She Doesn't Know I Exist

I didn't have a lot of mojo in high school, which I know must come as a shock to all of my readers, but there were certainly a lot of girls that I wish would have noticed me. While I had strong friendships with a lot of my crushes, there was one girl in particular that I never had the courage to speak to, and I'm pretty sure that, if she had passed me on the street in high school, she wouldn't have recognized me as one of her peers.

Eva was a girl that I saw frequently in the hallways, and I sometimes saw her during my flex periods, but I didn't have any proper classes with her. Had she and I shared any academic time together, I might have had the chance to work my way into her heart through a partner project of some sort, or feigning ignorance and leaning across the table to ask if she knew what was happening. I probably wouldn't have, though, because even that seems far more forward than I ever would have been at that time in my life. Or, you know...now, too.

For a long time I didn't know her name, and I didn't know anyone that did. I thought that, if I pointed her out in the hall and asked a friend who she was, it would have been far too obvious, and I couldn't have that. So for the first year of high school, I saw her pass ever now and then, and only knew of her as "that pretty girl," but didn't pursue the matter any further because I knew nothing about who she was as a person.

Over the summer during my first and second years in high school, I kind of forgot about Eva. It was a kind of "out of sight, out of mind" deal, so you can imagine my surprise when, on the first day of school, I passed by her again and thought "wow...she's still really pretty!"

It was during the second year of high school that my group of friends started expanding and including people within the greater population of our school. And some of those people happened to be friends with Eva. My first thought was something along the lines of "GREAT! I have an IN!" but that...never really panned out. As it turned out, the only mutual friends I had with Eva were dating some of my friends, so our two groups never fully melded.

Even though I held out hope that Eva would somehow make an appearance at one of the parties that my friends were throwing, it never really happened, and I couldn't be all too surprised. I became an expert of listening to my new friend's stories for hints that Eva might have been involved in their shenanigans, and, when he name was dropped (casually in passing), I would press on with "oh? That's hilarious/tragic! Please, tell me more!" And they would, and I would learn something new about this girl I'd never spoken to.

I spent the rest of the year living vicariously through other people's stories of how they had had some brief contact with Eva, and found myself scouring the yearbook at the beginning of summer for any sign of her image. Naturally, I had no idea what her last name was, and I would soon learn that she was the kind of person that didn't really care if she missed picture day.

During my third year of high school, I noticed, from a distance, that Eva often looked sad. It still baffles me today, but apparently she was severely depressed, and many of the bitchier girls in our high school had been telling her over the years that she was too short (she was about five-foot-five), too fat (she was thin, so I never understood that one), too stupid (from what I gathered she was an A-student), and too ugly (which, clearly, I would disagree with).

So when my buddy Jason, who I'm guessing had probably dated Eva since he seemed to have dated everyone that I had ever been interested in, brought Eva up in conversation, it seemed like the time to chat about her. He was going on about how insane it was that she could think she was so ugly and undesirable, and I, of course, agreed. Our conversation lasted for what was probably an inappropriate amount of time considering how creepy it probably would have been had Eva known about it. And, sure enough, Jason would later go and tell Eva that I agreed with him that she was beautiful.

I'm not sure if I had preferred her not knowing that I existed to her knowing me only as "the creepy guy that watches you that thinks you're absolutely amazing," but, either way, she wasn't talking to me.

Not long after Jason had revealed to Eva that I was an admirer did she graduate and I never saw her again. Now I'll have to take my stalking to facebook.