Actual Ruby

“Do you want to do something little-kiddish and go on the swings?” Anna asked. It was a bright summer afternoon before our sophomore year, and we were hanging out at the park. “Swings are not little-kiddish,” I stated. It was true—playing on the swing set and imagining that you're flying would never get old. We began to walk over to the swings, and then all of a sudden, my best friend stopped in her tracks. Her crystal-blue eyes were staring ahead, wide and sparkling. “What?” I asked, totally confused. “I think I’m in love,” she sighed, being the hopeless romantic that she was. I followed her gaze and saw that there was a boy there, sitting on the bench in front of the swings as some younger kids played on the jungle gym. He was probably supposed to be watching them, but he was glancing down at his phone. And even though he looked slightly bored, he was very cute. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I was in love with him, but he had light-brown hair that was messy in a stylish way, and he brushed it out of his eyes as we watched him, which made Anna sigh again. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he looked very familiar. Anna wasn’t brave enough to talk to him that day. She even abandoned going on the swings because they were “too close to him.” In fact, she wasn’t brave enough to talk to him all summer. So on days when we were all at the park, she would make us hang back and watch him from afar. We even came up with a code name for him: “Cute Boy.” So you can imagine how surprised I was on the first day of school, when he waltzed right into my fourth-period English classroom.