p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"He was getting bored at recess, he was getting a feeling that he needed something. He decided that something was the need to be attracted to someone. At the time, he had no questioning thoughts about it; he wanted to like a girl. He didn't like any of the girls in his own grade, none of them were fresh. He wanted someone new to him. Why not the girls in his friends' grade? They had brothers that were in his own brother's class, and they hung out all the time anyways. He was an awkward boy and never really had many friends other than the ones he was really close to. So, he decided to go watch them play soccer on one of the other fields. He started to go out to recess with these friends and stopped just watching eventually. He started to play soccer with them, and he figured out which girls there he liked. /p
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p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"There was a girl he had always found attractive and there was another one that had just caught his attention that year. The one that he had always been attracted to, intimidated him. She was good at everything and very pretty; he even got the feeling that she was smart. The other was different. Sometimes, before the bell rang to let them go out to recess, he stood and looked at the two, who were very good friends. He knew he was attracted to both of them, and thought he only had the ability to become friends with one of them; he had to choose./p
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p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"He stood one day before the bell rang to let them free for the brief fifteen minutes they had, and he decided. He decided the one that was shorter, cuter, and more vivid, in his mind. He dedicated his recesses to becoming her friend. He was still a shy person, but he knew how to talk to girls without sounding like a blundering idiot. He only knew how to use sarcasm though, so that is what he used, and that is how they became friends. During the process of becoming friends, he learned what he could from his resources available to him; he was stalker-like, very creepy. She was the reason he made an Instagram account, so he could practically stalk her even more. He was quite weird. As their friendship grew, he became more and more scared of what he could lose if she found out the terrible truth of the way he felt about her. He liked her more and more every single time they interacted. He became more and more wary too. They had a small banter, they called each other mean, and kept making reasons for how the other was meaner than themselves. He loved this game they played; it was exclusively between them, no one else was with them in this connection. They were very good friends, and he kept liking her more and more. She made a post on instagram, asking if people wanted her to rate them; he, of course, wanted her to, hoping he would get a 10/10 or the equivalent of it. He knew he wouldn't, he was very cynical and pessimistic. The result was still satisfying to him; he got the lowest score possible. She said it jokingly, of course, adding the common comment she used to describe him, "You ruin everything." There were also emojis, just so he could be 100% sure she was joking and take the rate as a sign of real friendship. He was not awake when she sent the message, but it was a wonderful thing for him to wake up to the next day, and year for that matter./p
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p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"Luckily for him no one had a clue he liked her. He did strange things, hoping to give it away, as if he found their friendship getting boring, even though it was something he looked forward to everyday. He loved the one time she playfully nudged him as they were walking in from recess. He loved it the one time they were playing something on the porch, waiting to go home, and she ended up on his the lap of his left leg for a moment (that sounds really creepy now that I wrote it, but it happened). It was the classic game of push on the person next to you on the bench, almost the opposite of tug-of-war. He loved those moments when they were genuine friends. Yet he still yearned for more. He gave hints to his friends that he liked someone. The amount of letters in her name, ten. He made the first letter of each of his posts on Instagram spell out her name. He even changed his bio on Instagram to a group of words that spelled out her name using the same method as before. He was obsessed with her and no one knew it. Eventually his friend found out, only because he let them find out. His most precious secret was out, among two people, then three, then four. He became scared that she would find out, that she would know. He was scared that once she did, she would never talk to him again. She didn't find out that year. His friends sealed their mouths, and no one else even guessed. Near the end of the school year he made a post asking people to ask him questions. At this point, he had made her start to wonder who he liked, he was getting bold. He made the post hoping she would ask that question, "Who do you like?" He would respond with one word, "You." Unfortunately for him, she never asked this exact question. She asked a similar question and gave him choices of people he did not like. She never asked those exact words, because if she did, then he would have answered, and she would have known. They messaged each other for a couple of days. He eventually asked her who she liked. She never told him before something happened. It was a Saturday. He was pressuring her, into telling him who she liked. He closed the app, and when he opened it again, the conversation they were having was gone, erased from the program. He was afraid he overstepped his boundaries and pushed too hard for the answer. He let her be for the summer. He was crushed./p