Britney

Fase (noun): The phase preceding a crush. The moment when you see someone and you slowly become mentally attracted to them.

Shunklings, Down 2 Clown, Track 7, “Fase,” 7 minutes, 33 seconds.

Inside out and out again:
Imagine that you see a beautiful boy across the room—allow yourself to become an early 2000s teen-movie cliché for a moment, and indulge in it—and don’t bother pursuing him because it could never happen. It has never happened. You forget about it in an instant.

Later on, you are talking to one of your friends and busying yourself with some menial task when you feel someone’s eyes on you and turn slightly to find the boy in the haziness of your peripheral, looking at you, unmoving. You make a split-second decision not to freeze up and continue talking to your friend, finding yourself to be surprisingly casual for once in your life. He remains a still figure in your peripheral vision until you turn around a few minutes later to throw him a quick glance. You are still too nervous for a full-on gaze.

                        (a tender, tentative touch)

Back inside myself:
Even later, I walk out of the bathroom and find everyone gathered in a circle, swaying and singing along to “Dancing Queen.” I stand on one side, next to one of my best friends. “What do I do?” I shout to her. “I don’t know how to dance, like, at all.” During my month-long stay in inpatient I listened to this song during iPod time almost every day, but I do not associate this memory with what is happening until much later.

She grabs my hands and energetically forces me to sway with her. I comply, laughing, until it no longer feels natural and I drop my arms by my side, standing slightly awkwardly in the middle of the moving bodies. I look up, a sudden jerk of my head, and he is right across from me, looking at me. I look back and he looks back and we are lost in our looking as “Dancing Queen” continues. His mouth morphs into a grin and so does mine; I begin to laugh again.

It is so beautiful to share yourself. It is so beautiful to share a moment with another human being whose eyes expose you. When things come together so well it seems like too much of a pure occurrence to be a true thing in this world.

That night, I stare at his number, hastily written on my phone. I eventually text him and we make plans to hang out on Saturday. Outside, the warm orange glow of my building’s lantern expands, as if it is absorbing all of the good energy flowing out of me. I think of how I whispered out my window days earlier to the person I had not yet and the words return to me, full circle. ♦