I clapped because he was cute, and because nobody else seemed to want to. His performance hadn’t been the best (in fact, it was kind of horrible) but he looked so cute standing up there alone, his face switching expressions from nervousness, to apprehension, then to just plain relief that it was over, that I couldn’t help but clap the moment he stopped because after the first eight seconds with no applause he looked ready to cry.

I was happy when people followed my example, but I knew that he knew that I had been the one delivering his first praise, whether he deserved it or not. And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t given it effort-you could clearly see he had given it everything he had-it just wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t particularly good at it. And wasn’t it enough that he had actually worked up enough courage to present whatever little talent he had to the world?

He lost, of course, but it wasn’t as if anyone expected anything less. Someone always has to be the loser in a competition and someone always emerges out on top. He just got the short end of the straw.

I was surprised when he found me the next day, panting and out of breath as he skidded to a stop next to me. I smiled, turning to look at him while shifting the books in my arms in order to make it more comfortable, and he grinned and whispered one word: “Thanks.”

He walked off after that, whistling a cheery tune, and I couldn’t help but wish that I had made him stay.

We began having random, yet planned, meetings in the hallways, and during those times we spoke more than a few sentences. He would walk me to whatever class I had first with no regard for his own, and we talked about nothing and everything and then nothing again. Whatever was on our minds, we said it, and we discussed it, and it was just natural.

I don’t know how he always managed to get to my class and then walk me over to my next one. I’ve started to suspect that he skipped his own, or left early, or something, but I was grateful for his company and the easy way we settled into a pattern with each other.

Looking at us, you could say that we were exact opposites. He was tall and rugged looking, an air of mystery and playfulness about him, and I was just your average teenager, plain and unattractive, just trying to get by in my own way.

Funny, how two exact opposites like us got along so well.

I was absolutely and perfectly comfortable with him. I let myself loose around him, if you could call it that. I wasn’t the normally stony girl you saw in your classroom, who always sat in the middle and sometimes gave the answer, the girl that was just average and nothing special. When I was with him, well, he changed all that.

If you saw me outside a classroom, and if you saw me walking next to him, you’d notice something different. For one, I would actually laugh and say things that didn’t correspond to any homework assignment. He changed me for the better, I must admit. He let me be free.

When you walk into the girl’s locker room, it’s hard to stop from gagging. The best thing to do is to just not breathe at all. So I was trying to take as little breaths as possible that wouldn’t result in getting a nostril full of disgusting stench while doing my gym locker combo at the same time. I’ve never been very good at multitasking, and when talking became another thing to add on, well, I was pretty horrible.

“Do you like him?” It took a few moments for the question to register, and when I realized who it was from (one of those prissy and stuck up popular girls that never spared a glance at me before) and who it was referring to, I couldn’t speak for a moment.

“NO!” I managed to blurt out forcefully, before I had to gag from the disgusting smell. The girl scoffed and shook her head, said something along the lines of ‘denial is a bad thing to have’ and then walked off, taking her posse with her.

For a few moments, I was frozen, unable to believe what I had just heard.

I absolutely hate running. Running miles, especially, which is just what we happened to be doing in gym class that day. “Run four laps just to practice!” came the command, and reluctantly, I began moving my feet into a jog.

After a few moments, someone fell into step beside me and I looked up to find him, grinning as he ran. I grinned back, and for once the run didn’t seem to be so bad.

Gym Locker Room, part 2, where after an agonizing class your face is all red and blotchy and you’re supposed to get back in your ‘day clothes’ to continue out the rest of the school day acting as if you didn’t get tortured in the class before.

“You SO like him.”

I didn’t bother to look at the speaker, shaking my head and holding my nose at the same time.

“C’mon,” the girl persisted, “I saw you with him. You were running together.” So running with a member of the opposite gender automatically means that we’re in love? I didn’t voice this out loud however, and scoffed, shaking my head before exiting the room.

The whispers never ceased to stop and I soon noticed that while walking in the hallways more eyes seemed to be gripping us constantly as we walked down them. He didn’t appear to notice however, talking as if it didn’t bother him at all.

I started getting uncomfortable. As the days passed by, the number of stares increased, the rumors grew bigger and it soon came to the point where my friends were asking the question everyone seemed to know the answer to, but when I refused the answer they found it hard to believe.

I hated being talked about. I was supposed to be the person nobody noticed. It had been working well for the past few years, and just because of him, everything just changed abruptly.

