My Fan

Last Friday night was the homecoming dance. It wasn't formal, not even semi-formal. I wore a "semi-nice" top and some jeans. One of my friends did my hair and makeup (a lot of eye makeup). And then I went.

The thing is about my school's dances are, no one knows how to dance. We just do whatever feels right, and hope it looks good.

Most of the time they played Mexican music. The thing about that style of music is that all the songs have the same time signature, and usually the same key signature. Plus, I don't know Spanish. So all the songs sound exactly the same. The whole time, it felt like it was just a really long song, even though it must have been at least five.

It was easy to get by, just stepping back and forth with the beat, and moving my body as natural as I could. Sometimes I'd put my hand above my head and circle around, or I'd put a hand in my hair and just shake my hips. I know I'm not a good dancer, but anyone could see that I was no worse than everyone else. Most of the time we just danced in a circle, spinning eachother around occasionally.

There was a point where everyone just broke off into couples. All of a sudden I found myself face to face with TJ, a senior, who was also partnerless at the moment. He took my hand and began to dance, and soon I was spinning helplessly in circles. It felt good. I let it all loose. What did I have to lose? I stopped holding back and really danced. And he liked it. I'd never felt sexy before, but I did now. And it felt good.

About a minute later, I let go of his hand and all of us just started dancing in a circle again. When the Mexican music stopped, I went to the water fountain for a quick break. Soon after, all my excitement was gone. Any energy I had felt before had been sucked out. I went home.

Last night, I saw TJ again. Sort of.

It was the home volleyball game against our rival team. My team made quite the entrance, complete with strobe lights and a paper banner to run through that said "We'll tear you up too!". Dan turned the gym lights off for us, and the red light from the digital clock and the strobe lights had a good effect as we ran through the paper, hyped up with adrenaline.

We warmed up, the game started, and away we went. I played front row only, which makes sense. Back row is okay, but front row is my forte. The front row is my fortress.

When I sat on the bench, I waited, ready for my turn to get back in and kick butt. My game was ON. I blocked and I spiked and I slammed that ball down in their arrogant faces. Any weakness, any defiance of gravity was gone. I was flying.

TJ shouted out my name a couple times. He only did it while I was on the bench, or maybe he did it the whole time, but I was just so focused when I was in the game that I didn't notice.

"Number 7!" Sigh....Good thing my boyfriend wasn't there. Well, according to my parents, "Just a good friend". My teammates would laugh and nudge me, "Ooo, Anne has a fan!" Sure, TJ is cute. But I don't need a fan.

"Paalllmmerrr!" I finally said, "I'm just on the bench Stupid!" But I won't deny, I was secretly flattered. But my good feelings vanished soon after. We lost the game.

As we neared the bitter end, I started to scratch at my arm and wrist. It's times like this that I want to cut, but my nails just aren't sharp enough. However, I left some good marks on myself, and that was all I could ask for. It would have drawn too much attention if I had actually started bleeding.

Back in the locker room after the game, everyone cried. I kicked the wall as hard as I could a couple times. My toes throbbed, but I didn't care. It was just so disappointing. But I lived, and I'll keep living, with a fan or not.