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Melinda | May 19 2005

Never mind why, but I’m reminded of Melinda, the incredibly beautiful girl who liked me in tenth grade. I was just at that school for one miserable semester, and she was the only person there who ever talked to me. At lunch I used to sit alone at a table meant for twelve. We met in French 1, where she was the best student in class. I was the worst and was flunking French 1 for the second time. She sat at the front of my row and would come by to pick up my tests and quizzes. One time she noticed I was writing something and asked what it was. A poem, I said. Oh really, she said, you write poetry?

After I left I wrote to thank her for being so nice to me. She wrote back that everyone thought I was a narc because a bunch of kids got busted for dealing right after I left. I said, no no no, and then one thing led to another and I took a two-hour train ride to visit her. She said she had crush on me. Or maybe she said that she’d had a crush on me. Probably it was the latter. She confessed to having a friend follow my head as she entered French class. This friend sat directly behind me; the idea was to see if I was watching Melinda. I would of course watch her the whole way because she was easily the most desirable girl in school—so beautiful and smart and freaky (in the good sense of freaky). Anyway nothing happened between us because, basically, I didn’t know what to do, or was too afraid to try. But I hold onto this memory as the time the most beautiful girl in school liked me.

Melinda Mason.

She owned a horse and sometimes wore a t-shirt that said Horse Feathers.

She liked my poetry.

We sat on her couch and listened to the first Heart album together, Dreamboat Annie.

I don’t know where her parents were.