Do You Like Me? Check Yes or No.

His name was Matt. He was tall, gangly, tan, all hard angles--knees, elbows, chin. He had silky brown hair, and he wore it in the way that a lot of the boys were wearing their hair in the early 90's: parted in the middle, flopping down over the ears.

This was eighth grade, and Matt and I shared a homeroom in the warm English room that overlooked the soccer fields. The room was plastered with Mark Twain posters and quotes. The man in charge of that room became my Ultimate Crush, the man I wanted to love me, the type of man I wanted to be with when I grew up, my English teacher for both eighth and twelfth grade, the best English teacher in the entire world.

But my English teacher wasn't my only crush that year. There was Ryan McLean, of course, and this new one: Matt. But I liked Matt in a way that was different than the way I liked Ryan. For most of our lives, Ryan had been beautiful and popular and stunning. He was unreachable and untouchable. He was the boy the popular girls would sigh about, sing about, gossip about. He kissed all the popular girls. He never kissed me.

But Matt seemed more attainable, more realistic. For one thing, he had glasses. None of the really popular guys had glasses. They weren't marred by imperfections. Instead, they were smooth canvases of perfectness. They were golden and sparkling. They were frat boys in training. Matt, though, had flaws that took him out of that category. He was loud and goofy. He was just the right amount of awkward. And--best of all--he liked me.

I thought it might be in that way. I thought it might be more than just a friend. He was sure giving me the indication that it might be so. He pinched me, he grabbed me, he pushed me, he caught me under his arm, he kept putting his hands on me. He called me Jessie, sweetly, like I was his best pet. He and I had inside jokes, tender moments, good times. He liked to pose for my camera. He'd flex his muscles, show off his teeth, stand his hair on end, twist his body into unfathomable poses. I pressed the shutter a thousand times for his poses. I was bringing my camera to school a lot back then. It was like I knew this life wasn't going to last, that these friendships weren't long for the world, that everything was about to change.

But for awhile I was very bold. And I let myself think Hey, maybe, maybe. I let myself think about that for a good long time, and then, when I was certain I'd examined his actions from every angle, when I was certain that his actions were saying I like you, Jessie! I want you to be my girlfriend but I'm just too good and shy to ask you myself!--when I was certain of all that, that's when I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I wrote Matt a note. The note explained that I was glad he and I had become friends, that he was making eighth grade extra memorable for me, that I thought he and I could be good together. Maybe, I said, just maybe we should be boyfriend and girlfriend.

And like the squirrely eighth grade girl I was, I handed that note to one of my best friends and made her deliver it to him before lunch. In lunch, I knew, I'd have to have my answer. It would be impossible to ignore me. His table of boys sat next to my table of girls, and he would have to face me at some point, whether it was to barter for a piece of my friend's Fruit by the Foot or to shoot milk at us with a straw.

I almost vomited in the lunch line. I knew in a few short minutes I would come out into the lunch room and see him. I was almost certain my life would be over at that very moment. After all, I'd never admitted my feelings to a boy before. I'd never felt capable. I'd never felt like I had a legitimate chance of having those feelings returned to me.

Luckily for me, I didn't have to wait very long to have my answer. I came out of the lunch line clutching my tray and barreling down the aisle toward my table. I ignored Matt's table because I was afraid of seeing the looks he and his friends were sharing. Surely I would be able to tell what my answer was by those looks, and I didn't want to know anymore. No, no. I decided I should tell him I was kidding, I didn't mean it, it was an early April Fool's joke. Ha! Gotcha!

But he was merciful. Merciful Matt. He took me aside during lunch and told me he didn't mean to have made it seem one way when it was actually the other. He didn't think of me that way, he said. In fact, he liked one of my best friends. He was sorry, so sorry. He said, "You're one of my best friends, Jessie. We shouldn't ruin that, right?"

Right, I said. Sure, absolutely, great, glad you think so, I think so too, I need to go eat the rest of my sandwich now and maybe puke in the trash can but that's besides the point oh my God I am never doing this again.

I sat back down and shoved the remains of my sandwich in my mouth and chewed and chewed and chewed until that bread was a masticated piece of cud in my big fat mouth. Why? Why? Why? I couldn't stop asking myself why I'd done it, why I'd even been possessed, why I'd been crazy enough to think there could be a happy ending at the end of that road. I sat in that lunch room and listened to the buzz of everyone around me and to my friends whispering it's okay, it's okay, you can cry later and I said to myself I am never ever ever doing that again.

But I did. To varying degrees of success, of course. But those are stories for another time.