Crush

Jamie Rook had a crush.

He was eating lunch with his older sister, Alexis, in their usual spot next to her locker. She didn’t like chancing someone coming by to graffiti it. They were two years apart in school, but both rarely had any reason to sit with anyone else. Jamie was okay with that.

“You gonna eat that sandwich or what?” Alexis asked, swallowing the last bite of her own.

The thirteen year old barely remembered he was holding one in his hands. It was turkey and cheese, no crust. He turned it around once, slanted his lips, and handed it to her. His mind was too far elsewhere to care for the pit in his stomach.

Alexis snatched it up, took a big bite out of it. “You’re gonna starve, you know,” she said through a mouthful. She chewed a few times, swallowed forcefully. “But I guess that’s why you eat so much dirt playing whompball.”

Jamie nodded vaguely to the beat of his sister’s words, numb to their jabs. He had been staring at his crush for twenty minutes, his thoughts a blur of potential conversations. Hey, I’m Jamie. I sit behind you in third period. . . He shook his head. Dumb. Hey, I was wondering if- “Ow!”

Alexis had knuckled him in the arm, sending sparks crawling across his skin. “What the dump are you staring at?” she said, her eyes narrowed.

Jamie’s eyes flashed from hers to his crush, and he immediately snapped them shut. Stupid.

“Sam Finnow?” She spat the name out like poison. “Don’t tell me you’re crushing on that dump.”

Jamie shifted his feet around, gave pale hands shelter in his hoodie pockets. He’s cool, he wanted to say, and Sam was. He still liked The Last Captain, Jamie’s favorite cartoon ever since it started airing seven years ago, and he-

“He likes that dumb cartoon you watch, doesn’t he?" Alexis asked, taking another bite from her sandwich. A slight smirk rested on her lips.

Jamie looked to her, an eyebrow cocked. “You’re friends with him on Tapclique, too?”

Alexis stopped chewing, narrowed her eyes while looking in the distance. After a moment she finished her bite, said, “You stalk him on Tapclique?”

Jamie blushed and yanked his hood over his head, looking to the floor. “It’s not-” he started, and crossed his arms in a huff. “He made a post about The Last Captain one time, anyone could’ve seen it.” He eyed his sister for an instant, then glued them back to the ground.  “It’s public.”

His sister let out a heavy breath. “I heard him talking about it with some other dump while we picked teams for whompball,” she said, then scratched the back of her head. “He’s. . . not a half bad player.”

Jamie turned to his sister, skeptical. A compliment from her was like getting a holographic in a trading card booster pack. “Did he ever get you out?”

She socked him in the arm again. “I said he’s not half bad, that still means he’s, uh. . .”

Jamie rubbed his arm, slanted his lips. “. . . A quarter bad?”

Alexis laughed. “Something like that,” she said, and took the last bite from her sandwich. “His sister, though," she added, pointing to some graffiti residue on her locker, “she can go skrak herself." She wiped her hands free of crumbs, tapped a small bracelet on her wrist. A blue holographic display popped up from it, showing her the current time along with a number of updates from Tapclique.

Jamie pointed at the updates and opened his mouth, but immediately shut it when he caught his sister’s glare.

“So,” she said, tapping the hologram away, “you gonna ask this guy out or what?”

Jamie’s blush returned with ferocity. Words rushed through his mind, but no answers presented themselves. He retreated further into his hood.

Alexis yanked it off over his head, then pulled him around to face her. Icy blue eyes stared into his own. Jamie knew this look all too well; her tried-and-true there’s no way out of this you little dump look.

“There’s no way out of this you little dump,” she said, and forced his head around toward where Sam was situated with his own friends. “This is what you do. . .”

Jamie was entirely prepared to absorb his sister’s words of assured wisdom, but in that moment he had made eye contact with Sam himself. He was wearing the black and neon pink of a Killstar Runnengun shirt, the main character from a series of video games that, admittedly, still gave Jamie nightmares. Sam put a hand through his spiky brown hair, adjusted the crisp glasses across his eyes, and then. . .

“Oh no,” Jamie whispered, unintentionally cutting off his sister’s muffled advice. Sam was smiling, and. . . waving. “He’s waving,” he said, his eyes wide with tension. “At me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Wave back,” Alexis said, letting go of his arms as if they were burning.

Jamie, his body a traitorously nervous wreck, only managed a crooked smile and lifted his fingers an inch above his leg. Sam raised an eyebrow, then was absorbed back into conversation with one of his other friends. “Alexis?” Jamie forced out.

His sister mopped a hand through her short black hair. “What.”

“I didn’t wave,” he said, his crooked smile now a sinking frown, “did I?”

“Nope,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Not at all.”

