A Rose by Any Other Plastic

My palms were sweaty. I licked my lips nervously as I tried to slow my heart down, which was beating against my chest like a jackhammer. I was certain someone would hear it and it would give me away. Just one look over in my direction was all that it would take to spell ruin for me. This was it. I was throwing everything on the line. But there was no other way. And even though I was 99% sure that I would be unsuccessful – that 1% far outweighed the “what if’s” that would have tormented me for the rest of my middle school career if I hadn’t gone through with it.

Adults often underestimate adolescence and write them off as “too young to understand.” But I believe that by the time you get out of your teenage years, you have already experienced the entire range of human emotion, whether you know it or not. Because as trivial as adolescents can sometimes be, you can be sure that whatever endeavor they may undertake will be treated as a life or death experience – whether it’s trying to get a job, staying at the top of their class in school, or, in my case, attempting to get the attention of a particular girl. She had a glow about her, along with the dangerous power of instantly paralyzing me with a glance. She had olive skin, dark eyes, dark hair, and her name was Amanda Mervine. She was the most beautiful and, consequently, the most popular girl in middle school. I wore sweater vests.

I knew that I was a nerd, but I also knew that Amanda Mervine was my soulmate. I too had olive skin, dark eyes, and dark hair! And if that wasn’t a match made in heaven, I didn’t know what was. So I set into action the brilliant plan that was bound to prove to her that I was worthy. As I was leaving the house to go to school one morning, I sneaked a plastic rose from the centerpiece in the middle of the dining room table. It would not be missed, and what I had planned for it was much more important.

In middle school, everyone has a “home room” in which they meet for the first and last classes of the day. My home room class was science, and Amanda was in it as well. I had never waited such a long 45 minutes in my life. Finally the bell rang and we all packed our stuff up and got ready to leave. I had to be swift and I had to be sneaky. As the last few students piled out of the room, I opened the desk I knew to be Amanda’s and quickly threw the plastic rose inside. The hardest part was over! Now all I had to do was wait. What I didn’t know was that the hardest part was far from over.

About halfway through the day, a boy that I recognized from the popular crowd came up to me with a worried expression on his face. “I don’t think she wants the flower.” A thousand questions ran through my head in a matter of seconds. “How did he find out about this?” “How did she find out already?” “Who is he to judge whether or not she wants the flower?” Before I could make sense of anything, he asked me with a sympathetic tone, “Do you want me to try and take it out?” I had gone this far, but I began to realize just what I had done and he was offering me a chance to save what was left of my dignity. I looked at his Abercrombie shirt and then at my sweater vest. “Ok,” I replied.

I walked into seventh period, the second to last period of the day. I sat down, weary from the events of the day. All I wanted was to get through this period, get my rose back, and get out of the school. And then the worst possible thing that could have happened…happened. Amanda Mervine walked in. She had a plastic rose in her hand and an amused look on her face. I had completely forgotten that Amanda Mervine was in my seventh period class. And apparently my ally had been unsuccessful in retrieving the evidence from her desk. She sat down next to me and I stared at her. And I kept staring at her. I couldn’t move or speak, and I think she knew this, as she decided to say the first word. “I got your flower.” In the next aisle over, a couple of kids laughed. It seemed that this had gone from a private matter to a public matter very quickly. I continued to stare at Amanda, dumbfounded, as she threw them a severe look and told them to be quiet. I had expected her to start laughing with them, and I tilted my head a little bit when I realized what she had said. Was it possible that she actually cared about me? Could she even have possibly shared the same feelings for me as I had for her? It was while these hopeful thoughts ran through my head that she spoke the words that crushed me. “I think we should just be friends.”

I knew full well that we would never be friends. Middle School works exactly the same way as the rest of the natural world – nerds don’t hang out with popular kids any more than a gazelle would chill with a lion. This was especially true once the rumors began that she and I were dating. See, I found out shortly after that she was actually “going out” with someone else, which made me all the more embarrassed about the rumors. If she didn’t already hate me, she certainly would now. I spent the next few days ducking into bathrooms and hiding behind doors to avoid her. Fortunately at the time I had a good group of friends who decided to start another, bigger rumor about one of themselves in hopes that people would forget about me, which they did.

We all know what it is like to desire the unattainable, to reach for the unreachable. Most of us, once matured, learn from our mistakes and figure out newer and better ways to go about achieving what we want. We stop using bows and we start using guns. We throw away our sharp sticks and develop blades. We leave behind the primitive and opt for the advanced. But if I could go back to that fateful day in middle school when that fleeting impulsive thought entered my head and change what I did, I would not touch it. Well, maybe I would have tried to get a hold of a real flower, but that’s beside the point. The fact is I went for it the only way that I knew how – with a sweater vest and a plastic rose.