Gone

Why? Why did it have to be him? There were so many other cars on the highway. Why couldn’t the truck have gone a little slower, a little faster? Why did he have to be on that particular road? There were so many no-drunk-driving assemblies. At each one, I always sat in the back, talking with him, not paying attention. We both knew that neither of us would ever touch alcohol. Those assemblies always tell you to not do things. Don’t do drugs. Don’t get drunk. But what do you do when someone else does those exact things?

We shouldn’t have split up before heading to the park. We should have just done something at home. He wouldn’t have had to drive. He would have been far away from that highway. He would still be here, by my side. He would still be alive…

Right after I got that phone call, I told myself it was just a bad nightmare. I expected to wake up to another phone call, and hear his voice on the other end, telling me everything was okay. But I’m not going to wake up from this nightmare. The only way I can get away from the nightmare of life is to dive into the land of dreams…

That night, I dream of him.  I dream of the day we met, on the first day of high school, when he was talking to my best friend. She introduced the two of us, and he smiled at me.  As if it were a movie, my mind cuts to a different scene:  a day in junior year, when we spent the day in the library together, sharing a chair, trying to study for a math test together but in the end just laughing and talking. In my dream, I see his face, leaning closer and closer to mine. Both of our eyes begin to close – and then suddenly, his face transforms. His left eye is no longer there, his nose becomes squashed. His face takes on a greenish-blue hue. His remaining eye is lifeless, but continues to stare straight at me. Somehow, I am aware of his broken arm, the tire print that cuts across his chest. I wake up to a leg cramp and a heart beating faster than the speed of the truck that had killed him. It is only three in the morning, but I continue to lie in bed, awake, afraid to go back to sleep and see that ghastly image again.  

How could it have happened? It was the middle of the day, for God’s sake! What kind of an idiot would be drunk and high and driving a truck at one in the afternoon?! But there had been an idiot who did that, and now he was gone. Forever.

In the morning, there was a line in the “Police Blotter” section of the newspaper. Yesterday, high school senior Adrian Nguyen was killed in a car accident, it said. Accident.  Accidents are small incidents, like getting rear ended. This wasn’t an accident. It was no accident that that driver decided to get drunk and high before stumbling back into his truck. It was no accident that he drove straight across the cement dividing block, right into Adrian’s rusty little car, catapulting it into the air. It isn’t right to call what happened an accident. People don’t get run over by their killers in accidents. People aren’t proclaimed “dead on arrival” in accidents.

I feel the tears coming on again. By now, I don’t even bother trying to hold them back. It seems like I won’t ever run out of tears. We only knew each other for four years, but those four years felt like a lifetime. I run back to my bedroom and let myself lie limply on the bed, the sheets getting soaked yet again. I curl up and bury my head deep into the pillow. I wish I could have done something. I wish I could have somehow seen it coming. I wish I had been in the car with him. But none of that happened, and no amount of wishing can change that. Nothing can change the fact that he is gone. Dead. Gone. Erased from this earth. He’ll never be back. And my life will never be the same. 

Daydream

I hear a child screaming from outside the window, and look up from my desk. There are three children down there, two boys and a girl who seems substantially younger. It was the little girl who is screaming, running away from the two older boys who each look around 10 years old. The little girl’s blond pigtails flap up and down as she runs, her scream turning into delighted laughter. The boys catch up to her, and one of them, perhaps her brother, bends over slightly as he catches her and pulls her arms behind her back.

“Hands up, pirate! You’re under arrest!” shouts the second boy, hands put together like a gun pointed up into the sky. The little girl laughs again, and struggles to get her arms out of the first boy’s grasp. When she finds she can’t do it, she kicks off a sandal and sticks her foot up in the air, wiggling her toes.

The boys and girl yell and laugh with each other some more, running around and jumping on each other all the way down the street and out of sight. I gaze out through the window, watching their little figures get smaller and smaller in the distance. Suddenly, I remember the open biology textbook sitting in front of me. I grudgingly go back to outlining chapter three.

