‘Dear Kyle,
You sound like a very interesting and sincere person. I’m delighted that we share so many interests. I’m particularly touched that you are into meeting a ‘special someone’ who will change your life forever.
I’d be happy to meet you.
When and where would you like to meet?
Sincerely, Jessica.’
Lyla pressed ‘SEND’ before Jessica could protest.
“There!” she said with a flourish.
Jessica groaned and covered her face with her palms. “No!”
“Yes! That’s how you meet guys, Jess. That’s how you take your life in your own hands.”
“You’re taking my life in your hands!” Jessica uncovered her face and scrambled for the computer. “I want to retrieve it.”
“You can’t retrieve the message. Just chill, Jess. For once in your life, grab something by the horns, OK? This is a good thing. Go meet him, if he isn’t taken by someone else first. If you don’t like him, then bail.”
It wasn’t that easy, Jessica knew. But she couldn’t explain it to Lyla because her best friend was ultra-confident and she wouldn’t understand. Jessica was afraid to hope so much that all her hopes would be dashed, and it wouldn’t be easy to recover from something like that. Or what if Kyle met her and he was everything he said he was and more . . . and he didn’t like her?
She wouldn’t be able to live with that. It would mean that she was so much lesser than she already thought she was. She knew her thinking was irrational, and that she should not put so much stock into what a guy thought or did not think about her. But it was still there, like a shadow hovering over her shoulder that wouldn’t quite go away no matter which way she turned.
And then . . . all her innermost fears about not being accepted for who she was would come hurtling back, and this time, they will not go away for a long, long time until she changed herself.
Maybe that was the only way.
She pulled in a deep breath.
“OK, I’ll meet him if he wants to meet me,” she said.
She knew she would never be able to live it down if she didn’t.
“Attagirl!” Lyla screamed. “He’ll reply. You just wait!”
*
Even waiting was a chore.
In the good old days when her mother was dating, Jessica reckoned that the girls of that era would be waiting by the good old phone. But today, there were a whole lot of other ways for a guy to reject a girl. SMS, email, Instant Messenger. You didn’t have to be ‘waiting’ by the phone in the sense of the word. Your cellphone was omnipresent, ready to buzz with a negative reply anytime, anywhere to dash your hopes.
Jessica felt the buzz of her cellphone indicating that she had a Yahoo message during Professor Peabody’s lecture. Professor Peabody was one of the more interesting teachers there, and Jessica almost forgot to surreptitiously check her phone every five minutes.
But the vibrator function alerted her.
“Let’s talk about amoeba,” Professor Peabody was saying. The Powerpoint slide onscreen in front of the tiered lecture hall was that of a reddish, amorphous-looking amoeba.
Let’s talk about excitement, thought Jessica. She teased her phone out from her pants pocket and glanced at the display. You’ve got mail, said the gleeful message.
Oh, oh, oh!
She opened up the message.
“Ms. Dent. Perhaps you’d be so kind to enlighten us on the properties of amoeba instead of looking at your cellphone every few minutes. Expecting a call from your boyfriend?”
Everyone tittered.
Jessica blushed. “Um . . . ”
Professor Peabody was eyeing her like a hawk from the lectern. “Well?” she inquired.
“Uh . . . ” Jessica wasn’t sure if she was supposed to answer the amoeba question or if she was expecting a call from her hopefully soon to be existent boyfriend. “Amoeba is a – ”
Gawd! She was supposed to be studying amoeba last night but was so carried away by ‘Kyle’ that she couldn’t remember a word.
“We are waiting,” Professor Peabody said. “Your assignment was to study the properties of amoeba prior to this lecture so that we all may proceed smoothly today.”
“Amoeba is a s-single celled protozoa,” Jessica stammered. They were mostly single-celled organisms anyhow.
“Go on.”
Jessica stared at the slide of the amoeba moving slowly across the screen.
“I-it has a nucleus . . . and cytoplasm . . . ” They all did after all “ . . . and they move exceedingly slow.”
The class laughed.
“That much is obvious,” Professor Peabody said wryly.
A boy behind her shot his hand up.