2 : Monday

Step Two: Be yourself! Guys like someone who's honest about who they are and what they like. If you put peanut butter on your mangos, don't hide that from him! If he's really worth your time (and all 101 steps), then he'll accept you for who you are!

"Psh..." my best friend, Blake Turner, says as he reads the second step out loud to me. He looks up at me with mocking brown eyes. "Lix, you're not going to be able to do all 101 steps."

I sigh, running my fingers through my hair, as I look at everything in my room, anything but the open book on my queen-sized bed that Blake is carefully inspecting. He toys with the corner of the page.

"Lix?"

I finally look at him. "Blake, I don't have the willpower to make him like me," I groan. He comes and sits next to me on the floor.

"How about this?" he begins. I perk up. "Every day, you try a new step on him. In 100 days, he should be your boyfriend!"

I'm skeptical. "And if he's not?"

"Then you can sue whoever wrote the book for false advertisement and gender-conforming assumptions," he offers. "It's a win-win situation." I'm not quite sure he understands the meaning of a 'win-win situation,' but I'll take what I can get.

I groan again, then sigh again. "Fine."

There's no harm in trying, I tell myself. Something in my mind told me to buy this book. That means I want this, right? It'll turn out well. I think. I hope. Probably not.

Blake bounces around, pleased with my answer. He flicks his head back, and I'm reminded that my hair will never be as pretty as his. Blake has dark curls that flop like crazy whenever he moves. And they're never messy, somehow, despite being so mobile. He is a living, breathing conditioner commercial. "Okay, now that we've taken care of that, let's get ready for school!"

Remind me; why did I decide to let him sleep over on a Sunday night?

~~~~~~~~

After a timespan that seems to last about two seconds but, in reality, is more like an hour, I find myself separated from Blake in the Hallway of Hell. It takes almost a full minute to locate Jason at his locker a few rows down from mine, talking to a close friend of his, Russell Chen. Just as I've been crushing on Jason since last year, Blake has had the most adorable crush on Russell for a while, too.

He's skilled at hiding it, though, unlike me. Blake has a talent of talking to hot guys, whereas my mouth never manages to do what my brain tells it to do. Half the time, my brain doesn't even know what it wants to accomplish. Just making it out of a situation without choking on my own tongue is a success, in my book.

Well, I should get on with showing my "true self" and stuff to Jason.

My "true self" never thinks things through, so that's how I find myself being carried over to Jason and Russell on feet that have decided to betray me.

I silently cuss out my legs for doing this to me, but I'm interrupted by a "Can I help you?" from Jason, who I'm standing right in front of.

Cue the lights!

Cue the music!

Cue the rose-scented perfume!

Our two protagonists have met, and it's true love at first sight!

Ha, I wish. Instead, I'm standing there with what I am pretty sure is the most stupid expression on my face, a look that clearly says, I'm not quite sure why I'm standing here.

Jason and Russell exchange a look. "Well, we're not quite sure either," Russell says, grinning at me. Like I mentioned earlier in one of my random messes of a thought train, Blake is crushing on Russell. One of the things I like about Blake is his refined taste in men, and Russell fits the bill.

Standing in front of your crush and someone who could be a movie star when you're gay and awkward as heck isn't the greatest idea.

Also, I suddenly realize that I said the first thing out loud, and now I look like more of an idiot than I actually am. Great.

"I, uh... hi?"

This is fantastic. Jason probably doesn't even know my name, even though in eighth grade we were lab partners in science for one project. Earlier this year we had math together, but then the semester changed, and he switched levels, tragically separating us.

"You're Felix, right? Felix Gray?" Jason asks, and... is he blushing? No. Maybe it's just hot in here. Maybe he walked into a freshly painted red wall and forgot to wash his face. Maybe he's secretly a lobster; there's no way he's blushing. I wonder if he's thinking about his post that I liked yesterday.

"U-uhh, y-yeah. You're J-Jason, right?" Who needs a broken record when you have me talking to Jason? It's like I've turned into a stutter-a-tron-3000.

Russell smirks at Jason before coming up with some excuse as to why he has to go—fifteen minutes before the first bell. Now I've been abandoned by a near-stranger, and I have no idea what to say.

That's when I notice that Jason has his hand extended in my direction, and for a moment I think we're married and he wants to skip off into the sunset... but, then I realize that when two people meet each other (for the first official time, might I add) it's customary to shake hands.

Stupid Felix.

I shake his hand, and oh my goodness it's so soft and warm and cuddly and it's larger than mine and—oh dear. I blink a few times, very quickly, staring at Jason. His hand is connected to his arm, which goes up to his shoulder. He has pretty broad shoulders, which is good, because they can support his neck and head.

Jason has a nice head.

I like his head.

He has dark skin and gold-specked hazel eyes. Like Blake, he has dark and curly hair, but Jason's soft locks curl around his head, parted to expose a sliver of his forehead. Not too tall, and not too short, but still a fraction of an inch shorter than I am. Not-basic fashion sense. Actually listens when talked to. Smiles even at jokes he doesn't find funny. All around, my ideal type in a nutshell.

"Yeah... so... um..."

I'd say that I've passed conversation level negative twenty four at this point, but just to be safe I'll say negative twenty five. My brain short-circuits, and sparks fly. I wish sparks would fly between Jason and me, but they're trapped in my face, setting my face on fire, turning it redder than it already feels.

A full minute of awkward silence comes and goes before Jason clears his throat and releases my hand.

I want to curl up into a tiny ball and just sink out of existence. This is a painful situation to be in.

"Wanna, um, wanna sit with me at lunch?"

Jason startles me by inviting me to his lunch table, and his smile is so pure and genuine that of course I'll say yes... but on one condition.

"Yeah, b-but can I-I bring a f-friend?" Curse my stupid stuttering. Thankfully, the (arguably) cutest boy in the universe nods... and that's when the bell stops me from continuing to try to force words through the barrier in my mouth (my tongue) and out of my lazy flaps of skin that people call 'lips.' Let's just say I'm not a talented public speaker.