It’s hard not be jealous, watching those little kids playing so happily outside. They are so carefree, so energetic, so happy. There was a time when summer vacation really was a vacation, a time to go out and play until the sun sets, a time to be idle and work-free. Not that elementary school kids have much to do during the school year… In any case, with increased work during the school year comes more school work during the summer. My gaze floats back out to the window, as if staring long enough would make the little kids come back.

I know I really shouldn’t be complaining. Summer still is better than the regular school year; I can set my own schedule, and do more exciting things than I do when school is in session. All the same, hearing those delighted shrieks makes me nostalgic and wishful for those good old pre-high school days. I pull my eyes away from the window and back to the textbook. The sooner I finish this, the more time I have for other things. 

Des Petits Poèmes :)

La Femme

Il était une fois

Une femme habitait dans le bois

Chaque matin elle travaillait

A quitter chez elle, mais

Aujourd’hui elle est encore là bas

Le Garçon

Il y avait un petit garçon

Désolée, mais j’ai oublié son nom

Ce garçon a aimé

Toutes les choses qu’il a pu jouer

Comme le foot, le basket, mais pas le ballet

Mon Chien

Il y a un petit chien

Il habite chez moi ; il est le mien

J’aime beaucoup mon chien, mon petit Poivron

Et je pense qu’il est le meilleur dans le monde

L’étudiant

L’étudiant reste toujours dans la salle de classe

Et là, tous ses jours il se passe

Il apprend beaucoup de choses

Comme qu’est-ce que c’est, les roses

Parce qu’il ne sait rien de choses

The Moment

                The skaters of the preceding team took their bow, then hurried to gather up their props and leave the ice. They stood in a straight line, poised and ready to take center stage. They were standing still, yet there was a sort of excited energy buzzing about them, something that hadn’t been there on previous practices and performances. But that was expected, for this performance was different. This was nationals.

                For many, this was the first time they had been to a national-level competition. For most, this was the biggest competition they would ever attend. For all, this was a very important competition, one in which they would impress the nation and show them what they had accomplished in the past six months. All those early morning practices, extra sessions, off-ice, hard work by parents, skaters, coaches… it was time to see if it would all pay off.

                Still, even if the team didn’t place first, second, or at all, simply being at the competition as prepared as they were was in itself quite an accomplishment. The team had stuck together, through drama, through injury, through last minute complications. They were all there, standing in that line together. In this way, they had already won, even before stepping onto the great white stage. They had won confidence and friendships. They had won the trust of each other and the pride of their parents.

                The announcer said, “And now, representing the Skating Club of San Francisco, please welcome…”

                The seventeen skaters of San Francisco Ice Theatre stepped gracefully onto the ice. 

Tribute to San Francisco Ice Theater

                                                                        The Dream

                The sun had set, and the birds had grown still in their nests. The little girl’s parents had tucked her into bed and kissed her good night. It was almost time to sleep. But first, the little girl had to say good night to all her toy clowns. She had twelve of them in all, each one a different size and color than the next, although they were all Pierrot dolls, with painted white faces and loose-fitting clothes over porcelain bodies. Humming quietly to herself, so as to not alert her parents of her nightly activity, the young girl danced with her dolls, picking them up, bidding them good night and carefully placing them all into the large toy chest in the closet. All, that is, except for one. The smallest doll was the young girl’s favorite. This doll had on a dark blue outfit with sparkly stars sprinkled all over. The doll wore a black cap on her head, as did all the others, but unlike the others, also had a huge ruffle around her neck that seemed almost too big for the doll’s small porcelain body. This doll had been the first one the girl had received, not too long ago on her fifth birthday. It had taken only six months for the girl to fall in love with the doll and collect the other eleven. No matter how many dolls she got, however, this one would always be her favorite. The little girl took extra time to hug and kiss this doll good night, and twirled around her room, dancing with it, before finally placing it into the tiny toy chest her father had made especially for the doll. With a yawn, the little girl clambered back into bed, pulled the covers over herself, and promptly fell asleep. So sudden was her slumber that she didn’t notice the mysterious twinkling of the stars or the uncharacteristic brightness of the moon hinting of the great adventure to come.

