The Incident: A Memoir

A quiet girl crushes on the new, popular guy.  It makes for an adorable romantic-comedy fit for teenagers, complete with a soundtrack of top 40 hits and a cast of 20-somethings to play the high school students.  But it is a real high school, not a fictional one, and no line of dialogue is guaranteed.

She is sweet though, if unassuming.  Her best friends can attest, but one in particular understands better than the others.  She's not technically as pretty as the quiet one- with oddly proportioned features and acne scars on her cheeks but she does her best to cake on makeup in an attractive facade and she is bold.  Ellie can talk to anyone and everyone.  She has the superpower, she was once told, of making everyone fall in love with her.

One afternoon, as the quiet girl bounds out the front doors of school, Ellie’s voice prompts her to turn around.

“Hey!” she squeals affectionately at her best friend, the two hugging because they'd hardly seen each other that day.  Even a matter of hours is too long for them to be separated, as opposite as they are.  They always have to hunt one another down by the end of school to catch up and say farewells until the next day.

Ellie pulls back from the hug to look at her best friend, but keeps her hands latched onto her forearms while speaking.  “Hey, I’m so glad I caught you,” she takes a quick glance around that signifies whatever she was about to say will be about Mike.

For girls who were never very surreptitious about our crushing, we like to believe that everything we said was some great secret.  We use code names at times, or emphasize our pronouns.

"Did you catch a glimpse of the bald eagle today?" she joked the time Mike buzzed off the curly locks of sandy auburn her friend adored.

"Oh, you should have heard what he said in Econ today."  That was the beginning of many a familiar tale.

This day, however, such formalities are bypassed.  She goes straight to the point.

“I have a story.”

Stories are synonymous with intel.  A girl so modest lets other people do the talking for her, so she relies on such stories, and they rarely disappoint.  Something flashes behind her eyes that made it clear that Ellie has her full attention.

“Okay so yesterday at rehearsal, we were like working on this piece of choreography right?" She doesn't wait for a nod of confirmation before continuing.  "And so I’m practicing with Ricky and all of a sudden Mike- oh my gosh, he’s so funny- just runs up to me and grabs my face, looks me in the eye like this, and then runs away!”  For emphasis she places her hands on either side of her friends head, drawing near so their foreheads are practically touching, and then flinging them apart.

The shy girl's laugh is incredulous, somewhat forced.  The good humor in her smile doesn't reach her eyes.  “What?” she plays it cool, chuckling out the question.  “Oh my god he’s so weird…” she rolls my eyes, like such random acts are just something about him that she has to tolerate.  But it doesn't matter to her what he has done.  He's a notorious flirt, she knows- it's clear even to people who don't spend as much time observing him as she seemed to.  What really bothers her is that Ellie thinks that this would be something she'd want to hear.  Her crush singling out her best friend.  There's a clenched feeling in her chest that she tries to ignore.

It feels like two of the most important people of her sophomore year of high school are complete idiots and, no matter how annoyed she grows with either, she'll never be able to shake them.  Mike and Ellie have become a part of her existence, and she must learn to accept both of them as they are.

The Idea and the Verb

I find motivation a funny thing.  Sometimes I want to write more than anything- I feel like the words are spilling out of me, racing to see who can be the first to reach the page.  Words dance through my mind, organizing themselves into an aesthetically pleasing arrangement, finding the balance between clarity and poetry.  They're acrobatic, and do the work for me.

Sometimes I don't even have the phrasing yet, just wonderful ideas that I verbalize to anyone whose ear I can catch.  I know exactly what I intend to write, and I'm proud already.

The trouble comes in the act of writing.

Why is it I can find myself with so much inspiration, with topics or plots I'd love to explore, and yet want to do anything but sit down and actually type or write it out?  The action seems like it'd be the easiest part, and yet I avoid it.