The gym was alive with energy, a symphony of life that pulsed through the walls. Sneakers squeaked against polished wood floors, their sound sharp and rhythmic, like the backbeat to an unspoken anthem. Basketballs ricocheted off backboards with hollow thuds, their echoes bouncing off the high ceilings. Laughter erupted in bursts, floating up like confetti—a soundtrack to the careless joy of being young. Late night at the middle school wasn’t just an event; it was a ritual. For kids like me, it wasn’t just something to do on a Friday night—it was everything.
And by everything, I mean it was an overpriced, over-hyped, sweat-scented carnival of middle school glory. There was the faint smell of popcorn wafting over from the vending machines in the corner, mixing with the unmistakable tang of prepubescent angst and the questionable hygiene choices of kids who believed a spritz of Cool Water cologne could replace a shower. The bleachers? Oh, they were a hierarchy in action. The popular girls perched at the top like they were auditioning for Gossip Girl: Middle School Edition, while the boys claimed the lower rows with the territorial sprawl of teenagers who’d just discovered deodorant but had no idea how to use it properly.
The buzz of conversation was a low hum, punctuated by the shrill whistle of parent volunteers futilely attempting to maintain order. But order wasn’t the point. Late night was about freedom—the kind that came from being just out of your parents’ reach but still within the safety net of the school walls.
And then there was him. Dane.
He wasn’t just part of the scene; he was the scene. He moved like he owned the court, his strides long and loose, his shoulders relaxed in a way that suggested he’d never had to try too hard at anything. When he jumped, it was like gravity took a coffee break just for him, leaving him suspended midair a moment longer than anyone else. His basketball shorts hung low, sagging so far down his hips it seemed like one wrong move might send them to the floor. But they never did. Somehow, they stayed put, a testament to his unique defiance of physics.
Off the court, he was even more mesmerizing. Dane had this way of wearing this oversized Starter jacket that made it look couture. One sleeve always slid off his shoulder, baring just enough skin to make you wonder if it was on purpose. His khaki Dickies sagged low, the elastic band of his boxers peeking out like a strategically placed advertisement for cool. And the belt? Completely decorative. It served no purpose except to taunt the laws of gravity and fashion. Every so often, he’d tug his shorts up with a casual flick of his hand, and I swear, it wasn’t just a gesture—it was an event. It had the kind of cinematic heat that made you feel like you were intruding on a private Calvin Klein ad.
I was a spectator. Perched on the bleachers, knees tucked to my chest, pretending to listen to my friends debate the latest middle-school scandals. In reality, I was laser-focused on Dane, tracking his every move like a nature documentarian narrating the habits of a rare species.
Dane wasn’t just cool; he was whatever came after cool, and God help me, I was captivated.
If there was a sexual awakening equivalent for middle school crushes, he was it. I’d be sitting there, watching him pull off some ridiculous move on the court, and suddenly I was thinking, does he even sweat? or is it just holy water? And if so, can I bottle it?
It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even lust—I didn’t have the vocabulary for that yet. It was pure, unfiltered, teenage delusion.
The thing about teenage delusion? It’s a force to be reckoned with. Because boys like Dane weren’t out here searching for love. No, they were on the hunt for two things: basketball glory and the first girl in school to have boobs and no curfew. Spoiler alert—it wasn’t me.
He never looked at me. Not once. I would replay those nights in my mind, dissecting every moment, clinging to every detail like they were treasures. In my head, he wasn’t just Dane; he was the main character in the story I hadn’t realized I was writing.
ENTER THE NICE GUY
But every good, fucked-up romcom needs a fallback guy, right? Enter Matthew. The boy-next-door type—sweet, steady, and so polite it made you want to punch him just to see if he’d apologize for bleeding. He was the kid who turned in his homework on time, helped old ladies cross the street, and probably rescued stray kittens in his spare time. Teachers adored him, parents trusted him, and he had this irritating knack for always saying the right thing, like he had a pocket guide to ‘How to Be Perfect Without Really Trying.’
