I’m just your average girl. Not fat, but not skinny. Brown hair, but not dull brown hair. Smart, but not a genius. You know the type. The type of girl that will always be your friend but never something more. I am perpetually stuck in the friend zone, and believe it or not, I’m okay with that, at least for now. I’m still in school at the moment, so there is still time for me to find someone and live all that mumbo-jumbo romance novels talk about. 

I grew up in a small town in Virginia, where everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows everyone’s business. Whenever someone got together, the whole town talked about it. Whether they thought it was a match made in heaven, or hell. They would take bets on anything from when the first pregnancy scare was going to happen to how long it would last until someone began to stray. I was never talked about that much in high school. You tend to stay off the radar when you are invisible. When you aren’t one of the pretty people, no one ever really cares what you do, or who you do it with. That was until Jack Roberts asked me out. It got the whole town buzzing. Jack Roberts had asked out plain Zooey Nicole. I think the only thing that saved me in their discussion over me and why he had chosen me over everyone in Stonebridge High is my name. It would have been a lot worse had my name been something plain and boring, like Jane or Judith. Zooey is an eccentric name, so that can only mean that I was eccentric. They were wrong, and as it turned out, they were also wrong about Jack asking me out. You see, my locker was right next to Britney Tiplady’s locker. Britney Tiplady is probably the prettiest of the pretty people. When Jack found out he had put his love note in the wrong locker, he made sure to tell the whole town as loudly and as quickly as possible. Because how could Jack Roberts, even know who Zooey Nicole was, let alone want to be with her. 

That is why the moment I could, I got out of that town. I went to a college as far away from everyone and anyone who knew that Zooey Nicole was nobody special. My plan was to go to the University of Oregon and start new, become one of the pretty people. My plan didn’t go work out exactly as I had planned. It turns out, it takes a lot more than just a front of confidence and nice clothes to be a pretty person. You need to not only have the appearance of greatness and eliteness, you need to actually be great and elite. I’m not talking about changing the world or winning a Noble Peace Prize by the age of twenty-five. You need to be a great athlete or dancer, and know that you are great at what you do. You need to be able to look at someone like me and know that no matter where we both go in life, you will always be better. I apparently am a Mother Teresa type. I pull over to help a turtle cross the street, and carries an old lady’s groceries to her car. Pretty people don’t do that type of stuff, and the moment they found out I was a fraud it all went down the drain. Now I am even worse than invisible, I’m an outcast. I am only on campus long enough to go to class, and the entire time I am there I keep my head down. 

If I had kept my head down yesterday, I wouldn’t be in the mess I am in now. I would have never seen Nick walk into the room. I would have never fallen in love. As it turns out, Nick isn’t a dick like the majority of pretty people. A girl, who unfortunately is deemed even uncooler than I am, dropped her books as she was coming into class. She is taking the History of War class as an elective, she is really one of those brainy types who will one day cure AIDS, hence the books. Well, while the other pretty people laughed and made jokes, Nick bent down and helped her pick them up. And, to top it all off, he introduced himself and went to go sit in the seat next to her. All the while, the poor girl, Elizabeth, stared open mouthed at him like he had grown a second head. Now, I can’t really fault her, because by the time she got to the seat next to me and Nick was seated behind me, my jaw was on the floor as well. And he talks to us until Professor Michaels walks in the door. Once class was done he said “See ya later”, gave a smirk, and left. It was the type of day that makes a million dreams. 

“Oh, my God. Can you believe that? What the hell was that?” Elizabeth asks as we are leaving class.

“I have no idea. I think we may have fallen into a parallel universe or something. He must be an alien.” I reply, because lets face it, he had to have noticed what we were. The outcasts.

“He was so nice. And cute. He had the type of hair that looks like he just wakes up and it is perfect. And it must be so soft. I bet it is soft, do you think it is soft?” Elizabeth can be a bit weird when she wants to be, but she is one of my only friends here, so I don’t judge her.

“Elizabeth, this is exactly why people think we are freaks. It was just another guy, on another day, in another class. Nothing special, and we can’t read anything more into it because if we do nothing good will come of it.” I am the reasonable one, or at least I keep telling myself that as we walk across campus to grab something to eat. All the while fantasizing about what our kids will look like.

“I don’t believe that for a second, Zooey. I think we are on our way to something important. I can feel it. I don’t know if it will be good or bad, but it’s something.” If only we could have known just how right Elizabeth was.