I Never Knew I Was a Techno Fan
He's just a weird boy in skinny jeans, he maintains, and he'll never be good enough for you because you're gorgeous and fiery and so full of life, and how could he ever match up to what you want?
The way he lopes along next to you with an easy grace as you both walk down the corridor, his arm over a battered notebook that he so carelessly balances against his hip, and you stare at him and you realise that he's so utterly insane – so completely out of it – that you laugh and link your arm with his and don't even care that he looks awkward and tries to move away.
He still thinks he's not good enough and you roll your bright eyes because, honestly, he could have any girl he wanted if he just chose to look around once in a while. Does he? Of course not, is the simple answer. His head is too filled with music and lyrics of words you don't understand, though you try to – you try to enter his world but fail miserably. That's when he first suggests that maybe you're not the person for him – not because you're not right for him but because you're too suffocated in the preoccupation of learning who he is and trying to understand that you forget to tone down your confusion and you end up in a worst state than that in which you started.
That's what you have to do, though, to understand him and it screws you up to realise it. You have to immerse yourself headfirst in the things that he likes in order to talk with him, all the while knowing it's no use because what would people say? What would your darling cousins say when they see the two of you together? You've never seen eye to eye with them; they've never understood how you two, complete opposites, could ever even be friends, let alone anything more.
You have to admit it, they're right. Sometimes you wonder it yourself, whether you'd even work out together, but then you get distracted as the corners of his mouth spread out into a little grin and your day brightens, without you even knowing why. He makes you feel alive – but it's no use, because he's not good enough for you, remember?
You hate yourself for considering the possibility of it maybe being you that's not good enough for him. If there's one thing you've learnt, it's how to be fearless, and why should some young boy with a lopsided smile and a head full of otherworldly things have the nerve to change that? But he does, before you even realise it, and suddenly – oh so suddenly – you've turned insane trying to keep up with him and his world and you refuse to give in (because if there's one thing you are, it's stubborn). You don't admit it because the only thing keeping you sane and above the water is the idea of the two of you being so different you'll never work out, all the while secretly knowing that you're more similar than you realise.
Oh, you're a sarcastic little bitch sometimes with the potential to do anything you set your mind to whilst he's calm and quiet and so hopelessly strange that you can't even get your head around it, but you're both smart and secretive and have such common sense it makes your cousins jealous. And you're both mad together – so utterly peculiar it makes your eyes hurt to rewatch hours later in your head – and fit so smoothly next to each other but, like he said, he's just a weird boy in skinny jeans and he can't see for himself that you work together.
Nor, for that matter, can he see that they all love him. His friends and people he's hardly ever met; your cousins and that group of third-years sitting down, blocking the corridor – they all adore him for reasons unbeknownst to him – and you long to talk about it, simply to make conversation, but you can't – because, after all, you have the dawning comprehension that it is you that's not good enough. Why talk to him when he can have so much better – and suddenly, your world crashes around your feet and you're crying and holding on to the one shred of hope you could ever wish to have because who are you next to them? Who are you next to the pretty girl that holds him in such high esteem that it hurts your neck to look up at the two of them; who are you compared to the boys who make him laugh so effortlessly that it pains you to see him doing so without your influence?
He thinks he's the weird one, yet you're the girl who can't understand why you feel this way about a boy you've known for longer than you can remember – like it matters. You give it all to spark a smile in him, but what does he give you? Oh, you're friends, but so automatically that it doesn't seem real; it seems as though any second it could be ripped out from under your feet and once again you're back there, accidentally reliving the days of when you were thirteen and you dreamt of boys who would never have you, and you can't stop it!
You don't give up. You're not stupid enough to throw away the one thing that you have going for you next to the other girls; you're not quite idiotic enough yet that you hate him for no goddamned reason other than the fact you can't have him. He makes you paranoid and you're conscious of every move you make, wondering whether those perceptive eyes could ever work out the mess of thoughts that are making a blizzard out of your normally logical head – but they don't, and you're not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. He's not the normal type of boy you fall for, but it's too late to get yourself back up to normality: you've started on the road and not there's no return from the fucked up place that you've tumbled into. After all, it's obvious, really, isn't it, when you think about it – he's just your weird boy in skinny jeans and you wouldn't have it any other way.