                The young girl woke to find her bed spinning rapidly on its own accord. She sat up, the bed grew still, and she was able to look around herself, quite confused. It was neither dark nor bright in her room, at least not in a day and night sense. There was both a hint of darkness and a glimmer of lightness in the room, something about it that made it feel somewhat foreign. At this point the little girl became aware of the fact that all her clown dolls had grown to life size and were dancing around her bed in a room that felt like her own but couldn’t have been, for it was large enough to accommodate a good number of clown dolls dancing in a circle around her bed. Now, she noticed her favorite doll waving to her not too far off. The little girl excitedly waved back and ran over, arms wide. The two embraced and danced around each other. The clown laughed, a sound that resembled very closely the jingling of tiny Christmas bells. Presently, another doll joined them. The trio twirled and leaped together, while the other clown dolls danced together around them.

As if by magic, the little girl suddenly found a large, emerald-green storybook sitting on her bed. She picked it up, and saw that it had neither title nor words. It was no matter to the girl.

“Tell me a fable,” she asked of her clown friends. “Tell me a pretty story!”

The clowns said nothing, but smiled and continued to dance. The two smallest dolls, with which the little girl had been dancing with previously, rose into the air as if they had had fairy powder sprinkled over them. The little girl watched in amazement as they flew joyously above her head, and clapped her hands with glee. The bedroom was filled with a magnificent mixture of music and movement, sights and sounds. The little girl never wanted the moment to end. She leaped, twirled, flew up in the air, always landing gracefully back down. Fireworks lit purely by her happiness burst into the sky as the little girl sung out to her clowns, “And now I dream… dream…. Dream a dream that will never end!” The words came to her without her thinking about them, without her even really knowing that she was saying them or what they meant. Then, with one last flash of color and one last crash of thunder, everything went dark. The music stopped, the sights vanished, and the air grew still.

The little girl opened her eyes, and wondered briefly at why they had been closed in the first place. She could see a hint of sunlight peeking through the blinds of her window. The little girl sat up in bed, confused. The room was back to its regular state, the bed pushed up against the wall, the door not even ten steps away. No clowns were dancing around her. No music floated around in the air. Where had everything gone? The little girl got out of bed to check on her dolls. They were still all in the toy chest, lifeless and small as they had been before. The starry blue clown still sat in its little box, although its smile seemed a little sweeter than usual. The little girl took it out of its box and set it on her nightstand. She sighed and climbed back into bed. It had been a dream, after all. She closed her eyes in hopes of returning to that wonderous land of dreams. As soon as she closed her eyes, the blue doll blinked, turned its head and smiled even wider at the little girl before turning its head back and resuming its lifeless look. There had been some magic after all. 

Perspectives

                This morning, as with all others, I woke up before everyone else after a nice night of entertaining dreams. I groggily opened my eyes, stretched a bit, and made my way into the girl’s room. Fortunately, she had left the door slightly ajar, and I was able to enter. To my surprise, the half-folded mattress was still on the floor. I took this opportunity to curl up on it and catch some beauty sleep.

~~

When I woke up, I saw that the dog had come to sleep on the extra mattress in my room. It was only 6am, but I didn’t feel like sleeping any more. I watched the little dog sleep for a while, but it was dark, and he wasn’t moving much, so I turned on a light and picked up the APUSH summer reading book from off the floor. Might as well do something productive, if I’m awake. Soon after I turned on the light, the dog woke up and left the room. I thought about calling him back to let him jump onto my bed, but decided not to make a loud noise and possibly wake up my parents.

~~

I had just fallen back asleep when she woke up and turned on the light. I tried to keep my eyes closed and drift back to dream land, but the sound of her moving around and the sudden brightness of the light made it difficult to do so. I gave up and walked out of the room in search of a shadier place to nap. I found that place on a couch downstairs. I jumped on, and started creating my dream barrier by turning around myself three times. The invisible barrier was to keep unwanted dreams and evil spirits away. I stomped on and clawed at the remains of the spirits that had been enclosed by the dream barrier so that they, too, would be unable to invade my dreams.

