Originally from 2019

He proposed to me with a Ring Pop. His bruised knee in the sand, the red and green freshly-unwravelled piece of candy in between two of his fingers. He laughed in between the words, “Will you marry me?” and I laughed back. Everyone around us laughed. To our twelve and thirteen year old selves, proposing to someone with a Ring Pop was the epitome of comedy, next to using the hole of a Twizzler to hurl spitballs at an unsuspecting victim. 

“Hell no,” I answered him. Even though I had a raging crush on him, saying “yes” to his comedic proposal–one presumably with absolutely no other meaning than to be funny–would’ve been too embarrassing. But of course there was always the chance there was some meaning. He could’ve been making fun of me. Who knows.

Something about being at summer camp makes the strongest bonds between people. You find yourself pouring your deep secrets to the girl across the hallway a week into knowing each other, or holding your roommate as they cry into your arms about something you feel is trivial. Maybe it’s the knowledge that you won’t see each other until next summer, if at all. Maybe it’s the fact that you were always together during meals, class, and activities all day and night. I’m not sure.

This session of academic classes at Northwestern University disguised as a summer camp had me sitting next to who I thought was the cutest guy in my class on the first day. It was one of many creative writing classes I’d taken there, and being thirteen made me a bit more focused on the boys in the class than the actual writing I was doing. 

On the first day of classes, everyone poured out from the dorm we were all stuffed into and gathered together based on what class we were in. As our glob of students began to grow around our TA, Britney, I took special notice of the guy with the dirty blonde hair and the hipster glasses with the denim jacket on even though it was around 80 degrees out. He smiled at Britney as she greeted him, revealing a little gap in his slightly yellowed teeth. He held his backpack straps in his hands, and when he said to Britney that his name was “Alfred,” I could feel myself trying to hold in a laugh. Whose fucking name was “Alfred” anymore? I thought after Alfred Hitchcock was born, the wave of naming kids Alfred was over. This kid’s a fucking nerd, I thought. And I was all over it. He told Britney he was from “many different places,” instead of saying stuff like Evanston and Waukegan like the rest of us. 

“Name one of the many places,” Britney said. 

“Hmm,” he thought. “I lived in Nantucket for awhile.” 

As if I was supposed to know where that was. Credit to my younger self, I was much bolder than I am now, so I took it upon myself to ask, “Where’s Nantucket?” 

He looked at me, almost surprised that anyone in our cluster of preteens was even listening to his and our TA’s conversation. “Massachusetts,” he answered. “Where are you from?” 

I didn’t expect for him to bring me into the conversation like that, and even though I was bold didn’t mean I still wasn’t horrified by the reality that I was a perceivable entity. My heart started pounding. “Uhm…Bolingbrook…It’s like, an hour and–”

“Oh, I know Bolingbrook!” he interrupted. “I used to live in Plainfield when I was a kid.” The conversation trailed off after that, but that nugget of information led me to being able to talk to him again later. After I made it a point to sit next to him at the front of our class (and tried to do it as unsuspecting as possible), we ended up perusing the vending machine in the hallway during our break. He asked for my name and we talked a bit about how overwhelming the snack options were to us before I asked him about Plainfield. The Bolingbrook/Plainfield border was five minutes from my house, and I was curious if we had any mutual friends or visited the same Walmarts and the like. He said he was too young to remember. 

I made a good decision by sitting next to him in class, as our professor always had us “turn to the person next you you and ___.” We found ourselves talking to each other all the time, which ended up translating to us sitting together at dinner and planning our afternoon activities together. The summer camp always had a list of activities to pick from for after class, and a lot of them fluctuated, like playing Medic in the field one day to doing nature based art in the greenhouse the next. But a lot of them were constant, like going downtown Evanston and to the beach. Most of the time, Alfred and I went to the beach and downtown. 

