Heartbreak
July 27, 2008 – 7:00 pm
~circa 1991~
I am perched on the hillside outside our apartment doing nothing in particular when I see him walking across the parking lot towards the playground below.
He has a certain ease about him as he saunters up to my sister (who is sitting in open-mouthed wonder on one of the swings).
“Hey,” I hear his greeting but can’t quite make out her response.
His hair is dark with bleached blond tips, and spikey and hard in the way that is so cool. He’s wearing an oversized sweatshirt and jeans and from up here I can’t quite tell but I think he might be tall. Or at least not short.
But most importantly he is a BOY and he appears to be MY AGE and he is LOOKING AT ME…
He is looking at me!
ACK!
“Hey.” and now he’s talking to me.
He is TALKING TO ME! This BOY who is definitely not short and who might even be tall and who probably almost CERTAINLY is very very cute is TALKING TO ME!
Something about being up on the hillside gives me a strangely brave feeling. I shout down at him and before I know what happened, me and THIS BOY are having a conversation.
He is new to the neighborhood! He is the same age as me! His name is Ian and he will be going to MY school when school starts in a few weeks!
I could just die from the thrill of it all.
And you know the best part? This Ian? He really seems to be into me. Really and honestly. At least from what I can gather from my perch up high on the hill.
Then he asks me, “So are you popular?”
Which might seem to you to be a rather revolting question, but then you’re almost certainly NOT a thirteen year old, so who are you to judge? Because in the world of the thirteen year old this is the ONLY question. I should know, I used to be one.
And in this moment up on the hillside with the evening sun slanting across my cheekbones in a highly flattering manner, I AM popular. I can do and be ANYTHING.
After all, now that I’ve met Ian, I practically have a boyfriend.
“Yeah, I’m pretty popular,” I tell him.
We hang out every day, Ian and I, meeting at the playground outside my apartment to shuffle our feet and talk.
I can’t wait for school to start. It’s going to be so DIFFERENT this year, I think. Me with Ian. Ian and I. The two of us together.
I picture us walking hand in hand down the hallway. Sitting together on the bus. Studying together. Laughing. Being popular. Because how could you NOT be popular when you had an Ian?
Life doesn’t work like that, does it?
Maybe the worst thing about being thirteen is that you still think life DOES work like that. And you’re set up to be horribly, painfully, pathetically miserable when you inevitably find out that it doesn’t. It so doesn’t.
So it is with me. I get up an hour early to get ready for school, carefully picking out my outfit and doing my hair. I walk to the bus with butterflies in my stomach.
When I get to the busstop, Ian is already there. But he’s not the only one. Brian is there too… tries-too-hard Brian with the embarassing laugh and the pimply chin. Only his chin isn’t so pimply and he and Ian are intently talking, glancing my way every so often.
I have the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that they’re talking about me. And NOT in a good way.
Ian sits next to Brian on the bus. And at lunch. They walk together in the hallway.
And, just as I predicted, Ian is immediately picked up by the popular kids. Only it’s Brian who he carries with him on his rise to glory and power, not me.
I guess that first day of school Ian learned the truth about me. That I wasn’t popular. And he never spoke to me again.
Later that week I came up with a plan.
I can’t bear being ignored without as much as an explanation. I decide that I just need to talk to Ian. Surely then he’ll remember about the good times. He’ll realize that popular doesn’t matter so much. We were friends after all.
On the way home from the bus stop I run to catch up with Ian and Brian.
“Hey! Ian!” I call out, and the stop.
Ian looks at me as if he’s never seen me before. Brian looks uncomfortable.
This can’t be right.
“Ian! What’s going on?”
Still nothing. Brian shifts nervously from one foot to the other.
“Why aren’t you talking to me?” I hear the whine in my voice but am helpless to control it.
Ian looks at me with such disdain that my stomach twists and pull with sick dread.
The look says it all.
“Stay away from me,” he says and walks away. Brian stands for a moment with pity in his eyes and then follows his friend.
Tears stream down my face as I race home to bury my head in my pillow. My heart hurts so much that I’m sure it will burst in a mess of anguish right there on my bed.
how can I go on living? I wonder. And in that moment my agony is so complete that I really mean it. Life seems too cruel, too awful.
***
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