If Dane was the boy who made your heart race and your eyeliner run, Matthew was the one who made your mom side-eye you at dinner and whisper, “Why don’t you like someone like him? He’s nice. He’s stable.” As if stability was what teenage dreams were made of. Matthew was dependable, approachable—like a Honda Civic in human form. Solid and reliable, sure, but not exactly the car you fantasized about taking on a joyride.
But here’s the thing no one warns you about: sometimes the Civics are the ones that run out of gas in the middle of nowhere and leave you stranded. The so-called safe bets? They’re the ones who light the match and set your emotional house on fire, handing you a marshmallow stick like they’re doing you a favor.
In that gym, Dane and Matthew were two sides of the same coin—both equally skilled at making a girl swoon and then torching her whole damn world. And me? I was the idiot flipping that coin over and over, naively hoping it would finally land heads up, completely unaware I’d need a fire extinguisher for both.
Back then, they were just boys playing basketball under fluorescent lights, blissfully unaware of the gravitational pull they had on my life. But those boys—Dane and Matthew—weren’t meant to stay distant characters in my story. They were threads woven into a tapestry I couldn’t yet see, tangled and intricate in ways I didn’t understand at the time. What started as harmless crushes and fleeting admiration would evolve into something far more complicated, leaving marks I’m still tracing to this day. They weren’t just players in the game of my adolescence—they were the catalysts for some of my most exhilarating highs and my most gut-wrenching lows.
Late night in the gym? It wasn’t just about the boys. Okay, it was mostly about the boys, but it was also where I learned to survive in a world that didn’t hand out instruction manuals for being invisible. It was where I learned how to blend in and dream big at the same time. And trust me, those two things don’t usually coexist.
The thing about dreams, though? They’re fragile. All it takes is one humiliation—a single spitball, a poorly timed laugh—to shatter them. And if I wasn’t going to be the girl who got noticed for the right reasons, I decided I’d damn well make sure no one noticed me for the wrong ones. At least, not without a fight.
So, the gym? It was a battlefield disguised as a basketball court, and every squeak of sneakers was another reminder that I wasn’t playing to win—I was just trying not to lose. But even the best defenses have cracks, and mine was about to take a hit so hard it’d make halftime at the Super Bowl look subtle.
The Armor of a Bitch
For as long as I could remember, I had been building walls, brick by jagged brick, around the softest parts of me. It wasn’t by choice—it was survival. Moments like that day in English class with Dane weren’t isolated events; they were part of a pattern, small but consistent chinks in the armor I hadn’t yet learned how to wear. After years of being ignored, ridiculed, and underestimated, I decided I would no longer sit in the shadows and quietly take the blows. If the world was going to hurt me, I was going to hurt it first.
I was tiny—always one of the smallest in my grade—but I made damn sure my presence was outsized. If I was going to be noticed, it wasn’t going to be as a target anymore. I toughened up, steeling myself with sarcasm and sharp edges. I developed a resting bitch face so impenetrable that no one dared question it. My silence became a weapon, my glare a warning. Inside, I was aching, crumbling under the weight of all the things I wanted to scream but couldn’t. But on the outside? I was untouchable.
Or at least, that’s what I wanted people to believe.
The truth was, I wasn’t untouchable—I was a walking wound, raw and exposed, covered in layers of attitude so thick even I started to forget there was anything soft underneath. I perfected the art of the cold shoulder, the quick retort, the dismissive laugh that told people I didn’t care about their opinions, even though I cared more than I’d ever admit. Every time someone hurt me, I added another layer of armor. And every time someone called me a bitch, I wore it like a badge of honor.
Being tough was the only way I knew to protect myself. I learned to talk louder, move faster, act meaner. I wanted people to think I was someone they didn’t want to mess with, someone who could handle anything, someone who didn’t cry herself to sleep at night because the world had made her feel so small. I was overcompensating, and I knew it, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. Caring meant vulnerability, and vulnerability had only ever led to pain.
