I remember what I was like as a pure and wholesome child before I ever knew what it meant to like boys. I was always relatively smart, teacher's pet, the first child in the classroom with her hand raised with the correct answer every time. I was more friendly with the teachers than with most of the other students and I preferred it that way, it made me feel more grown up. I always thought the other children were too childish somehow and not as evolved or devoted to the learning process as me. The more mentally challenged boys used to sit around me, not because they liked me or thought I was cute, but to cheat off of my papers on tests and writing assignments. The first boy I ever really noticed was this kid in the eighth grade. He was much taller than the other kids, he was like a Viking, he had raven black hair and blue eyes and skin fairer than arctic tundra. I was seated directly across from him in history everyday and I would just stare stupidly at his eyes and his jet black hair for the entire hour of fourth period History class. He captivated me in a way I didn't understand...he looked familiar to me the first time I ever saw him...a recognition that arouses you in the most secretive part of your soul. I had never kissed a boy at that point...I'd barely even spoken to one...I was shy...I still am...I still barely associate with men and don't think I am cut out to be around them much of the time as I am accustomed to men taking love or emotional feeding and then leaving and vanishing...never saying... never waking...just the leaving and abandoning and making excuses or dishing out a lie to spare my feelings. Not then...I hadn't had the trust raped out of me at that point...I was virginal...I was fourteen...I never rushed into boys or kissing...but I remeber staring pathetically at that kid with the mysteriously blue eyes and angular fair features for hours praying he might notice I exist and at least raise his eyebrow at me in approval. We rode the same bus home. He used to sit across from me on the bus. Sometimes he would throw crumbled up pieces of paper at my head and then rapidly fold his arms and start looking up and whistling, moving his eyes to and fro across the top of the bus, pretending he'd hadn't done it. I smiled inside but pretended to be irritated with him. I don't know if he ever liked me so much as he just liked to antagonize me because there was no other girl within the radius to annoy...he used to talk about one of my blond friends all the time...he would ask me about her and her interests or if we were hanging out on the weekends on the bus rides home...the rides became longer and more unpleasant whenever he would persist with the line of interrogation... which upset me because I thought he was just trying to make a good impression on me because he liked her and I suppose he favored blonds in spite of my peculiar shade of strawberry hair and I was merely some kind of haplessly awkward, clumsy, leftover displaced redheaded clown with bad skin to him that he simply liked to tease and taunt on the bus because he knew I liked him and it made him feel powerful to mess with my feelings but never be with me for real or hold me or be close to me or care enough to stay around after the bus ride home from school was over.