Boys like him don’t look at girls like me by Alauna Rose

May 14

He apologised for kissing me, my spit caught on his bottom lip. It came out of nowhere, the hall quiet and smelling oppressively of mothballs. The reek of an old building, a house for unteachable children - the only thing I learned there was how to lie. Looking back he wasn’t especially special, but in my eyes, the sort of star-struck ones that only come with youth, he was a boy god. An archangel, the same one who had whispered in Daniel's daydreams.

Boys like him don’t look at girls like me, I remember thinking. Not girls with round tummies, with thighs that rub together underneath their skirts. With chins, with wild hair, big feet and a bigger ass. Unworthy, I remember thinking. The word meant nothing when he looked at me.

It was a safe sort of love, not the kind that really means anything. Fondness, the holy feeling that comes with being beloved by a popular boy. “How do I look?” He’d ask me, Oxy-addled eyes searching mine. Gorgeous, always gorgeous. My gaze mattered, my opinion mattered, and what I had to say meant something. I’d never felt precious to any man before, and to him I was irreplaceable. His feminine oracle, his forever faithful answerer to his every question. I told him secrets, the most secret things that only exist in the soft brains of young girls. He pried me open for my pearls, teenage wisdoms stolen and stuffed in his ratty jean pockets.

For a time, I was important.

We were mirrors to each other for almost the entirety of ninth grade, children of lost souls, of sickness. Our broken homes didn’t seem so scary when we were together, daydreams rising high above our heads in clouds of sweet-smelling smoke. We’d be different one day, but always together.

It was a grey afternoon when it happened, ominous and cloudy, the kind of day perfect for tragedy. He apologized when he kissed me, the girls gathered around us still wide-eyed and giddy. In a place where nothing special ever happened, this was an event. A total eclipse of the sun as a stolen kiss. It feels like it lasted forever, his tongue stinging sweet of pot and stolen pills - an eternal high on his taste buds, a hit of something I’ve never had. First, misguided love. It was perfect for that split, dizzy second, the sugary bile at the back of my throat tasting like hope. In the haze, the spinning of the endless hallway, his eyes found mine. Disgust, remorse, a smoker’s perpetually dilated pupils. For the first time, he saw me as something he’d never want to see: someone that a boy like him shouldn’t be seen with.

“Was that your first kiss?” Those words are burned into my brain like he knew I’d never be kissed again. It was a mistake, he said, that he didn’t really mean to do it at all - he's sorry, it was an accident. Surrounded by those smiling girls, crowded around me to celebrate my very first stolen first, I watched him disappear into the mid-morning clouds. Still hopeful, maybe, that my mouth wasn’t marred by someone who was ashamed of me.

Days of silence, radio static. Weeks turned to months turned to summer break turned to September. Whatever still existed of our friendship languished like the waning Autumn sun.

School returned and so did we, wordless and worlds away. He found another girl to whisper to him, one that touched his ear with her glossy mouth, whose spine you could see through her shirt. His girlfriend, he’d tell the group, and avoid my eyes. I don’t think he was ashamed, he just didn’t need me anymore.

After a while, I didn't need him either.

I dream of him some nights, wonder where we’d be if I hadn’t been supple, warm - if I hadn’t begun to adore myself and my goddess body. Wandering hands walk to my tummy, my thighs, my rosy chin and cheeks. A Fiorucci cherub made flesh, Ruben’s twenty-first-century muse.