My First Memoir

In my sophomore year of high school, I fell for a boy named Malcolm. And I mean he was a boy, nowhere near the maturity level needed to be identified as a man. He was a real-life bad boy, not the fetishized version of a bad boy that they show on teenage drama shows. He was my around my age, maybe a year older. He had a buzz cut which I usually hated but for some reason I liked it on him. He always wore wife-beaters, semi-colorful jeans, fat skater shoes, and a big red hoodie that I afraid would smell like the inside of a smoking den. Yet, I found his appearance somewhat appealing.
We met at the school Christmas party, the last day before Winter Break and the last school day of 2013.  I was wearing my red, comfy HO HO HO shirt and Santa-inspired fingerless gloves to be in the Holiday spirit. I want to say it was around nine am when I originally met him. I was talking with my friend Jordan about a videogame I recently got addicted to, Saints Row, and Malcolm overheard. He was also a fan of the game.
I had a crush on him immediately.
We bonded even more during a movie screening in the math room, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas. We were the only ones in the room who were singing the correct lyrics to the opening song. He sat next to me as we sang it like a duet. We spent the rest of the movie talking to each other, playing footsie, and finding out even more of our interests.
We exchanged numbers. He said he wanted to talk to me over break, so we did. Not even ten minutes after school did we begin texting each other. My best friend at the time, Angela, knew I was in trouble. I always had crushes on the purely unattainable: fictional characters, lead singers of my favorite bands, and even famous youtubers. I lived in a fantasy world where I could be in an unreal relationship with whoever I wanted.
I’ve had boyfriends before. A lot of teenage girl would have had previous romantic encounters before tenth grade. I’ve had roughly six boyfriends before meeting Malcolm. I had only kissed one of them. None of them were exactly a serious relationship, more so just an extremely close friendship that was identified as romantic. So when he asked me out the exact same day I met him, I panicked.
I am terrified of relationships. I am terrified of intimacy, monogamy, anything that involves two persons exclusively. I have lived a life where I am comfortable being alone. Sure I fantasized about having a boyfriend and how happy it would be. But I am severely scared of giving myself to another person.
He said he wanted to go out sometime over break.
In my state of panic, I lied. I said I was busy until two weeks after school had started, hopefully he would lose interest in me by then. In reality, most of my time would be spent at my house with my PS3 and hot cocoa.

We didn’t talk for several months. I never lost interest in him though. He ended up dating some other girl for a couple of week, Latrice, who is one of the most annoying females I’ve ever encountered at a school. Shortly before they broke up, my crush on him had come back.
By then his hair was slightly longer, he talked more freely, and had become rather close to Angela, and it made me jealous.
As soon as he broke up with Latrice, I sought help from Angela. She had created a rather close friendship with the man while I maintained a relationship with my computer writing late-night fanfiction. I asked to ask him what he still thought of me, if she needed to tell him I was unsure of my feelings, then so be it.
She broke the news to me the next day. She told me that he was unsure of his feelings for me too but he knew he was falling for another girl, Hannah. I was heartbroken. For the next month, I had to hear them flirt with each other while never identifying themselves as exclusive.
One day, I thought to myself “I think I’m finally ready to be in a relationship.”
He was too… with her.
The moment when I was ready to tell him was the exact moment that Angela had informed me that Hannah and Malcolm were officially an item. My heart sank.
I didn’t talk to him for the rest of the school year, not until the last month of summer.
One day I messaged popped up on Facebook from Malcolm saying:
Hi
I lost ur number lol
Typed exactly like that, your spelled improperly, and with the laughing out loud acronym at the end.
I replied simply by resending my number to him.

A few weeks later we arranged to meet and catch up in Downtown Royal Oak. He offered me a ride in his Pontiac Fierro at least five times. I wasn’t comfortable being in a car alone with him for a few reasons: one he was at most seventeen, so he didn’t have much experience driving a car. Another, I was afraid to be in a car alone with a man based on my knowledge of teen movies where the couple always makes out in the back seat of the car.
Instead of taking the chance to be in a car with him, I rode four miles on a bike with flat tires in a plaid mini-skirt and broken boots. It was not my shining moment.
He took me to a coffee place that almost reminded you of the set of FRIENDS, but seemed a bit more… realistic. It was almost empty; it was me and Malcolm on one of the couches near the open window and another high school student typing rapidly in the corner. He ordered a cup of coffee with too much milk. I ordered nothing despite his offer to pay for me. I just sipped at one of the water bottles I filled up before my bike ride.
During the half hour I was there, he filled me in on his relationship trouble with Hannah. I was both happy and sad to hear the news. Somewhere near the end of our conversation, a man who I believe was named David came in and started to smoke hookah with the typing student. We left soon after that.
We sat on the benches outside the library for another hour while I waited for my mom to come and rescue me in her jeep. After several awkward silences, uneasy glances at one another, and small but forced conversations so we wouldn’t wait for sixty minutes in complete silence. Finally, she came. We shoved my bike into the back of her Jeep Patriot, he gave me an hug a goodbye, and that ended the most awkward non-date of my life.