Nostalgia in a Yellow Shirt

I may say I'm in something that begins with L-O, but so far every like in my life have been a lie because my L-O always ends in S-S.

Two of the boys I've liked have moved away. Granted, one of them was one of the guys you meet in kindergarten when you learn the word boyfriend and turn into a weirdo like all kindergarteners. Everyone is forgiven for being too young, but that was still one of the first tastes of sadness I recall.

One of them turned into a bumhead. Is still a bumhead. Wait, no, wasn't he a bumhead all along? Yeah. I don't like to think about him 'cause it's like Georgie says: "... never gonna get that year back." It was one of my lost years, where I had to figure everything out and change to fit the climate, and I managed to start in the worst place possible--best "friends" with Di and "in love" with some bumhead who I try not to look at anymore.

Last year's boy is still too painful to remember, and late at night I don't try and flashback, 'cause I was younger then and it was such a reaction, just seeing one thing and freezing up and crying in public a lot. Thankfully Danica, Orqua, and Georgie were there to save me, and I've moved on from that. I'm even friends with the guy again.

But in sixth grade, there was this one dude, and I'm can't even hear his name without doing one of those freeze-up numbers. 'Cause I could never solve it. In kindergarten, I eventually realized that I was being a stupid kindergartener and I had problems. With the other guy who moved, I realized I was acting stupid again, and same with the bumhead. With last year, I realized that it wasn't as bad as I'd thought. But with sixth grade ... I haven't been able to solve it.

Because even though I've finally quit e-mailing the guy, I still think about him and I still wonder who he is now and who I am and wonder when I try and picture him {his face and his laugh are the only things I can conjure ... well, or the way he runs with his head slightly down and his orange collared shirt}. And there was a phone call in August when I heard his voice. And even if I was inviting him to Vanessa's surprise birthday party because I knew she'd want him to be there, it was still crazy. 

And today there was an assembly and I found myself searching the freshman section and finding Pad, his brother. Wearing a yellow shirt, which stood out and my eyes kept being drawn to him and wondering what it was like to see Pen every day. 

He's not the same Pen. He's changed, definitely, and so have I, but there's one connection I keep trying to hold onto when I know the other end has been let go. So I sat in the bleachers staring at Pen's brother Pad and seeing him laugh and cheer and in his brother, I saw Pen. And then Pad's friends surrounding him would point something out and he would look and I thought for the many times this happened that he was looking at me.

He smiled when he looked. I don't know who or what he was looking at, but I wonder what Pen's face will look like if he ever sees me again.