The hardest part was that this persona—the bitch, the ice queen, the one who didn’t give a fuck—started to work. People who used to ignore me suddenly took notice, but not in the way I wanted. Instead of admiration, I got fear. Instead of connection, I got isolation. No one wanted to mess with me, but no one wanted to get close to me either. I had succeeded in making myself untouchable, but at what cost?
I still remember the whispers in the hallways, the way people would part like the Red Sea when I walked by. “Don’t mess with her,” they’d say. “She’s such a bitch.” They said it with a mix of disdain and respect, and I pretended it didn’t sting. I acted like it was exactly what I wanted—that being unapproachable was a choice I had made, not a consequence of the pain I carried. But the truth? The truth was that every time I heard it, it chipped away at me a little more.
I wasn’t a bitch. I was a girl who had been hurt so many times she didn’t know how to be anything else. I was a girl who had learned to hide her tears behind anger, who had traded vulnerability for venom because it was the only way she knew to survive. I didn’t want to be feared; I wanted to be loved. But love felt like a fantasy, like something other people got to have. I wasn’t built for love, I told myself. I was built for war.
And so, I stayed tough. I stayed loud. I kept my walls high and my glare sharp, daring anyone to try to tear them down. But beneath all the bravado, I was exhausted. Exhausted from carrying the weight of a persona I had created to protect myself. Exhausted from pretending I didn’t feel the sting of rejection or the ache of loneliness. Exhausted from fighting a battle I wasn’t sure I even wanted to win.
That armor, sharp and unyielding, became both my sanctuary and my prison. It shielded me from the blows I couldn’t bear, but it also kept me isolated, making it impossible for anyone to truly reach me. Strength became my identity, but it came at a cost. Every relationship I tried to build afterward was tinged with the fear that if I let someone in, they’d leave me with more cracks to mend. The walls I built were meant to keep pain out, but they also kept love from finding its way in.
The girl I was back then didn’t realize that survival and growth aren’t the same thing. The armor I wore helped me endure, but it also blinded me to what I truly needed: connection, vulnerability, and the courage to let others see my softer side. It would take years to unlearn the lessons that kept me walled off and years longer to find the balance between strength and openness. But that girl? She did the best she could with what she had. She kept me alive, even when it meant keeping me alone.
The Crush Turns to Pain
That day in class wasn’t just another day—it was the day my carefully constructed walls got bulldozed by a wrecking ball of humiliation, and the operator’s name was Dane. And here’s the kicker: it happened in English class. The one class I loved. The one place where I felt like I could actually do something right. It wasn’t like math, where I’d break out in a cold sweat trying to remember formulas, or science, where every lab seemed designed to expose how clueless I was. No, English was mine. I could raise my hand here without fear of being wrong, could actually enjoy the rare feeling of being noticed for something good. But even that space wasn’t safe—not from him.
It started small. It always starts small. I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my head before the first spitball even landed, like he was a cat about to pounce on a mouse that wasn’t even trying to escape. The soft, wet thud hit my hair, and every nerve in my body screamed, Don’t flinch. Don’t react. Don’t let him win. I sat there, stiff as a statue, clinging to my pen like it was a sword that could save me from the humiliation spreading like wildfire.
The second one hit. Then the third. Each one heavier, wetter, and more soul-crushing than the last. The sound of stifled giggles morphed into full-blown laughter, and I swear I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks like someone had set my face on fire. The girls around me, those traitorous little hyenas, laughed the hardest, probably planning to tell me later, “It’s just a joke! Don’t be so sensitive.” But it wasn’t a joke. It was a giant flashing billboard that said, You don’t belong here.
I wanted to turn around and scream, “What the hell is your problem?” or better yet, whip out some Carrie-level telekinesis and send his stupid desk flying. But instead, I stayed frozen, my eyes locked on the blackboard like it was the only thing keeping me tethered to the planet. My hand twitched toward the back of my head—an instinct to wipe away the humiliation, literally and figuratively—but I stopped myself. If I moved, they’d know they got to me. And if they knew, it was game over.
