Titan

Melanie

Eric and Melanie met just before middle school a couple of years after Sarah died. Eric went to a small, private elementary school, where many of his classmates had gone together since kindergarten. Eric had a close knit group of friends: Jim, Drew, Kyle, Sophia, Kathryn, and Blake. Everyone grew up together.

Eric, Drew, and Jim were the closest of all, having been together in school the longest. Sophia and Katherine were close girlfriends, though. Blake didn't join the school until the fourth grade, but boys make friends easily and he was accepted after a good Super Soaker war party.

In the lower grades, Katherine and Sophia played with the guys at recess, but boys and girls didn't interact much outside of that. As the fifth grade rolled around, the guys and girls started hanging out together more. All of their parents knew one another, too—Drew lived close to Katherine and Sophia in the Springfield suburbs. Eventually, they all started getting together for birthdays, hanging around at the mall on weekends, seeing movies, and pool in the summertime.

By the sixth grade, boys and girls started noticing each other as they do. The boys grew muscles and the girls grew breasts. Everyone had acne. Even though Katherine and Sophia were pretty, it felt "out of bounds" for Eric, Jim, or Drew to consider them as anything more than friends—they were like sisters. That was the year Melanie came to their school—a new girl without the baggage of having grown up with everyone. She was beautiful, vulnerable, and shy. Eric thought so anyway.

Melanie didn't talk much at first. Eric and his friends were open, though; the only people they didn't like were the ones that thought they were too cool for school—every class has them. Melanie gravitated toward Sophia and Katherine. By proxy, that included Eric and the guys. Eric had noticed Melanie before, but the lunch when she first sat down with them was the first time he had seen her smile. It seemed to light her face from the inside and filled her cheeks with a delightful pink hue.

Melanie's dad was a lawyer who had wanted to work for the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. for many years and finally made it. They moved from Texas. Eric thought Melanie's Texas accent was sexy. She came from a big family—two brothers and two sisters, and her mom was pregnant again. The baby had since been born and was now five and attending kindergarten at their old school. Melanie liked poetry and music and hated basketball.

Eric absorbed all of these details like a sponge. He wanted to know everything about her. Eric was just a boy, though—he wasn't like some of the other guys in his class who had already gone on dates—girls terrified him. It was the same paralyzing fear he felt in the present about Rose—what if he liked her but she didn't like him? Eric did nothing and said nothing about how he felt. He went on talking to Melanie every day and never let on that he thought she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever met.

This continued for two years. Eric was too afraid that Melanie didn't like him the same way he liked her so he didn't say anything. As the eighth grade wound down, Eric and Melanie were in the same chemistry class. The teacher, Mrs. Brouchard, changed seating assignments after every test—higher scores sat in the back of the room and lower scores sat right in front. For the last quarter of the year, Eric was seated right next to Melanie in the second to last row on the left side of the room. By this point, they knew each other well enough to talk and get along, but Melanie was still shy. The boy/girl barrier had still not quite been broken with her. Eric thought if he couldn't be with Melanie, he could at least make her laugh. Mrs. Brouchard had a very thick Irish brogue and Eric impersonated her all of the time because Melanie laughed at it every time with her sweet, light giggle. Every time she laughed, her shyness broke and Melanie relaxed.