Teen Ink

Waiting For Steven

Steven Greenburg had a decision to make. A huge decision. And I was waiting up by the phone at one in the morning, hoping that it was me he’d call, that it was me he’d choose. And I knew that Sarah was doing the same. But she was waiting for a call that she was sure was coming. A call that she was sure would happen.
My head was still pounding and my heart still racing. Steven’s blue eyes were still imprinted into my mind. And I was certain that they would never go away. I didn’t want them to go away.
I clicked through my contacts and stopped on Steven’s all too familiar number. His eyes stared back at me through his thick-rimmed black glasses in his picture, his lips curved into a classic Steve smirk. He wore a black jacket draped over a white T-Shirt, his fingers extended in a half-wave and his left hand caught in his dirty blonde hair. Sarah, her black hair and tell-tale tan skin making a cameo appearance in the background, made the smile I hadn’t noticed plastered my face drop into a scowl.
I flipped my phone closed and dropped it onto my bed. Then I snatched my black notebook off of my desk, opening its worn pages and flipping to an empty piece of paper. I pulled my pen out of its smooth case and set it to the lines that filled up the page’s otherwise blank surface. And I wrote his name.
Steven.
I wrote it again.
Steven, Steven.
And again.
Steven, Steven, Steven.
Again, again.
Steven, Steven, Steven, Steven, Steven.
I wrote it until it filled the paper with its loops and curves, until the lines from the ‘t’s burned themselves into my eyes, until my hand begged me to stop and my brain echoed his name.
Without my consent a tear dropped and left a perfect little circle on the page, wrinkling the tiny spot of paper where it had landed and smudging the ‘S‘ in the fourth Steven. I wiped the wet streak it had left on my cheek off and smeared the watery residue across the thigh of my dark wash jeans. I wrote his name one last time and made sure that I crossed the last ‘t’ perfectly. I dug the tip of my pen into the final line so hard that it broke through the fragile paper. Frustrated, I threw the pen against the wall and tossed the notebook onto the green carpeted floor.
One-thirty passed and I was curled around my purple pillow, burning holes into my cell phone with my eyes, watching as it didn’t ring, watching as it didn’t light up or move. The music from the party still pumped in my ears with words that were so heavily muffled that I couldn’t even tell if it was a boy or girl singing. And in my hand I held that blue Yankees cap that Steven had put on my head as I walked out the door, clutching its rough cloth until my palm was sore.
Two-o-clock approached and sleep was threatening to pull my eyelids shut. But I still watched the phone carefully, waiting for its doorbell-like ring to resonate in my bedroom and mark the start of something I was sure would change my life.
But it still stayed silent, and I drifted off.