Chapter 17:
He had to be mistaken.
No, he couldn't be.
Shaggy paced through the living room, wondering vaguely if he might wear a hole in the floor. Then the neighbors downstairs would be very mad. Then he would be evicted...
He was trying to distract himself with implausable scenarios. He knew he was. It wasn't working, though, and besides, he needed to focus.
Was he really in love with Velma?
If so, how long?
He paced faster, to match his heartbeat. He tried to imagine the same questions he had asked himself when he was wondering about Daphne, about her appearance, her personality, her laugh... only to find that this time it was a completely different game altogether. He didn't have to ask any questions; all he had to do was to think about Velma and everything else would come on its own...
Shaggy sat down. After pacing for hours, he was suddenly aware of how exhausted he had become. Something felt good about this feeling, about thinking about Velma this way. It wasn't that it was new and exciting; it was that it was old and familiar...
It was as though something Shaggy had known for years had finally come to light. How long had he suppressed these feelings? And why had he? A likely reason was that he was scared... but of what?
Shaggy thought back to their first meeting: fifth grade. One morning, a very small girl with brunette hair and glasses had waltzed into the room. It was Velma, age seven, but her small size had made Shaggy assume she was even younger. Maybe one of the kindergarten kids had been sent to deliver a note...
It was then that the teacher announced, "Class... today we have a new student." It turned out that Velma was being moved up from fourth grade to fifth grade, even though she had skipped two grades already.
And of course, she sat right next to Shaggy.
She had been much more shy back then-- it was clear she didn't really have any friends. Not yet, anyway. But then when Shaggy joined Fred and Daphne at the lunch table, he saw that Daphne had invited Velma to sit with them. Slowly she began to open up, and by the end of the school year she was as talkative as the rest of them. Shaggy had particularly admired the way her vocabulary always allowed her to say exactly what she wanted; he wished he could do that. Those were the days...
Was it possible that even as a ten-year-old boy, Shaggy had known Velma was special? Maybe that was why he had never been open with this, even to himself: There was that fear of discovery. At age ten, every girl has cooties. It is an established rule. The fact that Shaggy even talked to her was taking a risk most of his male classmates wouldn't dare take, especially with a nerd like Velma.
But then, had Shaggy really liked her back then? Or was it just friendship? Maybe it wasn't until high school that he really started feeling this way about her. Maybe what had stood in the way was her age-- it just felt wrong, somehow, for a fifteen-year-old boy to like a twelve-year-old girl.
Or could it have even been as recently as college? "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." But then, to grow fonder, wouldn't the heart have to be fond in the first place?
This was ridiculous. Shaggy knew, deep down, that he could have had Velma a long time ago-- just like Fred had had Daphne more or less since high school. But he didn't. How many years had he wasted, anyway? Would he ever really know?
What was it, exactly, that gave Fred what he wanted and left Shaggy denying that he even wanted it?
He knew. It was Fred's initiative. After all, for years Freddie had really been the leader of the gang. The Eagle Scout. The one who set up all the traps. The one who had really introduced the possibility of solving mysteries in the first place. Of course, it would be just like him to come out and admit he liked Daphne the moment he realized it.
Fred had always solved mysteries by leadership and courage. Shaggy had always solved mysteries by mere, dumb luck. That had worked fine... until now.
You couldn't use dumb luck to reach a smart girl...