Well, right now I'm missing a dance. I usually never attend dances and don't mind missing them, but for some reason this time is a bit different.
In my freshman year in high school, this girl in my German class told me I should go to the first dance, the only one held outside. I knew she wasn't asking me to go with her, but she was simply persuading me to try to enjoy myself. At the end of that day, I told her I'd go, and she seemed pleased for me. When I actually went, I found her after a while, pretty early on, dancing with her friends. She tried to make me just dance: not with her, just, you know, dance in the whole group of people around us. I was almost about to, but suddenly fear or shame made me refrain, and I told her either that "I couldn't" or that "I can't dance". She yelled, because the music was so loud, "You suck!". Not that other people heard her or anything, but that didn't exactly give me the confidence boost I needed. I afterwards walked inside the cafeteria, and checking the time, I turned on my mom's cell phone, which I was borrowing because I didn't have one of my own yet. One of the teachers walked up to me right away and told me to put it away; next time she would take it from me. I hadn't even heard that cell phones weren't allowed at dances, and being scolded didn't make me feel better. Also, my school's dances don't let you leave whenever you want, you have to stay until 10:30, I believe it was. So already my night was pretty discouraging, and I couldn't even go home. I ended up spending the rest of the night sitting on the other side of this big round fountain area thing, away from the dancing and the people. About every half-hour I would go to the bathroom, to make it more interesting. Twice teachers came up to me to ask if I was alright. The first time it was the lady who told me to put away my cell phone, the second time it was the principal. I told them both I was fine. The principal I actually talked to a little more, to be polite. I told I had seen a shooting star a little earlier, which I had. I didn't even know she was the principal at the time, I thought she was just a teacher. Anyway, it was the perfect prelude to a pretty rough year for me.
So yesterday after school, people were abuzz about the first dance of the year, my junior year. I wasn't really thinking about it, and didn't even mind others talking about it. But then this one girl in my group of friends that I at least greet regularly asked me and the two people I was next to if we were going. Everyone said yes, but I tried to shake my head gently. She persisted that I should come, and that's where I went crazy. My friends are the people that do school plays and stuff, and we like to act weird a lot, so I began a long series of sentences that I sputtered out quickly while jumping up and down about how I never go to dances because my spirits were dimmed ever since my first dance and how I have low self-esteem and I wouldn't have anyone to hang out with at the dance because I don't have any friends-- the girl interrupted saying "WE'RE your friends!"-- and I continued on saying how I can;t hang out with them because they all hang out in a, inclusive circle that would make any entrance quite awkward and unwanted-- and by this time one of my friends gave me a hug and they were all consoling me but I was trying to tell them that I had been kidding, which I was.
I have angst because I don't think they believed I was kidding. I don't think I believe me either.
