All I Ever Wanted

A girl’s senior year in high school is supposed to be the best year ever. If I was like girls in movies, I would have a 4.0 GPA, a lot of friends, and a gorgeous boyfriend. But I’m not like those girls. I struggle to keep a 3.7 GPA; I have one close friend, and let’s not even touch on the gorgeous boyfriend part.
My name’s Alexis Giordano. Currently, I’m in my guidance counselor’s office talking about my future. I’m not sure how many more times I’ll have to explain to him that I plan on going to FIT in New York City and I seriously do not plan on coming back to Maryland.
“You know you could always try a local college. How about Loyola? You could dorm but you’d also be within driving distance of home.” Mr. Brown tells me. He continues after I glare at him. “I’m just giving you more options, Alexis. Putting all you have on one college like FIT isn’t the best idea. You might not get in. You never really know.”
I want to say ‘I’m not an idiot, Mr. Brown, of course I applied to other colleges’, but instead I smile a little. He’s only trying to help, I guess.
“I have applied to other schools. I sent in applications to NYU, Colombia, and Fordham.”
“Alexis, those are all what we call ‘reach schools’. Don’t you have any ‘safety schools’?”
“Umm… Like?”
Mr. Brown sighs and pulls out a post it note from his desk drawer. Obviously I’m pissing him off. I watch as he writes down a few things and then he hands it to me as he pushes up his glasses.
“Tonight I want you to look at these 3 schools online, St. Johns, Hofstra and Cortland. Decide which one you like best and we’ll meet again tomorrow. Is 5th period okay?”
“Yeah, that’s fine… Thanks Mr. Brown.”
“I’m here to help you Alexis.”
“Gotcha. See you tomorrow… Bye”
The second the door closes behind me, I look up at the clock. It’s 12:15, more than halfway through English. Maybe I’ll just walk around a little bit. Then I can just go to lunch.
As I wander down the senior hallway, I look into a few classrooms. My entire grade looks like they’ve had it here. I go to a private school. It’s not very strict like most private schools are, but we do have uniforms. Even they’re a joke, though. For girls, the blue skirt doesn’t have a certain length it needs to be at and our shirts don’t have to be tucked in unless we have an assembly. Over it we wear a vest. It’s cute for a uniform. Guys just wear blue pants and a dress shirt and tie.
I’m not watching where I’m going, and that proves to be a stupid thing to do because I bump into someone in the hallway outside the cafeteria.
“Oh, wow, I’m really sorry.” I say, picking up the one notebook I dropped.
“Don’t worry about it… Can you do me a favor, though?”
When I look up I’m face to face with a guy who I would probably love to do more than a favor for, he’s that good looking. Taking a guess, I would say he’s older than I am, but not by much. And he definitely does not go here. He’s wearing tight jeans and a band t-shirt.
“Uh, sure… What?”
“Well,” He laughs, and almost looks embarrassed. He runs a hand through his messy light brown hair and tries to find the words he wants to use. “I can’t find my friend Jack. He’s talking to the Dean and I sort of got distracted and lost them. Do you think you could like, direct me to her office or something?”
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely.”
“Awesome, thank you. I’ve been wandering for like 10 minutes.”
I laugh because he’s kind of adorable.
“Follow me. It’s just upstairs.”
We walk down another hallway and then up 2 flights of steps before stopping in front of the most feared door in this school. It’s avoided like the plague. Even I try to avoid it as much as possible. Behind this door is the Dean, Mrs. Keyes. She’s less than 5 feet tall, yet everybody, including teachers, is afraid of her.
“Well, here it is. She’s probably in there with your friend.” I inform him, slowly backing away from the door. If Mrs. Keyes comes out and sees me out of class I’m so dead. She’ll hand me a detention pass so fast I won’t even know what to say to get out of it.
“Okay… Sorry, I never got your name?”
“I’m Alexis.”
“Well thanks for showing me where to go, Alexis. I’m Alex, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you… It was no problem; I wasn’t really doing anything anyway.”
“Oh, so you weren’t planning on going to class? You’re such a rebel.”
His laughter makes me smile; it’s something a guy hasn’t been able to do in a while. I shake my head and I think I’m blushing. Shit.
“No, I was at a guidance meeting and I just got out so I was waiting for the bell to ring-”
“So in other words, you weren’t going to class. Hey, how about this. You give me your number and I promise not to say anything about your class-skipping to the Dean when I go in there.”
His offer stuns me, but only for a few seconds. I’m not that bad with guys.
“Alright, if that’s the only way I can keep you from saying anything.”
I pull out a piece of loose-leaf from my notebook and a pen from my pocket. I manage to make my handwriting as neat as possible because I really want him to call me. He can’t do that if he can’t tell what numbers I write. I hand him the paper and he pockets it with a smile.
“I’m gonna try and call you tonight. I have no clue why, but I think I need to get to know you. There’s something about you, I’m not sure what though. Do you feel it too?”
“I think so, yeah.”
You know those moments when you look at someone for the first time and you just know you have to be with them? Let me know when it happens to you, because I still don’t believe in the whole ‘love at first sight’ thing. This was not one of those moments. But I’m gonna take a chance on this. He’s interested in me, so I might as well see where this goes.