August 26, 2014 - Admission

A week had passed since the spit tragedy, but the shame still clung to me like a smell you couldn’t scrub off. It wasn’t just embarrassment anymore – it was embedded, like muscle memory. Nothing I did could erase it, not with Jackie sitting right in front of me every day as a constant reminder. The way she’d stared at that glob, like it was radioactive, made me want to physically puke.

So one morning, I came early to class. Me. Early. Back straight, grinning like an idiot, waiting. Normally I strolled in halfway through homeroom, yawning and pretending I had better things to do. But now? I was planted in my chair before the room even warmed up, like a golden retriever waiting for the door to open. If I had a tail, it would’ve been wagging and smacking Ginny – the girl behind me – right in the face.

The door creaked.

There she was. Jackie.

The girl of my dreams. Or more accurately, the girl who had just dethroned Angelina Jolie from _Hacker_s off the top spot in my dreams. That was no small feat – Angelina had been undefeated since I was twelve.

Jackie walked to her seat, the air subtly shifting with her. Then her scent hit me. Plain soap. No perfume, no strawberry body spray like most girls at school loved to drown in. Just clean, sharp, simple soap. It smelled like fresh laundry on a Sunday. I’d even stopped using cologne after that week, realizing I preferred the honesty of clean over the fakery of Cool Ocean Breeze.

I told myself today was the day. I had a line prepared – something smooth, something clever. One sentence to erase the spit incident from history. I’d been rehearsing it since two in the morning. I was ready.

She dropped her bag onto her desk. I coughed loud enough for her to hear. Our eyes met. My mouth twitched into a smile.

And I immediately looked away, fumbling with the buttons on my uniform like they were made of gold and I’d just discovered them.

The line in my head evaporated. The spit incident replayed in HD. My throat shut down like a bank vault.

When Jackie sat back in her chair, I wanted to slam my forehead into the desk again. But the class was too quiet for drama, so I just pressed my palms against my cheeks and squeezed until my jaw hurt.

This was insane. She was right there – barely a foot away.

But she might as well have been standing on the other side of the planet. I couldn’t do anything right, apparently.

I took a deep breath and **** my head up, jaw set. I wasn’t ready to admit defeat. The duel with my awkwardness – and maybe karma – wasn’t over. Not yet. The day wasn’t over. If the “smooth line” had failed, I still had a backup plan – the one I’d been mentally polishing all week.

As everyone could see, my social skills around Jackie weren’t just bad; they were buried six feet under. I could talk to literally anyone else – other girls, my friends, even the janitor sweeping the hallway. But with her? Not a chance. My brain scrambled like eggs, my hands turned into clumsy claws, my tongue tied itself in knots.

So I did the only thing that made sense to my teenage, hormone-flooded brain.

I watched her.

Not in a creepy way. Okay, maybe a little creepy. But come on – she sat right in front of me. What was I supposed to do, study?

By the end of the first week of classes, Jackie had already built her own circle of friends. Not the loud, popular girls, thank God. Her group was quieter – the kind who actually did their homework, who didn’t need to shout to fill silence.

She was smart. Athletic. Effortlessly cool. The type of person who just was the main character. Even when she wasn’t trying, people gravitated toward her like moths to a lamp.

When she spoke, she was blunt. Straight to the point. Not mean, not cold – just honest. No fake smiles. Which somehow made her even more magnetic. It gave me hope. Maybe that sympathetic smile she’d given me after the spit disaster had been real – not pity.

Whenever there was a break, she’d pull out her sketchbook and draw. That was my favorite part of the day. I’d tilt my head slightly, pretending to stare at the clock while actually watching her pencil move – quick and deliberate. She’d bite her lip when something was off, tilt her head when it clicked. It was hypnotic.

She mostly drew anime characters.

That was my backup plan. And after my morning so-smooth-James-Bond-would-be-proud line failure, it was all I had left. If I couldn’t impress her with words, I’d be the guy she could talk to about anime. Easy. Common ground.

Except… it wasn’t so easy.

A few days ago, I leaned sideways, pretending to stretch, and peeked at her sketches. I froze.

Who the hell were those characters?

Not Goku. Not Naruto. Not Luffy. Not even Ash Ketchum. Just faces I couldn’t name.

