Way back when, I met Amelia in my first week of high school. She was pretty, sweet, and grew up about 20 minutes from school whereas I moved to the area from an entirely different country. I had never met a girl like her before because, well, I’d never been around Americans before. She had light brown hair, kind eyes, and an infectious laugh that made YOU want to laugh with her, even if it was about nothing. I didn’t have a shot.
I fawned over her for a few years and we were always friendly, once even staying up to talk all night before sleeping over at the school during our Senior year for Bonfire Night (build a pyre, light it up, let the fire die down, sleep by the smoldering ruins, smell like smoke forever). I’d always harbored a major crush on her but being shy, foreign, and a big ‘ol comic book dork, it would be incredibly brazen of me to try to make a move on Amelia. By the time we graduated, she’d been crowned captain of several of the sports teams she played, was named to the student governing body, and was one of the popular (but not mean) girls. I cherished our friendship and we added each other over Facebook, where we would maintain a decade-long back-and-forth digital relationship of birthday posts, “How’s it goings”, and Pokes (remember that shit?)