The Night I Left Everything Behind

The fluorescent gym lights hit my cheap party hat — a paper cone leftover from someone's quinceañera that I'd somehow ended up wearing. Around me, the student council had arranged the homecoming court into this ridiculous pyramid for photos, like we were human cheerleaders at a football game nobody was watching.

I checked my iPhone for the thousandth time. No new messages. Obviously. Maya wasn't going to text back. She'd made that clear yesterday when she said she needed "space," which is teenager for "I'm already talking to someone else now."

Everyone looked like zombies — glassy-eyed, scrolling through feeds, moving through the motions of this dance like undead extras in a movie I hadn't signed up to star in. I'd spent three weeks working up the courage to ask Maya to homecoming. Three weeks of overthinking every interaction, running our conversations through my head until they didn't even make sense anymore.

The DJ announced a slow song I couldn't hear over the bass vibrating through my chest. My chest hurt. I needed air.

I started walking, then running, past the punch bowl and the teachers chaperoning by the doors, out into the cool October night. My party hat fell off somewhere behind me. Good riddance.

The parking lot was empty except for a few cars. I sat on the curb and finally typed out the message I'd been holding back for days: "Hey, I know things are weird, but I still think you're cool. No pressure."

Then I deleted it.

Some things don't need to be said. Some things are understood in the spaces between texts, in the not-texting, in the moving forward.

A girl from my English class walked by, wearing her own defeated party hat. "Rough night?"

"You have no idea."

She sat next to me. "Wanna just walk around? I think there's a taco truck down the street. My treat."

"Yeah," I said, surprised by my own smile. "Yeah, I'd like that."

And somewhere behind us, the zombie dance continued without us, but for the first time all night, I didn't care. Maybe the best moments are the ones you don't post about. Maybe they're the ones that nobody else sees at all.