I started growing more distant, foolishly believing that if I purposely avoided him the stares would go away. They did-but instead I got one that was worse: his. He couldn’t understand what he had done wrong, why I always pressed myself with the rest of the exiting class to make it entirely impossible for him to get to me, and why whenever we were running that I always tried to go faster than he did, even when my legs were close to giving out and my breathing was heavy, my lungs gasping for air.

The rumors started up again, but they involved new topics: why we had broken up. I think he heard these, and I think he understood, because suddenly he stopped coming and our talks stopped occurring and everything that had to do with him just ended.

I found myself missing him and wondering if someone had ripped out my heart when I was asleep.

We had been ‘separated’ for about two weeks, when abruptly and without warning I found him pulling me into an empty science room, flicking off the lights, and shutting the door. To my relief, nobody noticed us ever going in.

“What’s your problem!?” The question was blunt, to the point, and the way his eyes looked at me, with an annoyance in them that I could never describe just tore through me.

“I don’t like being talked about…” I muttered meekly, feeling timid, my gaze reverting to the floor and staying there. I couldn’t look at him; for fear that I would say something that I shouldn’t.

He sighed heavily, crossing the room and putting his hands on my shoulders. I brought my eyes up to meet his face. “Are you that self-conscious? You care that much?”

I nodded again, and he released my shoulders and ran a hand through his hair, sending it up into odd spikes. “Alright then. Listen; these rumors, they’re the only things stopping us, right?”

I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by ‘stopping us’ but I thought that it might have something to do with the way that we used to talk, comfortably and free, ignoring the world and everyone around us. So I nodded a third time, because my vocal cords just wouldn’t work.

“So why don’t we satisfy them. Look, you want to go out sometime?” I looked at him in wide-eyed surprise, not even beginning to fathom what he was suggesting. “You know, we let the right people see us, and eventually they’ll be satisfied and all those hallway whispers you’re so scared about will stop. And it’s not even a date, like I’m sure you’re probably thinking. It’s just…dinner, between two friends, that looks like a date for personal purposes.”

I found myself smiling, and him smiling back, and I said sure.

The date-but-not-date was scheduled for a day that we knew the right people would be around to see us. To make it ‘look more professional’ he insisted on taking my jacket from me at the door and paying for the bill, even though I had money myself and didn’t want to let him pay. And after that he insisted on walking me home, even though we were away from the prying eyes.

But I had fun, the right people had seen, and that was all that mattered.

He insisted on taking me out for more. I wasn’t sure why, because now that we were ‘officially a couple’ the buzz had died down and we could walk in the hallways together without receiving stares. The first not-date had clinched the deal for us already.

He kept saying that he had heard people talking, and I, ever-paranoid, went along with him. I was probably just trying to make him satisfied though, but it didn’t seem to matter.

We went out to movies, had dinner, and once he came over on his own accord with a bunch of random movies. Most of them were action and horror flicks, the kind he liked, but I watched them anyways. On all the scary parts I buried my face into his sweatshirt and refused to look up until he assured me the bad part was done. Of course, immediately after that brief lull there was another part just ready to make me scream, so it was back to the sweatshirt I went. I think I made him take it off after things started getting ridiculous, making sure he had a t-shirt underneath.

He got me a chick flick to make up for it.

The rumors had stopped, but we still went on not-dates. To people looking, their minds instantly blazed to couple. To us, we were just friends, never more, never less. To keep up the charade however, we had to constantly refer to each other as ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’. It got natural after awhile-well, not natural, but I could say it without bursting out laughing, which to me was an accomplishment.

And then came Peter. Peter was the kind of guy that every girl fell for almost instantly. He had everything-good looks, good personality, and a charming smile. It wasn’t long before I found myself falling under his spell as well.

He noticed this instantly, and was annoyed. When I asked him why he was like that, he just shrugged it off, remaining stubborn. But I noticed how over-protective he became when Peter was around, and it continued to the point where I wanted to slap him for being so…so jealous, I suppose.

When Peter started noticing me, that’s when the hate flared up and we had our first ‘official argument as a couple’, according to the rumors. He pulled me into the same empty science room and demanded to know what the hell I saw in him.

“He’s nice,” was my answer, and by the look in his eyes and the shake of his head I knew he didn’t believe me. Maybe he didn’t want to believe me.

And then I told him what I knew would hurt: we shouldn’t play the charade anymore. He stared at me, like he couldn’t believe it, and then he walked away without another word.

I think I cried for a long time, but I don’t know why.

The next day, Peter asked me to go to the movies with him, and I agreed. It was my first actual date, so I wanted to look as presentable as possible. I put on the nicest thing I could find without going overboard, practically slathered my face with makeup, and I even wore jewelry for a change. Peter called me “beautiful” and I was satisfied.