~~

He had left my door wide open when he left the room, so I could hear him as he trotted down the stairs, over the wooden floor and jumped onto the couch. I heard him scratching at the leather, and momentarily wondered why he did that every time he picked a new sleeping spot. I had read somewhere that wild dogs had once turned up the leaves and twigs around them in order to create a more comfortable sleeping spot, but here, the leather couch had probably been more comfortable before he had scratched it all up. I shrugged, and went back to reading the book.

~~

                The squirrel stared at me with its small black eyes, holding its acorn protectively to its chest. I snarled, warning it away from the house. This is my land. The squirrel chattered angrily, then started to turn away. Still holding the acorn, it crouched low and then catapulted itself into the air, and started flapping its wings. The squirrel was a bird. It chirped and turned its head towards me, and I saw that its eyes were still that of the squirrel… I woke with a start to the incessant chirping of the sparrows. Stupid birds, entering my thoughts and ruining my sleep. Too bad the dream barrier was useless against outside sounds. I sat up and put my front paws on the back of the sofa. Away, birds! I barked at them. This was my life, in both waking and sleeping hours: protecting the house from those malevolent squirrels and birds.

~~

                Jeez. He was barking again, at some unseen threat to our house. That little dog had such a big voice, for someone his size. He barked so much to the point that I could tell people that to find our house, once they were in the general area, they only needed to listen for the sound of barking. It would be coming from him. The barking continued, and after a substantial amount of time had gone by, I decided that he was hungry and barking for his breakfast. I put down the book and headed downstairs to the kitchen.

~~

                The sound of the food container being opened momentarily distracted me from my security post. It’s nice to know that all I do as the official protector of the house is appreciated.

The Surgery

                  It seemed as though he had complained of migraine headaches for months. At first, no one took him seriously; our parents took it as an excuse not to go to school, and I thought he was just being an annoying brother, trying to get his little sister to be his slave.  Eventually, mostly just to humor him, our parents finally decided to take him to the hospital to see a doctor.

                  That first visit was bad, although it definitely wasn’t going to be the worst. Steven, ever trying to be an independent “young adult,” made my mother and I stay in the waiting room while he went to the check up alone. In the beginning, we weren’t very worried; I sat cross-legged on a chair, reading Lord of the Flies for English homework. When Steven didn’t come out of the doctor’s office after an hour, my mother began to fidget with worry, picking up a magazine, flipping through, throwing it down, picking up another, and sighing periodically. After an eternity, the doorknob squeaked, and Steven came out with the doctor trailing behind him. Steven scanned the waiting room, saw us, and quickly strode over.

                  The first thing he said was, “Don’t panic. It’s probably not a big deal.”  Which, of course, made our mother even more apprehensive than she was before. She turned to the doctor and asked urgently, “What happened?”

                  The doctor explained to us that Steven probably had a lesion in his head. They had spoken for a long time, and it was unclear what the cause of the lesion was. To make sure that there really was a lesion, Steven would have to get an MRI. In the case that there was no lesion, he would be given some medications to try to treat the headaches. If there was a lesion, there was a chance that he would need to undergo surgery to get rid of it. The office had the equipment necessary for an MRI, but it would take a while, up to an hour, and the doctor wanted to let us know what was going on.

                  When the doctor was finished speaking, my mother looked like she was about to cry. Steven quickly took her hand, saying, “Mom, I told you not to panic. It’s probably nothing. And even if there is, well, you’ve always said there’s something wrong with my head.” He gave her a little smile, and ruffled up my hair.

                  “See? Jaimie’s taking it much better. Yeah. That book is probably more interesting than my head. A bunch of little kids die in that book. So lovely.” I glared at him, annoyed that he had messed up my hair and spoiled part of the novel, but couldn’t stay mad at him for longer than a second. After fifteen years of sharing a room with that kid, I could tell that he was just putting on a show for our mother. Inside, he was just as afraid as she was.