I groaned out loud – loud enough that Kevin glanced at me. I was a Powerpuff-watching normie. I thought I knew anime, but apparently, I was a shallow, Saturday-morning-cartoon-tier fan. Absolute disaster.

Luckily, Mike saved me without even knowing it.

“What are you drawing?” he asked. I perked up immediately.

Jackie’s eyes lit up – not a grin, not a laugh, just a spark. Subtle but unmistakable. “It’s from Puella Magi Madoka Magica.”

Albert Einstein himself couldn’t have taken notes faster than me in that moment. I wrote it down – misspelled horribly – and scribbled watch ASAP beside it. For the next three nights, I binge-watched the entire thing, gripping my laptop like I was studying for finals.

And today, I was ready. I waited until lunch. I was grinning like an evil villain about to hatch his master plan. Then I blew air hard enough that my cheeks puffed out, trying to settle my nerves.

“Hey, Jackie,” I said, smooth and practiced, like I’d been rehearsing in front of the mirror. She looked back at me, a little surprised. Her eyebrows shot up.

“What’s your favorite anime?” I asked.

“Right now? Vagabond.” She didn’t even hesitate.

I nodded like a wise philosopher. “Cool. Me too. I adored Saki–”

Then my brain hit a wall.

Wait. What the fuck is Vagabond?

“Saki?” Jackie said. “You mean Sasaki? I like him too.”

My brain short-circuited. Was there even a Sasaki in Madoka Magica? I was pretty sure there wasn’t.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I like… that scene where… uh… you know… the thing.”

Jackie tilted her head. “Which thing?”

“The big thing. At the end.”

Silence.

“You have no idea what Vagabond is, do you?” she asked, deadpan.

I shook my head at the ceiling.

“You were talking about Saki from Puella, weren’t you?”

I nodded at my desk.

“Can I go back to sketching?”

I nodded at my shoes.

When she turned back to her desk, I risked a glance. Her face was calm, focused – maybe even smiling a little. I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than anger.

All I knew was that I wanted to jump out the nearest window. Maybe do a backflip first so my **** would at least be impressive. That useless backflip talent I’d been practicing on my bed could finally pay off.

Even Mike turned toward me, cringing so hard his whole face collapsed in on itself. His shoulders shook. He looked like he wanted to slap me. Honestly, I almost wanted him to.

Second try today. Second failure. My third over all strike. And I know what that meant. "You're out!"

Later, I found out Vagabond wasn’t even an anime. It was a manga. An insanely detailed, legendary manga. Of course she wasn’t drawing it.

I thought I’d gotten lucky by recognizing the name. But nope. Game over.

After that, I stopped forcing conversations.

I just… kept watching.

One afternoon, during a break, Jackie pulled out her phone. She read a message, her face calm, then flipped to a blank page in her notebook and carefully wrote something down.

A date.

Curiosity got the better of me. Okay, nosiness was more accurate. I was hoping it wasn’t a date with another guy. I leaned just enough to read it, then copied it into my own notes.

December 10 – Convention.

The rest of the day went. Me watching her, and hating myself. The usual.

It was already evening when I walked home. I’d been stuck doing homeroom cleaning duty. When I passed by the bridge, the black stray dog was there. I hadn’t seen it since Jackie’s first day. It looked like it had been waiting for me. It sat down on its hind legs, eyes fixed on me like it was judging. Dogs had a way of doing that.

“What’s up,” I said to it like a I was a gangster, complete with a head tilt.

The dog just kept staring.

“I know, I know,” I muttered, crouching as I poured kibble onto the ground.

The stray stared for a long moment, then walked toward me.

Once it was near the kibble, it growled. I took a step back, as always. The dog sniffed the food but didn’t stop staring. Still growling, still watching, like it was waiting for me to move – or to finally admit something I’d been avoiding all week.

I sighed. “I told ya I know,” I said quietly. “I admit defeat. She’s my karma.”

The words came out rough, dragged from somewhere deep. I didn’t even know why I said it out loud. The wind blew, cold and sharp, brushing against my face. I felt stupid talking to a stray dog – but at the same time, it felt right.

The dog’s ears twitched. It stared for another second, then bent down and began to eat, tail wagging slowly.

I watched it chew, the crunches echoing in the cool night air. It felt like the universe answering back, saying, Yeah, you messed up. And yeah, this is what you get.