~~~~~~~~

I don't manage to retain a single bit of information all morning, because I'm so freaking excited for lunch. It's really not that big of a deal... but it also is, at the same time. My whole body buzzes with excitement.

Blake and I are walking to the cafeteria together when I tell him the news.

Of course he squeals cutely, drawing attention from the self-established Blake Turner Fan Club, the BTFC, as we like to call it. It's a medium-sized menagerie of girls that are basically in love with him and won't accept the fact that he's gay, even though he's openly hollered it a few thousand times. He's even managed to work the statement into a yodeling opera he wrote and performed all by himself. I'm so proud of my best friend.

The BTFC echoes his squeal, four octaves higher and four thousand times more annoyingly. They sound like a colony of bats, if one could actually be unlucky enough to be able to hear the high-pitched mimicry of Blake's little, happy noise.

Shamefully, I'll admit that kind of, maybe, in a way, there's a chance that I may or may not have possibly started the BTFC's existence. But that's a story for another time.

Anyway, we finally get our daily dose of mushy slop and get to rest our butts on uncomfortable seats next to Jason and Russell. Nobody knows what to say, and we're waiting for something monumental to happen. Unfortunately, no adults are facilitating this, so we have no predetermined activities or topics of conversation.

In a random burst of brainpower (they're never there when I need them), I'm reminded of today's tip for getting Jason to like me.

Be yourself, I repeat to myself as I slowly get up from my seat and climb onto the table. Everyone in the room quickly quiets down to see what I'll do next, and, if I'm being honest... I'm regretting what I'm about to do already.

Be yourself.

Slowly, I bring my hands into a shrug position with my fists clenched. I cross my arms downward dramatically...

Stop being yourself, Felix. You're making a fool of yourself.

But it's too late.

Now I'm standing on a table in the middle of the cafeteria sometime towards the end of January in my senior year of high school, doing the orange justice in front of a few hundred people.

~~~~~~~~

"Felix, can I talk to you?" Russell comes to me at the end of the day. I'm about to head down to detention for the stunt I pulled during lunch.

I tilt my head. I've grown more comfortable talking to Russell, since, apparently, we have a lot of classes together after lunch. We've just never noticed it. Talking to Jason, however, makes my blood pressure spike, because I haven't done it as much.

"Yeah?"

"I... I don't know how to ask this. I wanted to know... ugh, never mind. I'll ask you once I figure out how to word it properly."

I knit my eyebrows together, but accept a simple, reassuring fact. I've found another person who struggles as I do. Stringing words together in a cohesive way is difficult, and Russell is afflicted by the lack of ability to do it properly.

But at least Russell is hot, which I think I've mentioned at least twice already.

And he's got dark blue hair to boot, which—

Sometimes I wonder if I'm actually capable of staying loyal to Jason when I'm over here, obsessing over how hot Russell is. Curse these hormones taking over my head.

Oh, and just like that, my trains of thoughts are crashing. I see that new kid whose name I don't know, but he's cute and I would 10/10 want to be friends with. I think we were on a Google Document together a while back, at, like, two in the morning. Someone else befriended him already, as I can see further down the hallway.

Russell leaves me (again, I might add). Now I'm lonely, going to a classroom with uncomfortable vibes to stay there and do absolutely nothing for an hour and a half. That ruins my after-school plans to go get coffee with Blake, but at least he isn't being straddled to another train of thought threatening to crash into me.

Now, the Detention Supervisor has arrived, and I've got to be so silent that even my thoughts can't be heard.