Loving Benjamin

Unicorns... I hate you.

"Oh my gosh, when did Ben get super tall?" I whisper into the right ear of my best friend, Dara. We walk away from my locker towards a group of guys standing in a circle talking and eating a snack during brunch in the middle of our high school.

Dara and I recently stopped hanging out with our usual group of girl friends since they have discovered the whimsical feelings of drugs and alcohol. They knew we were too much of "goody-goody's" for those harmful substances since we're "church-goers." They never invited us to things, which I'm happy about. But they would constantly talk about it during school and we still didn't want to be associated with alcohol and drugs.

The guys are from my church so I can trust then much more than the girls. The girls call our group "the church squad."

"Uh, who?"  I nod my head once towards Ben.  Puberty clearly hit him hard.  "I don't know.  I never really talked to him."

Usually I'm pretty quiet and I keep to myself but I approach him confidently, "Since when were you so tall?" He looks down at me with a curious but sweet set of warm brown eyes. His curious look signifies me that he didn't hear what I said. "How tall are you?"

Even though I have not talked to him since seventh grade, his words seems relaxed and unfazed by a girl he hadn't talk to in five years, "Five-nine. I actually started growing this year."

"Yeah, I remember you when you were shorter than me." I laugh thinking about my middle school days.

Back in middle school, I was about 4'5", very cringe, very loud, and thought I was all that. Oh, how times have changed.

His smile beams, "Oh right, we had English and History together." Of course I remember him; back then Ben was a short, scrawny, smart, Asian boy who wore thin-rimmed navy blue glasses with a terrible sense of fashion. I liked him back then. "I remember I hated you."

A surprised look appears on my face. "Me? You hated me? Why, what did I do?" I question, taken back.

His head tilts up to the sky a little, thinking, "I remember you drew a unicorn on my paper with pen. I couldn't erase it so I got mad." My jaw drops. I definitely remember drawing a unicorn on his paper in the seventh grade. I did not think a little drawing would be the thing he hated me for.

"Wow, you hated me because I drew on your paper?" I eye him suspiciously. Little did he know that I innocently drew a unicorn to catch his attention. That was my seventh grade version of flirting—I know, cringe.

His defense comes back, "It was pen! I couldn't erase it." The bell rang for third period and I wave good-bye as I walk away chuckling thinking back on the day that he stopped talking to me.