“What? Nooo,” I said, slamming my locker door closed. “He probably thought I was someone else.”
“We have to go to the game tonight,” Noelle said, the wheels in her mind spinning. “Maybe he’ll talk to you again.”
“Tonight? I can’t. I told my dad I’d go to dinner with him and Joanna.”
“Your stepmom?”
“Yes, well no, they’re not married. I don't think my dad will ever get married again,” I said. “They’ve just been together forever.”
The warning bell rang and Noelle and I headed in different directions. Once she was out of sight, I ran down the steps to peek out the glass doors towards the smoking porch where I knew Shane would be.
I was running out of time before class started, but I didn’t care. I had to see him again. He spoke to me! I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t care that it was barely a word, it was something. For at least one brief moment, he knew I existed.
Shane was sitting on one of the cement ledges that surrounded the brick patio, an unlit cigarette balanced between his lips. He cupped his hands around his lighter to keep the wind from blowing it out as he lit the cigarette.
If Noelle knew I was there, she would have pushed me to talk to him. But I couldn’t. I just wanted one last glimpse of him before my last class and the weekend started. As he blew the smoke out of his lungs, a few cheerleaders gathered around him. He leaned towards a tall redhead next to him and kissed her. Shane didn’t have one girlfriend, he had many. And I hated every one of them. Okay, maybe hate was the wrong word. I envied them.
There was no way he meant to say hi to me. I was invisible in school. I was the girl without the designer clothes and with the double-digit size. I wasn’t the girl that Shane Ventana noticed. I wasn’t the girl anyone noticed.
But I am the girl who stalks him,I thought, glad no one saw me.
As I headed back up the steps to the classrooms, I promised myself I would stop obsessing about him. But even as I swore it, I knew it was impossible.