                  Steven exited the waiting room with the doctor once more. My mother wiped her eyes with a tissue, and then went outside to call our dad. I tried to go back to the book, but I couldn’t concentrate any more. What if he really was sick? What if we had waited too long to take him to the doctor? I had told him many times that I wished I were an only child, but it was always in jest. I couldn’t imagine life without my brother. Who would I talk to when our parents were out? Who would I annoy, prank, argue with, even? I tried to shut out the thoughts, but, like my mother, my imagination tended to come up with the worst possible scenarios. Those forty-seven minutes were, at that point, the worst forty-seven minutes of my life.

                  Finally, the door opened again, but this time, it was the doctor beckoning my mother and me to go inside. We did, my mother almost forgetting her purse in her rush to know what was going on with her little boy.

                  Steven was sitting in a plastic chair in a small check-up room holding what looked like transparencies. He gave them back to the doctor when we came in, and gave me a get-ready-calm-Mom-down look. The doctor put the two sheets of the MRI results on a table. As it turned out, Steven had a medium-sized lesion in his left hemisphere. To get it out, he would have to undergo surgery.

                  I think at that point, our mother was about ready to faint. Both of us had had relatively healthy childhoods, with the most severe injury being my broken arm after falling off the high bar during gymnastics. Our mother stared at the pages while the doctor explained the surgical procedure to us. We decided to schedule the procedure in two months, to give everyone some time to prepare mentally, as well as to let Steven finish his senior year. Still trying to keep things light, he jokingly told the doctor that he wanted to wait until June so that he would be able to take his AP tests and finals. If something were to go wrong, he didn’t want to forget all the miscellaneous facts he had worked so hard to cram into his head all year to go to waste.

                  The car ride home felt heavy, and was silent except for Steven’s half-hearted jokes every few minutes. The whole feeling of the house changed after that one visit to the hospital. Steven actually stopped complaining so much, for if he gave the tiniest hint that he wasn’t feeling well, our mother was ready to sprint out the door to rush him back to the hospital. He seemed to split his time between studying and talking to his girlfriend online, and I tried my best to refrain from poking fun at him like I had ever since they got together. At school, we both acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He didn’t want anyone at school to know, except for his girlfriend. As the two months came to an end, and as the surgery date came closer and closer, everyone became extremely nervous. Steven started eating less, as did my father. I began waking up randomly during the night, and I could see a light in our parents’ bedroom that told me that my mother was suffering from a similar insomnia. Sometimes, when even reading my history book couldn’t get me sleepy, I crept over to the electric keyboard and played some piano just to do something with my hands. Senior finals came and went, and my brother tried to spend his free time playing video games, but staring at the screen amplified his headaches. He picked up the guitar again, and every day when I came home from school, I could hear him playing softly in our room.

                  My last day of school was the day of the surgery. Since I got out at noon, my brother came to pick me up after school, and we went to the hospital together. My parents came to the hospital directly from their workplace.

                  Back to the waiting room. The appointment had been at 2pm, but we waited until 3 for the nurse to come and get Steven. The surgeon came out to lay out the procedure for my parents and me again, and then we were given scrubs to put on so that we could see Steven one last time before they started the surgery. My father and I managed to hold back the tears, but my mother sobbed into him as she gave him a long and tight hug. Steven did most of the comforting, though he, too, looked rather terrified. Then it was back to the waiting room. It was a three hour procedure, and during that time I probably read through the yearbook at least six times, glancing at the clock every five minutes. My imagination went into overdrive again, going through every possible thing that could go wrong. I gave up on reading and closed my eyes, but all I could think of were movie-like daydreams that revolved around a complications-filled surgery. I thought the three ours would never end.