A soft trio of bells rang across the campus; lunch was over. Alexis balled up her trash, stood up, and deftly tossed it into a trash can a few feet away from them. She leaned up against her locker, pulled her backpack up from the ground with a sigh. “I don’t blame you, though,” she said, her eyes unfocused.

Jamie kicked limply at the ground. “I do.”

Alexis tightened her lips. “Well don’t,” she snapped, and stepped in front of him. “I don’t know everything, Jamie, but I do know. . .” She paused, cursed under her breath in thought. “Liking people sucks,” she said, and held out a hand to her brother. “But it sucks more to not do anything about it.”

He kept his eyes on the ground, shuffled his feet across loose gravel. His sister was right, of course. It did suck to not do anything about it, to just stare at him during class, or refresh his Tapclique profile for the umpteenth time in a day. To just imagine a conversation when he could actually have one.

Jamie took in a breath, grabbed his sister’s hand and pulled himself to his feet. “Thanks,” he said, looking up to her with a smile.

Alexis clapped his arm, making him flinch. “Just don’t go dumping it up,” she said. “I’ll see you after school.”

They parted ways, Jamie hefting his text-filled backpack off the ground with a grunt. He knew he would be seeing Sam after the class he was headed to, which also happened to be the last class of the day. All he had to do was catch him afterwards and. . . ask him out. “Easy,” Jamie said out loud to try and reassure himself.

It didn’t work very well.

His mind once again winding through its maze of hypothetical conversations, Jamie made his way for class, deftly maneuvering around other students through his school’s sterile white hallways. He was also in the middle of deftly picking his nose when he heard someone say,

“Jamie?”

He yanked his finger out, crammed it in a pocket as he turned to face Sam Finnow. His eyes wide, he attempted what he hoped could be interpreted as a smile. “H-Hey Sam,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. Way to dump this up already.

“I dunno if you saw me at lunch today,” he said, giving a crooked smile of his own. Jamie felt sweat dripping down his underarms. “I was gonna drop by but, uh, your sister’s pretty intense, dude,” he finished with a forced laugh.

Jamie let out his own squawk of laughter, both from the shock of realizing Sam noticed his existence, and not knowing how to react to his words in any other fashion. “Yeah, she’s, uh. . .” Change the subject, he thought. He licked his lips, ignored how absolutely awkward that must have looked, and deflected into the first thing his eyes latched on: “I-I like your shirt.” He nodded to the brightly clad gunman plastered on Sam’s chest.

Sam’s eyes brightened. “Thanks!” he said, brushing his hand across the garment. “Yeah I’ve played all the games, they’re skrakkin’ awesome.”

Jamie had managed to beat the first Killstar game only by forcing his sister to be in the same room in him while he played. She didn’t have the patience to repeat that process with the other three games in the series. “Have you seen the movie yet?” he offered. Of course he’s seen it, he scolded himself. It’s been out for two whole weeks.

“Not yet!” Sam said, punching the air in frustration and setting the butterflies in Jamie’s stomach into fluttery overdrive. “I can’t get any of my dump friends to see it but man I-”

Three bells chimed above them all once again, interrupting Sam and letting students know that they were now officially late to class. Jamie, normally stalwart in keeping up his attendance, couldn’t find any reason to care for tardiness now. He was talking with Sam, and that was worth even the most cross stares his teachers could give him.

“Skrakkin’ bell,” Sam sighed, adjusting his backpack. “See you in sixth, then?”

Jamie nodded with what he hoped wasn’t too much giddiness. “See you there,” he said, keeping the lump in his throat from bursting out in a fit of giggles.

Sam began walking away to his next class, and Jamie was about to follow suit when a thought occurred: the movie. Killstar Runnengun: Reign Of The Slashtronauts promised to be even more pants-wettingly nightmarish than any of the games they were based on, but Sam hadn’t seen it yet. Jamie took in a breath, balled his hands up tightly.

Do something about it, his sister’s words echoed.

Stomping out his anxiety, Jamie turned to Sam and called, “Wait!”

Sam turned around, flapped his arms out at his sides in recognition.

Jamie gulped. “You wanna catch that movie after school?” he said, steeling himself against the echo of his words in the empty hall. “O-Or something?” he added.

Sam stared back for a moment, scratched the back of his head. Jamie, his mouth dry and his undershirt drenched, knew he’d be visiting the bathroom before getting to class.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Sam finally answered, his words hitting Jamie like a fastball from his sister. “We’ll meet up after class, yeah?”

“S-Sounds like a plan!” Jamie parroted, and waved as Sam went back on his way.

The thirteen year old watched him round a corner before cramming clammy hands into his pockets. His thoughts were a maelstrom of curses and what-if’s that all culminated in one conclusion: I did it.

He texted his sister that very thought after coaxing his legs back into functionality. She texted back while he was sitting in a bathroom stall, calming himself down.

ur welcome, she wrote, and he laughed until it hurt.