I met him when I was in the middle school. He was the sweetest boy I'd met at that point, although a little slow to speak of his emotions. Imagine, if you will, a super skinny version of Weird Al Yankovic with the biggest, bluest eyes you've ever seen behind a pair of glasses and downy, curly brown hair. That was Richie.
Our relationship developed over our mutual hate for the more popular "preppy" kids. We passed notes back and forth in class with little stick figure comics to pass the time by and break the monotony of class. I fell into a comfortable space with him and felt I could tell him everything, from my dad's verbal abuse and his "disciplining" methods that sometimes went too far, to what I made for dinner the night before.
Then it happened. We were in class for American History and a mutual friend of ours passed me a note:
"You know Richie likes you right?"
At that moment I felt my chest tighten up and my hands started shaking. Jokingly, I write back "Awww I like him too! He's the best friend a girl could have!" I went back to paying attention to the teacher when I heard a snort to my right.
"No," he replied, "Richie likes you.. as in he LIKES you likes you." I glanced to my left and noticed our subject of conversation trying as hard as he could to be disinterested in what was happening.
"How long has this been going on?" I asked.
"Oh, for about 2 months now..." he answered. My mind ran at a million miles a minute. I just kept asking myself how it happened and why it was he fell for me. I couldn't comprehend my life anymore. Everything and nothing was going on inside my head. I could still hear the teacher speaking about the Revolution but I didn't understand. I knew I needed to reply back at least SOMETHING but I didn't know what. I'm sure, at the time, I had a very unpleasant look on my face. I just didn't know what to do; so I did what any self respecting girl would do at the time and I just scribbled something down before passing it back to our friend Micah.