In a matter of minutes, my heart will be swallowed whole. This girl, the way that her electric blue eyes take hold of me, leaves me gasping for air, but I would rather breathe her in instead.

“Why are you staring at me like that, loser?”

I sigh the type of sigh that only an unrequited lover could have. Gosh, she’s beautiful. I love the way that her plump lips curl when she’s sneering at me. I’ve been caught and I don’t even care. I just want her to look at me a little longer.

“Seriously, do you want something?”

No one talks to her at school because everyone is too afraid to approach her. They call her “pinhead” due to the fact that she has 15 piercings in her face alone. But to me, each one of those piercings glint in the sunlight in the most beautiful way. Her sweet round face and her eccentric pink-orange hair is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. She is an original, a work of art.

“No,” I say, in a trance. She is like a collapsed star, entrapping all of my attention.

She turns to walk away, giving me a glare as she does so.

“Wait!” I cry out like a romantic hero that I’ve seen a million times in a celluloid dream. Her electric eyes spark and set fire to my heart as they gaze back at me. I am smitten, consumed with her spell. I’m hers and she doesn’t realize it. I take a breath. They say that destiny is something that you make. “I lied,” I say. “I want you, but not as something to own. You are no one’s to own. You are something free and illusive, a sunrise that could never be captured even by the greatest photographer. When I say, ‘I want you,’ I mean that I want to know you. And I know that I’ll never be able to know you, but I want to try. I want to see if I can enrich your life the way you have enriched mine.”

She looks genuinely frightened for her life. Her eyes dart around for a weapon. “Uhhh… that’s cool… I guess.”

I hide my face in my hands. I did not mean for all of that to come out. “Sorry, I watch too many romance movies.” I give a chuckle. She doesn’t seem amused. “Let me start over. My name is Franklin. We have the same lunch period? And I was wondering if you might want to sit together sometime? Maybe? I mean you never sit with anyone and you looked kind of lonely.”

She holds up her hand. And I’m grateful that she’s managed to shut my stupid mouth up. “Let me stop you right there. This isn’t a movie, okay? And I’m your manic pixie dream girl. And for your information, I actually like to be alone. So you better have something more than this creepy confession thing or whatever you’re doing here because if you’re trying to win my heart or whatever, you’re doing a terrible job.”

“Well, I also-”

“Oh, and did I mention that I’m gay? Because I definitely am.”

“Oh,” I say. And all at once I realize that all I’ve done is turn her into my false idol. I don’t even know anything about this girl except for the story I’ve constructed for her, one where I’m the hero. Does that make her the damsel? Oh man, I really screwed up. I scratch the back of my neck sheepishly. “Jeez, I’m so sorry. I’m being a real jerk, aren’t I?”

She holds up her fingers. “A smidge.”

“Can we just be friends?”

She mulls it over. “No, let’s start off as acquaintances and work our way up to friends. But no more being a creep and spouting poetry or following me home or anything, alright? One more cheesy line or creepy move out of you and we’re done, understand?”

I nod my head vigorously. “Yup, that seems reasonable.”

“Cool. I guess I’ll see you at lunch?”

I smile. Okay, this may not have been the way I saw this panning out, but in a way, this was so much better, because this is reality, not some ridiculous movie façade. “Sounds good.”