As the year progressed, I started seeing more and more of Peter and less and less of him. Now it was Peter that walked me to my classes instead of him, Peter that took me places, and it was Peter and I that everyone was talking about, not me and him.

He still ran with me, though, that was mandatory. But we also didn’t talk, another mandatory thing.

Peter and I ended up ‘going our separate’ ways a few months later. In other words, he wanted to see other people. I knew he’d had an eye on this other girl weeks before our breakup happened, but I was still sad anyways.

And then, he showed up like nothing had ever happened between us. It was awkward for a bit, but pretty soon we started heading back into our normal routine. We didn’t go on not-dates anymore, but we didn’t need those because there was no gossip, and I was happy.

When someone writes ‘miss ya’ on your yearbook, it normally means they must be moving. He had been mysterious about what he had written on mine the whole entire day, telling me that I couldn’t read his message until school let out for the summer.

Hours after the last hug between friends and promises to contact people over the summer had been given, I sat on the porch steps, the yearbook feeling heavy and filled with signatures in my hands.

It took me quite awhile to find his, because it wasn’t like the lengthy paragraph that I had written on his, practically taking up an entire page. No, in fact, it was only two words, minuscule, scrawled across the top of the page in a fashion that was all his own.

‘Miss Ya’ were the words, no signature, nothing to remember him by but two words written on a yearbook page and all the memories I had. I didn’t know where he lived (he always found me) and I suppose I could’ve looked it up in the phonebook but I wasn’t thinking straight.

Instead I buried my head in my arms and sobbed for the person I had once…yes, I had once loved him, and my tears dripped onto the yearbook page, splattering his words with water.

The next day I ran. I don’t know why I did it; I probably just wanted to get away from it all, away from the fact that I wasn’t going to see him, ever, ever, again. I took my iPod with me, blaring the headphones so I wouldn’t have to listen to anything. My mother told me I was going to go deaf. I didn’t care.

I had only been running for ten minutes when he started running next to me. I didn’t realize it was him at first, but when I did, I froze mid-jog and he continued on. I sprinted to catch up.

I wanted to yell at him, scream at him, demand that he tell me that everything was a big joke. I wanted to hug him until I squished the air out of his lungs because I didn’t think I was going to see him again, and then after that I wanted to kick him for making me cry.

I was still hanging onto my denial, foolishly believing that he was going to yell April Fool’s (even though we were nowhere near April) and that he was going to laugh at me for actually taking him seriously.

But we were running, and when we’re running it’s an unspoken agreement between us that we don’t talk. And suddenly I knew it was the end, that this really was the last time that I was going to see him, and when we came to a fork in the path I knew that the last image I would have of him was him running away, me too much a coward to call him back because I was going in a different direction.

He smiled one last smile at me and jogged off, and suddenly I found myself running at him, really running, and then tackling him from behind, squishing him into a hug.

He laughed then, turning around and letting me cry into the same sweatshirt that had been my blanket the night we watched the movies, and I wanted to kill him for laughing because it wasn’t funny at all.

Eventually I stopped, but we stayed in that position for awhile until more people started walking on the path. He kissed me on the forehead, whispered thanks, and walked away.

I stared after him as he whistled cheerily, wishing beyond everything that I had made him stay.

It was time for next year’s competition. He wasn’t there of course, but I still found myself scanning the program again and again searching for his name, wishing that suddenly it would appear there like magic.

I hadn’t seen him since our last run. It wasn’t as if I was expecting to see him, but I had been hoping that he would drop by. Eventually I gave up on ever seeing him again, settling myself with keeping his memory alive in my mind.

As one contestant came up on stage, I couldn’t help but notice how much the boy resembled him, and before the boy had even begun I clapped, and I made everyone else clap, and then the boy continued with his talent and we clapped even more.

The boy won, and I smiled, and suddenly a voice behind me said, “So, you like my little brother?”

a/n: i was digging through some of my old stuff and i found this. i think i wrote it at least two years ago, maybe even four, and while it’s really crappy and totally cliché i thought i’d just throw it up here, because in parts i think it’s cute. and i like the fact that nobody has names. well, peter does, but he’s unimportant, so there.

is the last line too ambiguous? i was trying to make it obvious that the guy was back, but i’m not sure it worked out that well.

soooo yeah. my laptop got a virus and i’m really not happy about that, because it has a lot of stuff i was working on on it and i REALLY don’t want to lose that. reassurance would be nice. or reviews. (you see what i did there? haha)