                  Three hours, twenty minutes and forty-four seconds after we had stepped back into the waiting room, the nurse came out again. Inside, I started jumping up and down with joy when I saw her big smile. She informed us that the surgery had gone very well, and that although he was sleeping right now, we would be able to see Steven and he would be able to go home the next day. My mother heaved a huge sigh of relief and hugged the nurse, thanking her for bringing such good news. We followed the nurse to the room where Steven lay fast asleep. I smiled when I saw him, sleeping so peacefully. No more worries, no more frightening daydreams. Everything would be back to normal. 

A Letter to all you humans out there :)

Among the many things that confuse me

Are people, you see.

I'd like to understand you

Really, I do

But although I try

I still don't get why;

Why you say this, why you ask that

I wish I knew answers like I did on the math SAT

Unfortunately, here, it is not the case

And maybe it's really some sort of race

To see who will do better, you or I

At understanding; and it isn't a lie

That I think your chances of winning are high

For to understand you, it is my bet

That I should first know myself, something that hasn't quite happened yet

I don't get myself, how can I know you?

So I'm stuck with bad rhymes, and that's what I do

Maybe tomorrow, the next day or next

I'll learn how to know you through some magical text

For that seems to be the only thing I can know

To read and to learn, for me, that's a go

Yet when I am with you, or you are with me

My brain nearly shuts down so I can no longer see

What you are feeling, or what I should say

Confusion is always my word of the day

I wish I could know, and I wish I could help

But as of right now, I'm as helpless as a whelp. 

And right now, all I can think of is that

I should stop this silly rhyming, stat

So I will as of now...

And that will be that. 

(not) A New Life

This is a poem I wrote during a vocab class... we had just read a poem about Ibrahim, a Persian king who gave up his throne. The assignment was to write a similar poem that included a few of the given words. The original poem was A New Life by the Persian poet Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. 


On the rooftop one special day
The Persian king half-asleep lay

The ecstatic spinning had been a nice trip
But the dizziness had made him bite his lower lip.

Happy to be back from Qaf
That was a rollercoaster he really wanted off


At first, the throne he had wanted to abdicate
But now he was glad that for a mind change it wasn't too late

To the menace of the drum he preferred the cello
Because those sounds were so much more mellow

For though the spinning had been fun
It was only illusory and now it was done

And so the king resumed his throne
No transformation; the robe and beard he'd keep as his own

Memories

I woke up thinking I was back on the farm, and opened my eyes half expecting to see the high, painted ceiling of my old bedroom. Instead, the low, whitewashed and dusty apartment ceiling greeted me, as it had for the past two years. Yet the thoughts were enough to revoke memories and send my imagination into overdrive. So I got out of bed and went over to the window, half expecting to see the beautiful green field below.

Of course, there wasn’t a blade of grass to be seen, only the gray, foggy procession of morning traffic. I sighed, and sat back down on the bed. Why had I been thinking of the old farm anyway? It had been two years since my family had moved to the East Coast for “an opportunity for a better education,” to quote my parents. The private school I went to here was full of AP and honor classes, educational extracurricular activities and all sorts of other things created solely to propel me, along with the rest of the high school population, towards Harvard and the other Ivy Leagues.

Sure, I had crammed more academic information into my head in these two years than I had ever learned in the thirteen that I had spent in Colorado. But there, I feel like I learned so much more. Who cares about finding derivatives and deviations or knowing what happens during salt hydrolysis? In Colorado, I learned things that were much more practical just by living: How to identify the edible berries, and how to pick out the sweetest ones. How to climb a tree, and take a nap high up in the branches without falling off. How to act around wild animals so that they trust you. 

Memories of those great times washed over me, and I lay back in bed with my eyes closed, thinking of the time I won a horse race, the time I saved the little kitten, the time I helped my dad rebuild the stable… Life in Colorado had been so much more peaceful, yet so much more exciting at the same time. There, in the summer, I could go out and run around the fields with my sheepdog, Snowball, or go out for a ride with my chestnut Canadian horse named Rooster. Here, all I can see are buildings and artificial lights. I don’t think I’ve heard complete silence since we’ve come here; there’s always some sort of traffic below the apartment. I don’t think I’ve seen a sunset or sunrise; there’s always a building or sign in the way. I don’t think I’ve seen the big dipper or any other constellation either; the lights all come on at night, and cloud the sky. I don’t think I’ve seen any wildlife other than pigeons; the middle of New York City is no place for an animal.