One time, while downtown, the two of us and a group of our friends went to Andy’s Frozen Custard. It was an extra sunny day on top of the July temperatures, so we sought out the eggy ice cream. We all stood in the long line full of Evanston natives, laughing and making harmless jokes about our TAs and professors. I was next in line when I put my hand on my pocket to take out my wallet. No wallet. I felt dread roll over me as I didn’t know what to do, frantically patting my torso and hips to see if I’d put it in a different pocket than usual. 

“What’s wrong?” Alfred asked me, noticing my uneasiness. 

“I don’t know where my wallet is,” I told him, slowing down my frantic macarena/body bongo routine. 

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll buy it for you.”

“You’ll what?” I’m not sure if it was my thirteen year old brain reading every sign of kindness from a boy as an act of affection or utter guilt that I was going to let someone else spend money on me that wasn’t my mom, but I felt my heart start to pound. 

“Yeah, we’ll find your wallet later, but I don’t mind covering you,” he answered. 

“Oh, okay, that’s really nice, I guess.” There was that part of me that didn’t want to show excitement or care, it was preteen apathy or just straight up insecurity. But I let Alfred buy me the cheapest thing on the menu, a small vanilla cone, and we sat outside with our friends on the bench as our custard melted onto our fingers faster than we could eat it. I sat next to him, and that was the first time I noticed myself getting…nervous around Alfred. My hands were clammy as I kept wiping them on the thin napkins we got inside of Andy’s and I could feel my heart slamming against my chest as if it was trying to get out. Every joke or comment I made to him, I began to overthink my intonation and syntax. I started to think about whether my voice was appealing to him or not. I started to pay attention to the way I was sitting, the way I was eating my melting custard cone, the way my clothes fell on my body. 

My friend Theresea who lived across the hall was forced to listen to me talk about Alfred for an hour that night as I tried to devise my feelings with her. Was I just flattered that he spent $2 on me? Or was I developing a crush? Sure I thought he was cute and all, but that didn’t mean I liked him, right? Not necessarily, but me expressing my butterflies at the idea of going for a walk on the beach with him at sunset and how I hoped that we could hold hands (or even hug!) at some point definitely did. 

The next morning, I made more effort to look nice than I had for the entire time I’d been there so far. Crooked eyeliner and my flower pattern skirt completed my look for the day, Alfred on my mind. I didn’t have a plan, though. I just hoped he’d fall for me and make it known without me having to do anything. Sitting next to him in class wasn’t as easy as it used to be, as every little thing I said I overthought, and it wasn’t like talking to a friend anymore. He intimidated me now. That afternoon, we went to the beach again, and while everyone was going cartwheels in the sand and running around collecting rocks at the shore, I sat on my towel, not wanting to move. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have fun with my friends, I just didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of Alfred somehow. It didn’t take him long to notice my complete and sudden shift in demeanor, as he made his way from our group of newly-announced gymnasts. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, kneeling down in the sand next to my towel.

In a perfect world, I would’ve told him that I had feelings for him right then, and even better, he would’ve reciprocated them and we could’ve run off into Lake Michigan together. But what did I say instead? “Yeah, I’m just tired.” I blamed my fatigue on staying up writing that night. 

Theresa, who was at the beach with us, ended up laying next to me in her towel to dry off. She asked me how things were “going” with Alfred, and when she discovered that I had been borderline avoiding him, she told me I’d either have to tell him I liked him or give it up. She explained to me that we were already friends which meant he liked me for me, and that hiding from him would only make things worse. Much easier said than done, of course, so I didn’t want to do either at all. 

“Theresa, you do it,” I demanded. “Can you tell Alfred I like him for me?” 

As young as we were, we didn’t know the value in speaking up for yourself and doing things on your own, so she agreed to do it. I watched her trot off into our group of front-flipping friends, whisper something in Alfred’s ear, and the two of them turn to look at me. I whipped my head away as fast as I could to not give away to Alfred that this was 100% planned, and looked down at my lap. Because that looked normal. I saw someone approaching me from the corner of my eye, and I assumed it was Theresa coming to tell me what he said, but instead it was Alfred, Ring Pop in hand.