Then I made the mistake of looking. Just a glance, barely a flick of my eyes toward the side of the room. There he was, Dane, with that stupid smirk plastered across his face like he was the king of middle school comedy. His laugh wasn’t nervous or awkward—it was confident, cruel, and entirely too pleased with itself. And in that moment, I felt my teenage heart shatter into a thousand pathetic pieces. This was the boy I had spent hours daydreaming about, the one I had built up in my mind as some kind of teenage Greek god. And here he was, using my hair as target practice.
By the time the bell rang, I was in full-on fight-or-flight mode. I threw my stuff into my bag with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking and bolted out the door like my life depended on it. The hallway was too bright, too loud, and too full of kids who couldn’t care less about my meltdown. I ducked into the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and let the tears come. Not the cute, single-tear-running-down-the-cheek kind you see in movies—oh no, this was the full-on ugly cry, the kind where your chest heaves and your face gets all blotchy.
And in that moment, sitting on the cold, graffiti-covered metal toilet paper holder, I realized two things: one, I hated Dane. Like, really hated him. And two, I hated myself even more. I hated that I had spent so much time wishing he’d notice me, that I had built him up in my mind as this untouchable god when he was really just an asshole with good hair. I hated that I hadn’t said anything, hadn’t stood up for myself, hadn’t thrown one of those spitballs right back at his smug face. I hated that I let him win.
But here’s the thing they don’t tell you about armor: it doesn’t protect you when you need it most. My so-called tough exterior didn’t shield me from that day; it collapsed the moment that spitball hit. No glare, no snappy comeback, no icy silence could have saved me from feeling like the smallest person in that room. That day, I wasn’t the girl with walls of steel—I was the girl with spitballs in her hair, and I knew it.
The teacher didn’t notice. How could she not? The laughter had grown loud enough to drown out her monotone lecture on the day’s book discussion. Or maybe she did notice but decided that a girl sitting silently in the middle row wasn’t worth the trouble. Either way, I realized no one was coming to save me. There would be no knight in shining armor, no best friend throwing herself into the line of fire to defend my honor. I was completely, utterly alone.
I didn’t go back to that class the next day. Or the day after that. In fact, I didn’t go back to Mount Rainier High School at all. Halfway through senior year, I transferred, leaving behind the spitball memories, the silent classrooms, and Dane’s stupid smirk. For me, that day wasn’t just a bad memory—it was a turning point, a scar that still aches if I poke at it too hard. For him? It was probably just another laugh, another “joke” he doesn’t even remember.
But here’s the thing: I did. I never forgot. Because scars don’t fade when they’re carved this deep. And even after I left, I wasn’t free of him. I carried that hurt, that humiliation, with me for years. I carried it when I saw him again, years later, and let him do to me what he’d done that day—tear me apart without a second thought. Only this time, it wasn’t spitballs; it was his knowing smirk, his carelessness with my feelings, his unspoken awareness that I loved him. Loved him so much that I let him break me over and over again.
And that’s the thing about scars—they don’t just remind you of what happened. They remind you of what you let happen, too. I hated him. I hated myself. And sometimes, I still do. Because even now, all these years later, it’s hard not to feel like I’m still that girl in English class, sitting silently as someone I adored showed me just how little I meant to him.
Growth is a funny thing—it rarely announces itself in the moment. Instead, it disguises itself as heartbreak, rejection, or humiliation, slipping quietly into the cracks those experiences leave behind. The people who orbit our lives, those who ignite the fires of love, rage, or despair, often feel less like divine lessons and more like cosmic jokes. And yet, they shape us. They press their fingerprints into our stories, sometimes leaving scars, sometimes leaving a blueprint we can’t yet decipher. I wish I could say I took those lessons and used them to catapult myself into some enlightened version of adulthood, free from self-doubt and teenage delusions. But the truth? I stumbled forward, dragging those feelings of inadequacy and longing with me like old luggage I didn’t know how to let go of. If these moments were stepping stones to my higher self, I spent a long time circling them, unsure of which direction to go next.
And that uncertainty? That’s where the story truly begins.
