Tiffanie rolled her eyes as she and her semi- almost, but not real boyfriend, Devan, walked down the hallway. He was yet again explaining to her how gay *NSYNC was.
"They just look like a bunch of fruitcakes!" he said in disgust.
Tiffanie was already steaming on the inside, but she managed to force a small smile because she knew that he only said things like that to make her go off and she wasn't about to give him the pleasure of knowing that he'd succeeded. As he went on about all the other "gay" things about *NSYNC, she thought to herself, "He must think I'm awfully cute when I'm angry to go to this much trouble to upset me."
Finally, they got to the corner where they split so he could go to his locker and she could go to her 7th period class. Devan stopped to hug her good-bye like they always did, but Tiffanie kept walking. Devan stood there in confusion for a minute, then concluded that she simply hadn't seen him standing there, and went to his locker.
Tiffanie continued towards Ms. Durham's class. She'd seen him, alright. He had no idea how angry she truly was at him. Not only about the *NSYNC stuff, even though that was enough to make her upset, but there was more. After all the embarrassing drama her friends (and his) had put her through just to get him, Devan wasn't half what she'd expected. When they first went out he was perfect. He opened doors for her, said thoughtful things to her all the time, and was toothache sweet to her for about a month. He acted totally different towards her when they were at school. Open doors? Ha! He wouldn't even acknowlege her existence when certain friends of his were around. Plus, he was dating one of her close friends, Jayli, but never told either of them that he was dating the other. Tiffanie found out from her best friend, Daphne, whom he had told that he was "torn" between them.
"Bull," thought Tiffanie, remembering that particular situation. She dropped her purple L.L. Bean bookbag to the floor and slid into her desk. She was the first one in the room, as usual. Her mind drifted back to Devan.
"It was pretty stupid of him to tell my best friend and not expect me to find out about it," she thought to herself as a smirk crossed her lips. They weren't boyfriend and girlfriend, but she didn't think that he should be dating one of her friends. That was just disgusting!
"Just who does he think he is anyway?" she thought, getting angrier by the second. Devan was far from the fine captain of the football team that all the girls fall for type. He was more the dork-next-door type. He was awkwardly tall, skinny, very shy and quiet. He was into odd things that no one else would even begin to think about having as a hobby. He was a dork.. a big dork.. but he was cute.. in a dorky way. His initial sweetness and shy smile is what had drawn Tiffanie to him in the first place. Things like dorkiness didn't matter to her. Tiffanie was much different. She's the sweet, smart, but very quiet girl in the back of the class that only gets loud when certain friends of hers are around. The sweetest person you ever want to meet and would do anything for you until you hurt her. She played clarinet in the band. She was 5'5 and not supermodel-skinny, but normal girl thin. People told her that she was pretty, cute, and all that stuff, but she never really took any of it seriously. When she looked into the mirror she just saw Tiffanie. Nothing more, nothing less.
Her eyes had filled with angry tears when her classmates began to file into the classroom. Tiffanie quickly collected herself and managed to sit through a dull note-taking for the final exam which she wasn't even taking. When the bell rang, she wanted to do a cartwheel out of the door, but she simply heaved her bookbag onto her back and left Ms. Durham's class for the last time with a sigh of long-awaited relief. She met up with her good pal, Dee, in the hallway and they walked to the parking lot.
After saying good-bye to Dee at her car, Tiffanie started the long hike to her car. Since the Juniors have to pick parking spaces AFTER Seniors, she had a parking space a mile away from the school.
"Boy, I can't wait to be a Senior," she thought as she trudged along to her car.
As Tiffanie headed to her car, she saw something that made her stop dead in her tracks. There was Devan, and he wasn't alone. He was talking to Jayli. A weakness came over Tiffanie and for a moment she felt as if she might cry, but then she got a hold of herlself and continued walking.
"They were just talking. It was nothing," she assured herself as she shut the door of her car. She buckled up, started the engine and slid in her "No Strings Attached" CD.
As Tiffanie sat in her room watching "*N The Mix" for the fifty-millionth time, her mind wandered to the earlier events of the day. She sighed and pressed the 'STOP' button on her remote control. She knew what she had to do.
After rumaging through her bookbag for 10 minutes she located her stationary with rainbow background and her favorite purple pen. "Dear Devan," she began. Words flowed from her mind onto paper like honey. She had always been much better at expressing her feelings on paper than she had at speaking. After two full pages, she ended the letter with her swirly signature and read over it. She had put every positive feeling that she had about Devan on those two sheets of paper. She knew how risky telling a 17-year-old guy how much you really care about him was, but it was a risk that she was ready to take.
Tiffanie woke up early the next day. She knew that Devan had a 5th period exam and if she was lucky, she could catch him on the way to his car afterwards.
She got dressed and flat-ironed her dark hair, which fell halfway down her back. After applying eyeliner, a touch of mascara, and lip gloss, she was out the door. She never was one for wearing layers of makeup.
She arrived at Austin High School a few minutes early, so she wandered around aimlessly until the bell rang. She waited around outside of the building of his 5th period class until the tardy bell for 6th period exam rang. Still no sight of him.
"That's strange," thought Tiffanie as she started towards her car. Then she got the exact same feeling as she had the day before when she'd walked to her car. She looked up to see Devan and Jayli walking towards his car. TOGETHER. A numbness fell over Tiffanie's whole body as tears sprang to her eyes. She couldn't move. She couldn't even breathe as she stood in the middle of the parking lot watching the two talk. When she regained feeling in her body, she began to ache all over. She didn't want to see any more. She walked as fast as her barely-there legs could take her to her car. Once inside she ripped up the letter in which she had poured her true feelings into and threw the pieces onto the passenger's seat. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she started the engine and backed out of the parking space.
Tiffanie stared at the ceiling as she lie on her bed. "Maybe I was wrong," she thought.
She remembered that Devan was going away that summer. When he signed her yearbook, he noted that he wanted to see her before he left. She'd promised that she would call him.
After a week of thinking things over, Tiffanie decided that she'd overreacted. After all, Devan wasn't her boyfriend. She picked up the phone and slowly dialed Devan's phone number. His mother answered the phone and told her that Devan wasn't there.
For the next three weeks Tiffanie tried to reach Devan, but did not succeed.
On the fourth week, Devan's name somehow came up in the middle of an online conversation with none other than Jayli.
"You know he's gone now, right?" typed Jayli.
"Yeah, I figured... um, I have to get off now. Bye Bye Bye :)" typed Tiffanie. She was lying. She had no idea that he was gone.
"He could've called," she mumbled to herself as she got up from her computer. Tears slowly rolled down her cheeks. If he really cared about her, he would've at least called to tell her that he was leaving.
She walked to her room and turned on the radio. She sat down on her bed and picked up her favorite stuffed animal, a Koala Bear, and held it to her chest, resting her chin on its head.
"That's it," thought Tiffanie as the radio in her room blasted, "that is my signal. I've got to get over him. I think he's had more than enough 'second chances'. Whatever we had is history."
Ironically, as she thought that, "Bye Bye Bye" began to play on the radio.