Everything absent in the city from the countryside, I miss. Nothing from the city I felt I lacked in the countryside. Life was so full of surprises back then. Here there are no surprises; it’s just the same thing every day. Wake up. School. Soccer. Guitar. Homework. Sleep. Even the school days are all the same: go to class, stare blankly, leave for the next one. The only class I enjoy at school is art, for in that class, I can always manage to find a way to incorporate my old life into the project. English is not bad either, especially when we get creative writing assignments. Unfortunately, everything else is a complete bore.

“Alice! What are you doing?!” My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the shrill voice of my older sister yelling at me to hurry up and get ready for school. We were so different. We are only one year apart, and very close, but it had taken no time at all for Jessie to love the city. I took a deep breath and headed towards the bathroom. Time to start another day, just as I had yesterday, just as I will tomorrow, although I’d rather be in Colorado. I can’t wait until I’m done with school and old enough to move back. 

The Encounter

Ever since he told me about his new job at Diagon Alley, the new Harry Potter-themed boutique, on the last day of school, I knew I had to go visit. “I just want to say ‘hi’,” I told my friends, even though I knew it was more than that. But the summer passed by so quickly, and school would start once again tomorrow. Things didn’t look very hopeful. Then, today, I got my chance. My parents were both out for the evening, my brother over at a friend’s house. I had the evening to myself, plenty of time to bike to Diagon Alley and back. I’d finally be able to fulfill the promise I gave him to

I hoped onto my bike and rode quickly to Diagon Alley, only ten minutes away. When I got there, he was helping another customer. He looked so cute, with his ruffled black hair and green eyes. Everyone had teased him about looking like Harry Potter, to the point that he had started wearing contact lenses near the end of the school year.  Here, though, it was an asset to resemble the famous wizard, and he was wearing his brown, rectangular glasses once again.

I watched him for a few seconds as he spoke with the other customer. He acted so professionally, so unlike a nerdy high school student. Eventually, he looked up and noticed me. He gave a surprised greeting, and smiled. I love that smile. It was such a simple move, and I had seen it many times before, but it never felt fake. Nothing about him was ever fake.  Just as I was going to say something, a coworker popped out of a back room and asked me what I wanted to order.

“Say you’ll wait a bit,” a little voice at the back of my head whispered. But shyness and apprehension took over and I blurted out, “I’ll have a box of Berttie Bott’s Every Flavoured Beans and three chocolate frogs, please.” I couldn’t help but watch as he rung up the other customer’s order. It took a few seconds for me to realize that the coworker was trying to ask me something.

 “I said, ‘Would you like anything else?’” I shook my head. The coworker handed me the bag. I gave him some money. He handed me the change. And I left. Just like that. I left.

When I got home, it hit me of how stupid I had been.  He could have taken my order. I don’t even know why it’d make a difference. No, I do know. There would have been more of an interaction between us. I would have talked to him. But no. All I had managed to do was stare at him. Great. I probably looked like a creeper now. All throughout the school year, I had been trying to find an opportunity to talk to him about something other than schoolwork and the weather. All week I had tried to think of ways I could see him at Diagon Alley before school started again. And then when I finally found an opportunity, I blew it.

Sitting on my bed, holding onto my favorite teddy bear, one I had gotten for my tenth birthday, I realized that I was blowing everything a bit more than a little out of proportion. So what if I didn’t get to say much to him? At least I went. At least he acknowledged my existence. Things could have gone much worse. And who knows? Maybe tomorrow I’ll see him in one of my classes. I put the teddy bear down and got off my bed to start packing my backpack for the next day, a little happier, and, for the first time in a while, a little excited for the first day of school.