You had to be different.
I knew you would be.
I knew.
I'd just met you. This year; it wasn't the first time, though. I knew who you were, I'd known you in sixth grade. Science buddies, yep, that was us. Tyler and Lindsey, always together, always laughing. But we drifted. Of course. It always ended like that for my friendships in middle school.
But we're older now, we're more mature. You know more about yourself and I know who I am. We both know where we're going in life. And we know who we can trust and who we can't. We've grown up, and I guess I thought it would be for the best. So I couldn't believe what I heard from her. Your ex girlfriend, whom I didn't even know you were dating. Liar, backstabber, cheater, unfair. Her cold words filled my ears, and I told her off. Not you. I knew it wasn't you.
You stare blankly at the wall as our Math teacher preached to us about the Pythagorean theorem. I don't look at you - something in me told me her words held some truth in them. You reached over and leaned yourself on my desk, asking what was going on, what you needed to do for homework. I looked at you sadly and shook my head. What happened to the straight A kid who always applied himself? Your "friends", yeah, they don't seem like great kids. Not you. You couldn't have made that choice.
In Biology, you don't take notes about taxonomy, and don't listen to directions as we prepare to dissect a frog on Friday. You ask to be my partner. For what? So you can sit there and let me do all the work, while I try my hardest to not barf up my just eaten lunch? Um, no sir. No thanks. I flash back to sixth grade; you were a good kid, always helping me out when I asked for it and always being there to figure something out when I didn't get it. Now I was your slave. Not you.
You asked what I thought of you this year. I wouldn't dare admit anything to you. But you admitted something to me. You liked me, you really cared about me, you called me beautiful. But I was never asked out, I was never in a relationship with you. We talked all night long, on the phone. Not even texting, but calling, which would really make your mom mad if you went over your limit. But you risked it anyways. Then you sat there, and asked her out. Not you.
I know you. I know who you are. I know you aren't a bad kid. I know you care about your grades. I know you're secretly looking forward to that dissection, you want to help me out again like middle school. I notice how you look at our table at lunch, how you always scoot closer to us before your friends pull you back into the discussion, cussing and leaving messes for the janitors to clean up. I see how you seem in Math. You're not you anymore. Something has been going on. Something has to be.
But you're not a bad kid. You're not like the others.
Please.
Not you.
