Jared Freed

I was in middle school.

Her name was Morgan Marks and I was going to ask her to be my girlfriend.

My 12-year-old logic was sound.

She lived near me, and she was, like, cute, but not in a way that made every other prepubescent guy obsessed with her.

That's the play for any self-conscious middle school boy.

Find someone who you can see yourself hanging around Aeropostale with for two or three weekends, who's also totally pretty, but not so popular that you ever have to find out how you stack up against literally anyone else.

Her name wasn't really Morgan Marks, for privacy stuff.

But you bet your ass I remember her name.

In this audiobook, I'll never use real names.

I can't shake the idea of a woman in the suburbs being bothered by this audiobook while trying to get an iPad out of her kid's hands before bed.

Once I decided I was going to call, I thought about it the whole day.

My life was going to change.

It was the 12-year-old equivalent of buying a Peloton.

You know, how you start imagining yourself with abs and hanging out at the beach like, totally, let's take more pictures of ourselves.

Well, that was me.

Except instead of confident swimsuit posts, I had visions of us holding hands in the hallway and slow dancing at parties.

This was it.

I was about to move from an adolescent side character into the cool, confident main character of maturity.

I was going to be dating someone.

As soon as I got home from school, I went up to my room.