The Beginning of Something?

Meta: I wrote this in October 2006, in anticipation of NaNoWriMo; there's probably more to this story, but at the same time, I think this scene stands well enough on its own.

“Hmm… what do you think would happen if I just walked over there and asked him out?” I casually wondered aloud to my friends during lunch one cold February day. As eighth-graders, we had alpha status in the lunchroom, yet even during the coldest winter months our group of giggling girls still crowded around the table closest to the thin glass windowpane.

“Wait a sec, girl. You guys aren’t already going out? I totally thought you were,” commented my friend Maureen as she offered me the last of her Dunkaroos. In our class, everybody knew that “going out” was an adjective, not a conjugated verb. Couples didn’t actually go anywhere, they just wandered the hallways holding hands and stood six inches apart at eighth-grade dances during “A Moment Like This”.

“Huh?”

“You’re like, over at his locker every day, and you sit at his lunch table whenever you’re not with us. You’ve told practically the whole school that you like him, everybody knows that he likes you; if that doesn’t make you a couple, what does?”

“Well, don’t I have to ask him or something?”

“That’s what you’re doin’ now, girl. I’ll come with you, moral support.” And with that, she grabbed my hand and began to drag me away from the table. Hah, moral support my ass. Maureen needed to come along so she could report back on all the details to the rest of the gang just in case I refused to spill.

“Hey, Chloe, before you go… you gonna eat those Dunkaroos?” asked my friend Christine.

“Nah, you can have them.” I said, no longer struggling against Maureen.

“Thanks, and uh, good luck.”

“Okay, Chloe, spill. Tell us everything.” Christine and the others immediately demanded as I returned to the table, smiling deliriously less than two minutes later.

“What’s there to tell? He said yes.”

“And then what?”

“What do you mean?” I wondered. There was supposed to be more?

“Well, did he say anything else?”

“Uh, not really.”

“Maureen?”

“I think that was it, girls. I kinda missed it.” Missed it? How could she have missed the most monumental event of my entire life? I had just walked up to Connor Wheatley, the cutest boy in the entire school, tapped him on the shoulder, asked “Will you go out with me?”, and my best friend Maureen had missed it! Granted, the entire sequence of events had only taken about 30 seconds, but still… it was Maureen’s responsibility both as my moral support and as scout for the rest of the table to have been present and alert enough to serve as a reliable witness. Now how would anybody ever know that I didn’t make it up? In fact, how would I ever know I didn’t made it up? Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing. Maybe I’d never even left the table. I began to seriously contemplate this as the fifth-period bell rang and the ceaseless tide of students flowing through the hallway separated me from my friends and ushered me to my next class.