I looked down at my skinny body and turned to the side. I was awkward; my knobby knees led down to thin, bony legs. I looked around, enviously watching as the other girls pulled on their bras and hooked the back. I pulled on the bra I barely fit into, the one I had forced my mom to take me to buy, just so you could se the outline through the back of my shirt. I was a late-bloomer; there was no questioning that.
I walked home from school with my equally skinny best friend Laura at my side; she had hidden her embarrasment of her not-yet-developed body with a larger-than-life attitude. It was the normal walk home: She and I were taunted by Ben and a few other boys our age who inevitably found a way to make me cry.
I reached my house, knowing that the phone would ring later that night with some crank call and muffled sounds of prepubescent boy's laughter. I know that the same pattern would be repeated the next day: They would walk behind us on the way to school, laughing about the "wall," Ben's less-than-endearing reference to my chest.
To ease my despair, I was told, "They only do that because they like you." My dad reassured me that once I blossomed, they'd be begging to go out with me. I hadn't had a boyfriend yet, and it seemed like everyone else was well on his or her way to awkward handholding and spin-the-bottle games. I pinned for some sort of attention from the opposit sex. I didn't realize at the time that the torture from Ben and his friends was actually attention.
By the ninth grade, Laura and I were no longer walking to school; we caught the number-three bus on our corner to the local high school. Ben, by this point, had moved on to hitting us with spitballs. So every morning, I had to clean the wads of gross spit-covered paper out of my hair, making sure the evidence was gone. I would yell at him to stop, which only provoked him torture. I had known him for four years at this point, and the funny thing was we considered each other friends. He would talk to me, if the other boys weren't around, and I knew, despite his tough exterior, that he actually enjoyed my company.
Throughout the middleschool, Ben maintained the ritual of Rollerblading to my house after school, but I'm sure he never told his friends that in the seventh grade he had held my hand down the street, teaching me to use the Rollerblades I had just received for my birthday. It seemed that the nicer he was to me in private, the meaner he had to be to me in public.
I vowed that once I "blossomed," he would want to be my boyfriend, that the group of boys who tortured me in the middle school would long for me in high school. I had a cruel fantasy of one of them asking me out and my rejecting him coldly, in front of everyone. I wanted to make them feel the embarrassment I had felt during all those walks home, and on all the bus rides with spitwadfilled hair.
High school finally came along and, better late than never, I did blossom. I grew out of my awkward, bony body. My wavy red hair grew longer and straightened itself out. Although I didn't transform, I grew up, more in mind than in body. I started to accept the freckles and felt blessed to be naturally thin. I even wore a little makeup. And my dad was right, it did happen. I finally had a boyfriend. He was from a different middle school than I had attended, and he was unaware of my uncomfortable begginings.
I still saw Ben; we attended the same high school parties and shared the same group of friends. He teased me a bit, but it didn't really bother me as much. I went through a few boys in high school, and it seemed that the awkward years were finally over.
This summer I returned home from my first year of college. Ben and I ran into each other. He stood about a foot taller than I did, and I realized how much he had grown up throughout our eight years of friendship. He lives on his own now and invited me over to see his new apartment. The walls were sparse; it looked like a college boy's room, which struck me as odd. I knew so many college boys, but it was hard for me to picture Ben as one. I still saw the skinny blond boy who sat behind me in eighth grade snapping my bra straps.
We started talking about those years, and we both laughed. A few other old friends filled the apartment, and one of Ben's old partners-in-crime leaned over and said, "You have gone so pretty." I thanked him, smirking at the same time. It seemed like I had waited eight years for this, for my revenge.
I found myself sitting outside with Ben, and then, it hapened. He leaned over, and he kissed me, something that had never happened between us before. For a second, I thought,This is it, I can finally tell him off and embarrass him for all the times he belittled me.But I didn't. I no longer neede revenge. I contiued to look at him, and I asked, "Did you ever have a crush on me?"
And he responded, "I had a crush on you the whole time. I was just too embarrassed to tell you."
--Lia Gay (Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul III)
