along the road

first sight | 2014 | age 15

It was the night I was caught unaware.

I step through the gate, led by the smiling birthday girl, her raven hair framing her face as if it were a painting—some kind of revelation, a masterpiece that had just hit the light. I'm cold. Even though the sun's still out, its beams still caressing our side of the sky, I feel a shiver up my arms, the fabric of my sweater apparently not enough to keep the warmth trapped within me.

We walk towards the front of her house, and she chirps on about how excited she is—how fresh sixteen feels, how the thought of it makes her skin glow. She mentions a boy who's stopping by, a guy we all swiped from Instagram, and I grin as her voice lilts into face-breaking joy. Some part of me wants to know how that feels—to have googly eyes for a boy you've only seen on a screen, to want your fingertips to graze against something you haven't touched in the flesh. I've only seen traces of it; the lingering stare as a boy walks by, the voice that caves in and out when someone who your heart swelters for awaits an answer.

This girl is air, cool and confident, floating even as her feet hit the ground. She is made for love.

She introduces me to her closest friends. They're the early ones, the people that were here long before the party started, helping her set-up, aiding each other with makeup and outfit choices, sedating one another with stories of their weeks, uplifting each other with a well-placed hand and a resonating voice.

When I see him, I don't feel it. Not at first; not when all I know is his name, not when I'm too busy acknowledging everyone else. I feel his gaze linger when I step away, I hear her voice fade into nonentity as I return. It doesn't hit me, not yet, not even in the slightest.

The sun sets, and the party begins. My classmates pour into the garden, their figures barely illuminated by the fairy lights strung across the trees, and the floor lamps flickering in the winter wind. I spend my time in the tent, where the food is, happily biding my time with a girl whose laugh pierces the air like a knife to a neck, and nearly shatters my eardrums. I pretend it doesn't rub me the wrong way—a good cut of meat tends to sedate you that way, make you impenetrable.

He finds his way to me. I still don't feel it, but I know that he's beautiful; in how his voice soothes the atmosphere, even as he belts out the wrong lyrics to the right song, how his hair magically stays out of those blue, blue eyes, how he walks as if God hovers behind him, spurring him on, beckoning him forth.

I don't feel it as we speak, a conversation that gradually becomes everything and nothing; up in the air, and right here, on the ground. I find myself laughing more than I usually do, speaking more than I care to. In the moment, it warms me, replaces the cold writhing around my body.

Everyone lulls into the tent, drowsy from either corner-side kisses or the iced bucket of alcohol lingering on the other end of the tent, far enough from him and me to prove unworthy. The birthday girl brings blankets, and he unfurls one over us, that tranquil aura never missing a beat.

He slithers away, for a moment, and I'm left swaying to the beat of a vaguely familiar song, one that forces a few of my peers to rise to their muddied feet. Boys run around, sipping beer and whispering into reddening ears, making crude jokes and slapping each other on the back. It's strange, how there are boys and then me, how I've managed to separate one from the other, as if they did not operate within the same spectrum, did not exist within the same earth-dusted body.

I'm not sure when it happens—when the feeling hits, when I'm drowning in it—but my eyes find him in the crowd as he strolls back into the tent, a mug in each glorious hand, donning a jacket so wonderfully creased, I imagine my fingers smoothing over each bump in the fabric, exploring every valley and every cave. He's talking to someone, the birthday girl, but I can't hear their voices—I can't hear anything except the song, pumping through my ears, begging to be heard. He's tall, almost taller than me, and as they draw nearer, something swells within me, growing and growing until everything—the world, the music, my thundering heart—comes to a timely halt.