“Rebecca, second row, last seat,” I froze. Was this one of my ridiculous fantasies, or did my English teacher actually just say that? She snapped me out of it, “Rebecca! Did you hear me?”

“Yeah, sorry,” I mumbled and headed down the row to my new seat. It was the first day of freshman year and we were being assigned seats, in alphabetical order. I sat down and looked to my left. There he was. I looked down at my books until my heart returned to human speed, and my teacher had placed every student in a desk. On my right sat some girl, whose name I didn’t know. I looked straight ahead, I was afraid to turn to my head left, what if he caught me looking at him?

“OK, everybody look at me. Well that’s nice, everybody in the right order. Now, we work a lot with partners in this class,” she paused while kids looked across the room to their friends and smiled, “but before you get excited, I assign your partners. Rows one and two are together, rows three and four, and rows five and six, get it?”

I could have died right there, but she kept on going, “I would like you to turn to your partner and introduce yourselves. I want you exchanging cell numbers and get to know each other; you are to become best friends. This brings me to your first assignment; you will be coming in front of the class and giving a three minute presentation on your partner. Talk about what they like, what they don’t like and four little known facts. Get to work.” She smiled that classic teacher smile, not realizing she had just made me the happiest girl in the entire world.
I quickly did the math; 6 rows of 5, with rows 5 and 6 only having 2 pairs of teens. That’s 28 kids, 27 not including me. 1 out of 27 chances that I would be paired up with him. It must be fate.

“Hi, I’m Andrew, Your Rebecca, right?” He was talking to me; he knew my name. The kid I have liked since the very beginning of first grade was talking to me.

“Yeah, so, um, where should we start?” We slid our desks together, so they were touching in the middle, and I was trapped between them.

“Well, I don’t have your number?” he asked it as a question.

“Right, I don’t have yours either,” my heart leaped.

“So do you want to exchange phones, I think that would be easier?”


“Yeah,” he handed me his phone and our fingers touched, I melted inside my jean shorts and light blue baby-doll tee, and not because it was hot outside.

“So,” he began when we were done, “why do I know you?”

“Well, this is a pretty small town,” I shrugged and he laughed. I made him laugh.

“True, but were you in any of my classes last year?” He looked into my brown eyes, and I stared into the pools of blue, that he called his eyes.

“Nope,” Trust me, I would know.

“Oh well, maybe I’ve just seen you around school then,” He said. I wasn’t going to remind him that he knew me from when we were little. I wasn’t going to tell him I was the girl that used to chase him around the swing set, never knowing what to do once I caught up with him. If he didn’t remember that, I wasn’t going to tell him. He continued, “So this project, we really should start on it.”

During those 40 minutes, I found out everything and anything I ever wanted and needed to know about my crush, Andrew. We spent the class talking and getting to know each other. He told me about how he started playing basketball, and how he killed his fish when he was five; and I told him about how I met my best friend and my first dance competition.
When the bell rang, I tried to hide the disappointment in my eyes by shielding my face in a curtain of coffee colored curls. I walked out of the classroom and met up with the best friend I was just talking about, Lisa.

“So,” she asked, “how’d it go?”

“Amazing,” I swooned. Lisa was the only one who knew about my major crush on Andrew. That’s only because we both had liked him when we were little toddlers in first grade, but she has moved on, and sadly, I haven’t, “I sit next to him!”

“That’s great! Maybe you will work up the guts to talk to him.” She smiled at me as we walked up the stairs to the one class we had together, math.

“Well, I actually got his number,” I said still glowing, “but before you start freaking out, it’s because we are partners for a project and we have to know everything about each other and we had to talk and it is perfect!”

We spent the rest of the walk talking about Andrew, and my obsession with him. When school let out I was still smiling; I smiled as I walked home listening to my iPod, I smiled as I finally understood the love the pop sensations were singing about; and I smiled as I told my mom about my first day back at school. I even smiled as my younger brother came running off the bus screaming about the new friends he made in his first grade class.

I walked upstairs, still smiling, and turned my computer on. But all of those smiles didn’t compare to the one I got when my phone rang, and his name was lighting up my cell phone screen. With shaking hands, I answered the phone, “Hello?”

“Hey, Rebecca?” It was really Andrew.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Um,” he sounded nervous and paused. “Nothing, I was making sure you put the right number in my phone, I got to go. Bye.”

He hung up, and I just stared at the phone. I hung up also, and hit number two on my keypad, Lisa. She picked up after the second ring, “Hello?”

“Hey Lisa, can you talk?” I asked her.

“Yeah, sure! First day means no homework! What’s going on?”

“You’ll never guess who just called me.”


“Well, from that, I bet I can, was it An-drew?” she cooed his name.

“Yeah.” I confirmed.

“So why aren’t you screaming with excitement? What did you talk about? Tell me exactly what he said!” Lisa was excited for me, I could tell by her voice.

“Well, nothing happened,” I said, still confused, “he called and I said hello, then he asked if it was me, and I asked what’s up, and then he told me he just called to make sure he gave me the right number! As if I would ever give him a fake one! Then he told me he had to leave and hung up! I’m extremely confused! What just happened?”


“Hmm,” Lisa was thinking on the other end of the line, “Well, did he sound nervous?”


“Yeah, a little bit, why?”

“Well, don’t freak out, but maybe he likes you? Why else would he call unless he discovered his love for you?” I froze, my heart stopped, she spoke again, “please don’t faint! Keep breathing, in and out, in and out.”

I was still in shock; I didn’t want to get my hopes up, just to have them crushed. I asked her, “Are you sure?”


“No, but come on, why else would he call, or any guy call, and then just hang up like that?”

“I don’t know! That’s why I called you! Oh my gosh! What if he really does like me? I mean, we did talk a lot in class today. But things like this don’t happen to me; they never happen to me, ever. They happen in books and movies and to other lucky people! Not to me!”


“Well, I guess there is a first for everything!” I could hear Lisa smiling for me.

“Yeah, hold on, I just got a text,” I looked at my phone, “I’m going to die! It’s from him, I’ll read it out loud! It says, ‘sorry about that call, I just wanted to know if you-“

“If you, what?!” Lisa asked, I had stopped reading, “Come on Rebecca! What does it say?”

I had broken down. In class when we talked about it, I didn’t think that- “REBECCA!”

Lisa was still on the phone, “What happened?! What did he say? If you can’t talk; forward me the text.”

I hit forward on my cell, without thinking and just kept crying, I didn’t hear Lisa gasping in surprise, I didn’t hear her trying to comfort me because I had hung up. I stared through my drenched eyes at the sentences that had just ruined my life:

‘Sorry about that call, I just wanted to know if you could set me up with your friend Lisa. She was in my first grade class, and don’t laugh at me, but I’ve liked her for a long time. You would be my best friend ever if you did this for me. =) Text me back!’