To the boys down the hall…I wasn’t that girl. I’ve never been that girl. That girl that boys look at; that girl that boys want. In high school I was the girl overlooked. Did I have crushes? Of course. Were they reciprocated? Nope. Never. Not one. I was the girl who graduated high school having never been kissed. I was the one that watched my friends go out with their boyfriends as I sat home watching Netflix. And to be honest, it was never really something I complained about. I was ok without a boy. I’ve never felt like I needed a boy, and I didn’t feel incomplete without one. I just always felt like maybe there was something wrong with me; some reason why not one boy had ever flirted or grinned widely, or made any kind of advance towards me. And then I moved into college and you were there…you were the boys down the hall, and you gave me my confidence. My third day of college I stood waiting for an elevator with two of you and that’s the first time it happened. You spoke to me, you gave me that boyish grin boys give girls they think are cute. And at the time, I didn’t know what it meant, but as time went on I got it more and more. The first time I got it I was confused. No boy had ever looked at me the way you had. Then later as I waited for my laundry you asked me for my number—you offered to help me carry my clothes back to my room. You invited me over to your room, and I…didn’t know how to respond. Me…a girl who had never been kissed was invited to go to a boys room…alone. Did I say yes or did I smartly decline? I said yes and hesitantly made my way….down the hall. And I told you I’d never had a boyfriend and you didn’t believe me. You were astonished that no boy had wanted to make me his…but it was true. No boy had. And somehow I coughed up the fact that I was a virgin and it made me uncomfortable and it was really none of your business, but the words were already out there…everything had been said. But you weren’t the only one. As days and weeks passed, more of you started to talk to me—to flirt with me. I didn’t call it flirting, I called it being nice, but all of my friends called it flirting. Flirting turned to the hello hug, and the conversations as we walked to our rooms. Then flirting turned to one of you leaving your number on a whiteboard in my bedroom with your number on it telling me you were my future bae. I suddenly had the confidence to talk to boys that I hadn’t before. I no longer felt like there was something wrong with me. I was just in the wrong place. Maybe high school just wasn’t my place, but college was. And soon, the boys down the hall became friends and turned into the boy down the hall…the boy down the hall I call my boyfriend…the boy down the hall that makes me happier and angrier than I’ve ever been…As I close off my freshman year of high school, I say thank you to the boys down the hall, the boys that gave me my confidence and to my boy down the hall...thank you to my boy down the hall...