I don't go with you

I was 15 and in the ninth grade. I was awkward with girls. A little shy but mostly clueless. I had a crush on this girl, an eight-grader named Melody. We were choral students. When we practiced after school, our director worked with different ensembles. And so sometimes when I didn’t have to be on stage, Melody and I and a couple other friends goofed off a lot, running around the auditorium, playing some sort of variation of tag. She was gorgeous and friendly. So I started liking her for a girlfriend, but had no idea what to do. Well, one day, during study hall, I passed a note, asking if she would meet me at a park later. Our homes were about a half mile apart, and the park was a public place between them.

I don’t know if she ever got the note, or if she read it she would have met me. Never had the chance to test it out.

During a lull in my geometry class, some of the others started talking about who was dating whom. I wasn’t in the conversation. Tried to stay out of it. But one person supposedly observed that a girl named Leah liked me. I barely knew Leah. She was nice. Cute. But I didn’t know her. Just saw her in one or two classes. Wasn’t interested. So I tried to keep my bit mouth shut. But then the pressure started.

“Why don’t you go out with Leah?” Well. Um, I kind of like someone else. I said, “I have someone else on my mind.”

“Who?” I don’t want to say right now. It’s too early to tell. I don’t know if she likes me, and I definitely don’t want to jinx it by dropping names. I said, “Nobody. Just some girl I know.”

Then the bomb.

“Who you go with?” The honest answer would have been “no one,” which of course would have led back to them trying to get me to go with Leah. If I knew Leah. If we’d been friends already, that would have been an easy thing to do. But not knowing her, I refused to be pushed into a relationship just because somebody said she liked me.

“Who you go with?” By now, everybody who had been in on the conversation, about 10 of them. Three or four boys, and the rest girls. All of them were looking at me, waiting on an answer. I blurted out, “Melody.”

After that class, I thought no more of that moment. Just looking forward to after school, at the park, hoping Melody will show up.

Later, in the hallway on my way to science class, there was Melody. Mad as hell. Followed by a horde of girls I don’t know. She let me have it. The only words I remember are, “I don’t go with you!” But I do remember the rage in her eyes, the flare of her nostrils. I don’t remember who else was present, but I think at least two of the people from geometry were there.

Most embarrassing moment of my life.

Shook me up, big time. I managed to avoid Melody for the remainder of the school year. Couldn’t face her. Luckily, the next year I was at another campus and didn’t have to see her. For the longest, I kept to myself and stayed out of conversations in that geometry class. The good news is nobody brought it up. I fully expected the guys to pick on me. They didn’t. Hadn’t they heard? A month or so later, one of the girls from geometry class asked, “Do you still go with Melody?” I responded with a simple, “no,” and that was that.

I was a senior by the time I saw Melody again. We spoke in passing, but I still didn’t have the nerve to try to have a conversation. Maybe apologize, tell her how stupid I was to cave to pressure. To tell her I really did like her and wanted to see her, talk to her about it. But I never did.

That was decades ago. Melody and I are Facebook friends. That moment has never come up in conversation, but I still think about it every now and then.