Alone is a dangerous word. Many people fear it if they know it or not. I was one of those people, even though I stated otherwise. I had no idea that I feared that word so much because I lived with it everyday and thought that I was perfectly fine with the fact.
The University I went to was vast like every other University in this country or the world. Each one of those schools has a small handful of people that I would like to call wallflowers. They are real people with extraordinary personalities with the ability to blend into the scenery and disappear. I'm one of those people. My interests are many and varied, but no one cares enough to learn this fact about me. The simple truth is that wallflowers are able to blend into scenery so well is because they don't crave attention. All they simply crave is a few true friends and ultimately someone to love deeply who loves them with the same intensity.
This description fits you? It fits me perfectly. Everyday I walked around my University, looking at the groups of people and especially watching the person at the center of it all making of fool of themselves or of other people just to gain the acceptance of the shallow people watching them. Those are the people that most wallflowers wish to be like. Not because they make a fool of themselves or get the attention of shallow people, but because they most likely have a significant other by their sides at the center of the group. Sure they're probably with them only because they get noticed just for being on the arm of the popular performer, but you know that the person at the center of the group with that significant other isn't lonely.
For everyday of my life, I walked around virtually invisible, watching these people from afar, wishing and praying that one day one person would notice me, and then suddenly, I got my wish. One sunny day I was sitting under my favorite tree on the well-manicured lawn, eating my lunch and reading a book. Over the years, books have given me comfort when I have lacked human companionship. As you can imagine, I'm well read. My spot was near a walkway that received a fair amount of traffic for the lunch hour. It was like I had a silent bargain with those people who walked by. They would ignore me and I would just keep reading my book.
This day was just like any other day, accept that I noticed, just under the edge of my raised book that pair of feet was turned towards me and they weren't moving. Puzzled by this phenomenon, I slowly lowered my book. I was stunned at the vision before me and as I noticed by the females passing by the vision, they noticed him too. He was tall, even taller then me and I stood at a high five foot eleven, his eyes were a breath taking shade of dark blue, and his hair was clean cut pitch black. After I took in these exotic features (I looked for a while so I can recall every feature when I daydream), my eyes slowly began to travel down.
As you can imagine, his body reflected his exotic face. The blue t-shirt he wore seemed to hug ever groove of his chiseled form. God! The man was buff, but he wasn't bursting out of his shirt buff. I would say that he was just right. My eyes dared not travel down farther without turning my face reader then the rosy shade it was now. Realizing that I had stared long enough, I raised my book back up and tried to continue with the paragraph that I left off at.
It was difficult for me and I had to read the paragraph five times because those feet were still there. Finally I gave up reading and just looked under the edge of my book, staring at his loafers. What will he do? Why is he just standing there looking at me? I thought wildly to myself. Then after these two important thoughts repeated themselves at least a hundred times in my mind, the loafers finally moved. Not away as I expected they would, but to me.
He had pushed down my book and I was forced took look him in the face. It was either that or looking at his crotch. The kindest smile I had ever seen grew on his face.
"What's your name?" He gently whispered to me. That one little soft line seemed to create a world around us that only we existed in. In this world, time stood still, and the animals held their breath in utter shock that this living male work of art would ask me what my name was.
It took a while, but I found what little breath I had left in my lungs and sighed, "Amelia."
His smile stayed and he nodded his head as if to say, "that sounds right". Then he stood up and walked off. My heart was beating in my chance and I shot up like a comet and ran after him, forgetting my poor abused book and my picnic lunch. My hand shot out before I could thing better of it and I snagged his finely corded arm. In a flash, he turned around and shock registered in his eyes for just a second before it was replaced with a type of shinning happiness.
My mouth opened a closed a few times before I squeaked out, "You're name?"
His smile widened and he put his hand over my restraining one. With great care he placed it over his heart and leaned into me until our faces were only inches apart. "Brandon."
The name shivered through me like so many hands caressing me. As I was in the daze of that one simple word, he released me and walked away. The world slowly came back to normal, the animals resumed their play, and time went on running, and my heart speed up faster. For a few short minutes, someone paid attention to me, and it wasn't just anyone, it was a God that shinned a spotlight on me.
The days following that day were drastically changed from the mind numbing routine that I use to have. My luxury reading books were left in my little apartment because every second I was not in class was spent looking for Brandon. A whole week had gone by with me checking every face that I could see, but it was like he vanished just as fast as he appeared. I tried the easier way by looking him up on the online student directory, but there were well over two hundred Brandons at my school. Until then, I never realized what a popular name that was. At the end of the second week, with still no sign of him, I was starting to get frustrated and angry.
It was so hurtfully obvious! He was just playing with me! No guy would ever notice me. I had short brown hair, when most men would favor longer hair. My body wasn't fat but not abnormally skinny as other girls tried to keep themselves, and my height was too tall for any man to favor me even if I had long hair and was a skeleton. The only features I had going for me were my eyes. They were a dazzling blue/gray with a talent of changing color with intense emotions. Unfortunately, most men didn't bother looking at my eyes; those features weren't exactly on their important list of attractive body parts.
Brandon most likely acted on a bet to his friends, or some crackpot practical joke him and his friends' thought was funny. He could have even been doing it to get back at his girlfriend. As my thoughts had a habit of doing, they kept repeating themselves over and over again. It was my entire fault though; I let myself get obsessed with a cute boy that asked me for my name.
I couldn't just drop and pick up where I left off. There was a dance coming up which was the favored dance to go too. Almost everyone showed up to it and I figured that it would be my last chance and if I didn't see him then I would go on.
The night of the dance came in a hurry. I made my dream dress, which amazed me at how fast I put it together. It was one of those long and flowing numbers that needed many petticoats to help it billow out. The bodice hugged my upper body as if it was a second skin and it showed just enough cleavage to modestly tantalize. I left it plain because the fabric I picked out for it was a glistening dark blue, there seemed to be sparkles imbedded into the fabric so that it looked as if I were wearing the night sky. With my hair and make-up done up perfectly, I didn't look like myself at all, I looked like a one of the heroines in my romance novels that take place in 1800's England.
