting for 30 minutes outside since I was scared that my outfit was too crazy. I was just wearing jeans and a black short-sleeved polo that revealed my collarbones. There were key moments that I think about now to this day. One of them, was when the first slow song of the night played. Like always, I was with my friends talking because they didn't have dance partners either. Of course, I still cared about what Oli was doing. Leaning on the wall of the gymnasium, I scanned the room for him. I swear, something cracked in me when I saw him. Unbeknownst to me, he'd found himself a girl to dance with. Her name was Cate. She was blonde, like him. She was light-skinned, like him. She had light eyes, like him. Did she have to be everything I wasn't? I shouldn't let jealousy get to me, but it did. Kayla and Brooklynn were next to me when I saw him with her. His hands on her. Her hands on him. I wanted to hold him like that. I wanted to touch his hands and his skin. I wanted to feel him, well obviously not like that, but I wanted to feel him in my arms. I walked through the doorway that leads outside with my hands covering my mouth to prevent my whines from escaping. I sat down on the bench and put in head down on the table in front of it. I knew he liked girls, I just didn't want to believe it. There was always a chance he could like girls and boys, but was I willing to take that chance, tell him, and risk our month-old friendship? I lifted my head to see Kayla and Brooklynn sat next to me. I heard the song in the auditorium end and as it ends, in the corner of my eye, a flash of blond hair exited from the door.

"Heyyy guyysss," Oli says while walking up to us. I put my hand on my cheek and leaned on my elbow as if I wasn't on the verge of tears a few minutes ago. I smiled at him. He looked at me. He smiled, and suddenly it's okay again.

"Who was that girl you danced with? Do you like her??" Kayla asked with no shame. I always admired her for that. I knew she asked playfully because she smirked at him. Every Wednesday, they had journalism together so they started acting like brother and sister.

"Cate? Oh no, she's just my friend." He answered. He looked nervous saying that. Could he have lied, I hoped. They talk for some more and Oliver walked over to his friend, leaving us.

Another key moment I remember was after the second slow song played. He danced with a different girl this time, and the fact that it was a different one got to me. Directly after the slow song, our DJ played Baby by Justin Bieber. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I screamed because I liked that song and dragged my friends closer to the speaker. I sang the lyrics. But didn't feel the tears coming from my eyes. All that was on my mind was Oliver. Oliver, Oliver Oliver, this girl, that girl, which girl, why did it have to be a girl? I broke down in tears in front of my peers and friends and him. What would say when tears are streaming down your face in front of everyone you know? Luckily, no one else heard my drowned out cries except for my friends. I started sobbing on the auditorium floor and they were asking me what was wrong. I wasn't physically, mentally, and emotionally able to hear them. I heard only the lyrics and my wailing. I kept dancing, even though I was drowning in my own sea. They took me outside to calm me down. It took me a while. I've never done that before.

I liked him a lot. I knew that now.

word count: 1875

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