Chapter Three

I was overwhelmed with a feeling of victory when I scored for the umpteenth time that day. The adrenaline rush was almost more than I could muster and I was sure that there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. Only at times like these, I felt free enough to let my guard down, to step out of the shyness that normally overtook me in about every situation.

I turned around to my team mates when I saw her. She was sitting on a bench on the left side of the basketball field, smiling broadly. At me? Nah, don’t be silly… she wouldn’t, would she?
And why did I care so much? This was supposed to be a crush, a silly teacher’s crush… it was my own fault, too. I thought it’d suck to leave high school without ever having had a teacher’s crush, as if it would make my youth incomplete.

It was already incomplete enough, it wouldn’t even have hurt. Ten years from now, I wouldn’t have regretted not having one of them. But back then, I thought I would and I saw her and I thought she looked so much like Nina – that totally hot character in Earthlings. Before I knew it, it had gotten too far. It was supposed to be nothing big and I wasn’t supposed to fall in love. Fall in love – it’s just ridiculous, I didn’t know anything about her!

Like some obsessed stalker I gathered every piece of information on her I could get and every bit of it delighted me. The times that ‘Tina Kennard’ has appeared in my Google search bar were incountable. I knew Mr Haspel was her best friend and despite what rumours said, I knew they weren’t an item. I knew that because I had seen Mr Haspel with a woman on his arm every now and then and altough ms Kennard seemed to be such an open person, I didn’t think she’d be supportive of an open relationship. She wouldn’t condemn others that have it, but it’d be nothing for her.

She seemed to be such a loyal and faithful person. Thinking of her really ached, mostly because I knew that I probably had the wrong image of her. I knew I had and that’s why my desires contradict. I wanted to hold her, kiss her, feel her, smell her, tell her I love her… but then again, I didn’t think I could. Because for all of those things to happen, I would have had to get to know her, talk to her. And I was so scared that when I did just that, I’d find out who she was inside and it wouldn’t be anything like the picture I had of her and it’d shatter me, destroy me and I couldn’t take it. This – thing I felt for her was bad enough already. I hated to call it this ‘thing’, but what else could I do? What I felt inside when I saw her, thought of her, woke up after dreaming of her told me that it was more than a crush. But I couldn’t say I’m in love cause I didn’t really know her.