Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves (True Stories) (23 page)

Dear Teen Me,

You’ve fallen for a guy you’ve known for pretty much your whole life.

Let’s call him Charlie. He hugs you. He writes notes on the backs of your hands, using those orange and purple gel pens you love so much. He swaps sneakers with you. You laugh like crazy together, reciting lines from the Austin Powers movies. He always grabs a seat next to you in the church van.

Then he decides he likes your friend, and they start dating. You want to die.

He knows you love him, but he’s just not into you like that. And he’s the whole reason you decided to become a manager for the boys’ soccer team! So now you’re stuck with him every day at practice and at games. You can’t stop looking at him, thinking about him.

You believe that if he doesn’t start liking you back soon, you will die. For real.

Now for a bit of good news: There are some seriously hot senior guys on the soccer team—but every time they look your way, you bow your head and avoid them. You talk to the guys who are your age instead. You know you aren’t pretty. You’re nice and sweet and funny but guys don’t like you. They like your friends. They ask you to put in a good word for them with Julie and Stephanie.

One day on the sidelines, the captain of the team—let’s call him Jack—sits down beside you on the grass. He’s eighteen and has this cropped brown hair and a nice smile. He’s very cute in that all-American guy kind of way. Even in February, he has a tan. He’s about to graduate.

You’re fifteen. There’s no way in hell a guy like this is into you, so you just act like yourself. You make him laugh. You tell him about this really cheesy pickup line you heard. “I may not be Fred Flintstone but I sure can make your bed rock.”

He laughs.

“I saw your family in my church directory,” you tell him. “But you never come to choir practice or to Sunday night socials or summer camp or anything.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Why don’t you?” you ask, just curious to know.

He adjusts his shin guard. Reties the laces on his cleats. “I dunno. I just haven’t.”

“You should come sometime. It’s fun. This summer we’re going on a choir tour to Florida and we’re doing this mission trip thing, too.”

Jack smiles at you.

The next Sunday, he comes to church. He hangs around with the preacher’s son—the guy who plays quarterback for the football team—and some of the cheerleaders. And that’s fine. He’s very popular and in a different circle than you. But it makes you happy that he came.

Over the next several weeks, he keeps coming to church and you start telling him more about your life. You tell him about how much you like Charlie. Jack is sympathetic and listens to you whine about this other guy who is so not worth your time.

Right before he graduates, Jack writes a note in your yearbook. He tells you how much he’s enjoyed getting to know you. That he thinks you’re awesome. You show it off to your friends. “Can you believe he wrote that…
to me
?! Isn’t he so hot?”

Your friends are most jealous, indeed. You read his inscription over and over.

Over the summer, he goes on the church mission trip with you. You’re playing a game of poker after a day of painting an underprivileged family’s home. You’re practically in tears because Charlie has started hooking up with yet another girl, one he just met on this very mission trip. Jack tells you he doesn’t know why you care about Charlie.

“You can do better,” Jack says. “You’re nice. You’re honest and open.”

You hear what he says, but you don’t really listen to him. Miranda, you should be listening to this guy—this smart, nice, and thoughtful guy who keeps coming to your church events now that you’ve asked him to.

A few days after you get home from the mission trip, you’re lying on your bed, staring at the ceiling. One hand rests on your phone. The other wipes tears from your face. All you want is for Charlie to call. To tell you that he was wrong; that he likes you, not her. None of your friends will listen to you talk about Charlie anymore, because they’re sick to death of your obsession with him. You feel alone.

The phone rings. It’s Jack.

“Hey,” he says. “Want to come over to my house and swim? My parents aren’t in town.”

All you can think about is Charlie. What if he calls while you’re at Jack’s house? Cell phones aren’t really mainstream yet. You don’t have a pager.

“I can’t,” you tell him. “I don’t feel well.” Lie.

“Aw, come on. Come over.”

You lie there, staring across the room at the pictures of you and Charlie that are pinned all over your bulletin board. You think about peeling off a T-shirt and shorts to reveal a two-piece bathing suit in front of Jack. It never has fit right. You’re not skinny like the cheerleaders he hangs out with. Does he want to kiss you? What if he tries? No one’s ever kissed you before. What if you’re a terrible kisser because you’ve never had any practice?
There’s no way in hell a guy like him would kiss me anyway
, you think.

