I walked into the cafeteria resigned to my plan but those plans promptly fizzled once I saw Jules sitting at her table all by herself again. She had a sack of carrots on her lap and her feet, once again, rested on the chair beside her. I got a small kick out of the fact that it was how she liked to sit, sort of unashamed. That’s what it was. She was brazen. She had her nose buried in yet another book. When I got closer I noticed it was George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. I loved that book. Boy, was she exasperating to me. That’s it. No more, I thought. I walked to her table and sat in the chair across from her.
“I love that book,” I said.
Look at me, I wordlessly demanded, swallowing hard. I’m sweating. Oh no. I’m nervous. Very, very nervous. I wiped sweat from my forehead and felt my longish hair stick to it. She didn’t even look at me, let alone respond. So, it was going to be like that.
“Carrots, huh?” I asked, obviously reaching.
She rolled her eyes.
“Those are good for the eyes, I’ve heard. I see they’ve done wonders for your teeth too. Texas A&M did that study a few years ago. Did you hear about it?”
She didn’t respond.
“No? Well a few years ago they developed a carrot that helps people absorb forty one percent more calcium than when they consume a regular carrot. Interesting right? Genetically altered vegetables?”
No reply.
“I certainly found that interesting,” I said, laughing nervously. “You may not, or maybe you did, I’m not sure. It’s certainly something a braniac should find interesting. You’re a braniac, right? I mean, you’re always reading, so I assume. Not that I claim to be a braniac or anything. I’m of pretty average intelligence, I think.”
I was drowning.
“Yeah, so,” I continued, digging my embarrassment hole deeper. Hell, it was so deep I could bury myself in it. Good thing, too. I wanted to be buried. “I heard they collaborated with Baylor’s College of Medicine in Houston.” Nothing. I was beginning to think the book was attached to her nose. “Houston’s a pretty crazy town or so I’ve heard. Supposedly the humidity is heck on girls’ hair. Your hair doesn’t seem to take on that much humidity. I’ve never seen it frizz anyway.”
I drummed my fingertips on the table.
“As I was saying,” I said digging my grave further than needed, might as well go for gold here, “it’s obviously done wonders for your teeth.”
She stopped her reading and scanned my eyes. Stop talking! I commanded myself.
“Yeah, your teeth are big and a pretty white.” See, that wasn’t so bad. “You could mistake them for a horse’s.” Nice, very nice.
I nervously laughed. She didn’t. When I was nervous, I resorted to inadvertent insults.
She looked at me but turned her focus back on her book. Sweat was dripping down my neck. I carried my fingers through my hair and down the nape to remove any evidence of my impending social death. No sense in letting her see the physical evidence as well as the emotional proof that I was drowning.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to compare your teeth to a horse’s. I was only trying to point out how large they were. That is, I mean to say, that they are larger than most people’s. But! Perfectly proportionate to your face. Your face isn’t huge or anything! Your face seems pretty average in its proportions. Yes, very well proportioned.” I sighed deeply. “What I meant to say is that you have very beautiful teeth.”
And, scene. Very good job Mr. Gray. Your audience has accepted you for the idiot that you are. Look forward to being typecast as the bumbling fool from this point on.
My throat was dryer than a bone. I yanked my bottled water from my bag and downed half of it. She refused to even look at me.
“Jules,” I said, catching my breath.
“Julia,” she corrected me.
“Julia, obviously I’m an idiot. All I want to do is talk to you. It’s extremely hard for me to talk to you.”
“Then you should stop.”
“But I can’t.”
“But you should.”
She sat up and sighed loudly, collected her belongings and left the cafeteria.
I sat back in my chair. I had no idea what had just happened. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Nothing came out how I’d planned them. I couldn’t stop vomiting the worst conversation I had ever had. I didn’t understand. I never had trouble talking to girls, ever. Granted, I never shared a literal lightning bolt with one of them or was ever really interested in one but, just the same, I never had trouble speaking with them. I knew Jules was going to be trouble. She was going to give me the fight of my life but I decided right then and there that I was not going to give up. The next time I saw her, I knew exactly how I was going to talk to her.
Third period I had band and it gave me a chance to calm down a little bit, for which I was grateful and allowed me to go to my last class of the day, chemistry, a little bit more relaxed until I walked through the door to the classroom. I was immediately crushed with borderline hysteria. I gulped a breath and slid past Julia who sat at a lab table in the center of class. I chose a table in the very back and sat with Sawyer Tuttle, whom everyone just called Tut. He nodded a hello and I nodded back. I set all my stuff down and just watched her.
She reached for her bag on the ground and her hair gracefully slid across her shoulders and back as she pulled it onto the table. She opened the bag’s flap and felt around inside for her notebook and pen and pencil. She closed the flap and laid the bag back onto the floor but as she let the bag slide off her arm and fall to the linoleum she glanced behind her to see if I was watching. I smiled and she quickly turned her head back to the front of the classroom. She looked. That was enough for me.