You remember all the guys you’ve liked over the years. None of them have liked you back. A few boys have liked you, but you weren’t interested in them. (You never gave them a chance. You were too worried that people would make fun of you for hanging around “dorky” guys.)

You don’t bother to think about Jack’s feelings because you assume that he, like everyone else (yourself excluded), lives a golden life. What if Jack needs a friend? What if he’s lonely and looking for something and wants to tell you about it? Did you ever think that he started coming to church because you asked him to? Because he thought you cared enough about him to include him?

Why don’t you ever think about anyone but yourself, Miranda? What if Jack needs
you
?

“I can’t come over.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll talk to you later,” Jack replies, and hangs up.

Now, over ten years later, I can tell you.

Jack never calls you again.

He goes on to college or wherever and you never see him again. Sometimes I look at pictures of him from high school and remember the series of conversations you had. In one photo from a soccer banquet, you’re wearing a dress and he’s in a button-down shirt and tie. He has his arm around you and you’re
both smiling. He treated you like a real person. He wasn’t using you to get close to your friends. He just liked talking to you. And you screwed it all up because you thought he’d treat you like other guys had treated you.

Jack was right: You’re honest. You’re open. You take care of your friends. One day you’ll look back on this time and wish you had listened to him.

You’ll wish you’d picked up the phone and called him right back. “Yes, I’d love to go swimming with you.”

I’m not saying that anything romantic would’ve happened. I doubt it would have. But you could’ve had a nice afternoon with a good friend. He might’ve invited you over again another day. He might’ve asked you to a movie. He might’ve asked you to go to Sonic for a cherry limeade, or to cruise around town in his truck or something.

You’re in a great spot today, and you wouldn’t trade it for anything. But the next time a great person tells you that you matter to them—listen to them. And then tell them why they matter to you, too.

Stephanie Kuehnert

Dear Teen Me,

It started when he made you give Acacia that poor, pink, stuffed duck that he’d burned and stabbed and defaced with permanent marker with words like
Skunkhead
, which was supposed to insult Acacia because she’d bleached half of her black hair blond. “She’s copying you,” he said, referring to the blond streak you’d had in your hair for three months. You said you didn’t see it that way, but he insisted, “She’s jealous of you—of us being together. She’s been spreading rumors about us.”

You doubted this and you were right to. He cut you off from Acacia first for the simple reason that she was the biggest threat. If the two of you had stayed close, she would’ve noticed what he was doing to you. He said that she was out to get you. You believed him, because he was the first boy to tell you that he loved you.

He even said it before you did. You’d only been together for two weeks. It was earth-shattering. This gorgeous guy—a talented musician who looked like a dark-haired, hazel-eyed Kurt Cobain and smelled like sandalwood incense, cigarettes, and warm sheets—loved
you
, a girl who had just been used by two other gorgeous guys.

Of course if he really had been like Kurt Cobain, he would’ve joined you in trying to kick the convertible filled with loud, obnoxious jocks. They were screaming catcalls at you, but instead of supporting you, he threw you over his shoulder and lifted your skirt, flashing your underwear to the busy street. When you started to cry, he got pissed and said you couldn’t take a joke. He also said your skirt was too short and those fishnet tights made you look like a slut. After a few more arguments like this, including one where he shredded your favorite shirt, you adopted a baggy, multilayered uniform.

You were all he had (he said), so when you did something to upset him, he told you he wanted to die. You did whatever you could to avoid this, including having sex with him when you didn’t want to. He was your first, and the sex was beautiful…until that day he wanted to hook up in your friend Robin’s garage. You knew she’d be mad, and she was the only friend you had left, so you said
no and he gave you the silent treatment all day. Robin convinced him to talk to you and he said that if you didn’t want to have sex with him anymore, it meant you didn’t love him. So you did it. You never said no again, because you knew no one would ever love you like he did. He told you so.

After six months, he broke up with you anyway. You took a scalding shower and listened to Hole’s cover of “He Hit Me (and It Felt like a Kiss)” a thousand times. Now it’s dawning on you that even though he never physically hit you, he found other ways to smash you into a thousand pieces. You feel powerless, and blame yourself, and take it out on your own body with razor blades and alcohol. It will take you six months to call it “emotional abuse,” and then a year to call it what it really was: “sexual abuse.” It will take ten full years before you’re ready to put it all behind you and love yourself again.