Top Ten Signs We're Soulmates

-- I wrote this because I loved the idea of the world being in favor of two people dating. And also because I pretty much was this guy in high school. I sort of love him, and I hope you do too. --

“Top Ten Signs We’re Soulmates”

1) The Frogs. The morning after you and I first met at Hank Schroeger’s party, where Rissy St. Lawrence threw up on half the basketball team, there were frogs everywhere. Mr. Lodge caught most of them for dissection purposes, but they were freed once again when the Avery High School Association for Protection of Small Creatures (AHSAPSC—pronounced ‘Ah, saps…cuh.’) let the frogs loose in Tinkin Pond. They were never seen again, but I swear, as they hopped off into the mist that hovers over the water, I heard them say—‘Barry and Trisha are soulmates.’ Swear to God. Louis Weil says he heard them too, but he was stoned at the time, so he thought they said ‘Harry and Trina are goalies,’ which really doesn’t make any sense, since Harry Roster is in a wheelchair and Trina Hooper plays volleyball.

2) My Heart Condition. A week after meeting you, I developed a heart condition. The doctor says it’s the strangest thing he’s ever seen. There are actually two small indentations on my heart that look like the letters ‘T.I.’ Now, granted, your real first name is actually Patricia, but everyone calls you Trisha. And I know that your last name is Brandt, but your mother’s maiden name is Ilton, and if she had taken her maiden name back after she divorced your father, which she really should have, your last name would be Ilton too. So technically, those are your initials, and they’re emblazoned on my heart, but they won’t kill me. Anyway, like I said, the doctor says it’s super strange, even though it could be genetic, in which case it’s really not strange at all.

3) The Prom. You and I both came in third for Prom King and Queen. What are the odds that an amazing girl like you, who everybody loves, would come in third and that a loser like me who everyone calls Fugly would actually land a coveted spot at number three? Granted, you probably only lost because Danielle Tanaran promised to flash a boob if she won (which she didn’t, which I found to be very underhanded and uncool) and Margot Paulson came in second because she got the Special Ed vote. And I probably only got third place because I bribed a ton of the stoners with free chocolate bars and they voted like, eight times each, and nobody thought to actually check the ballots for inaccuracies. Plus the ballot box wasn’t exactly guarded, so anybody could have taken it away somewhere and rigged the votes so that we’d both come in third and have to stand across from each other, but not dance together because our school is not progressive and doesn’t celebrate the achievements of third place finalists with a special song or a photo or anything. But I mean, who would go to all that trouble just to have us stand across from each other?

4) Numerology. You were born on March 3, 1984. I was born on August 1, 1984. Okay, go with me on this. If you take three and three, and add them together, you get six. If you take eight and one, and add them together, you get nine. Six and nine are both multiples of three, which brings us back to your birthday. Three times one is three, but three times itself is nine minus one brings us to eight which brings you to me. The numbers don’t lie, Trisha.

5) Nutrition. You and I like the exact same food. Everyday at lunch you get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with strawberry yogurt with the little chocolate crunchies on top, plus a Coke, and an apple. I get almost exactly the same thing. Everyday at lunch I get a sandwich with regular butter because I’m allergic to peanuts and raspberry jam, which looks exactly like grape jelly if it’s in a certain light. I also get yogurt, although I only eat it with granola because chocolate makes me break out into hives, and I don’t really eat the yogurt because I’m lacto intolerant so I guess I could just get a granola bar, but I kind of like the little plastic container that the granola with the yogurt comes in, and I get a soda too, just not a Coke, because I can’t really drink caffeine or I start hitting myself in the forehead with the palm of my hand for no reason at all for like…hours. So I just get carbonated water, but it still comes in a can. And instead of an apple I get an orange, because I need lots of Vitamin C, but I could totally get an apple if I wasn’t a little scared of apples from the time I bit into one and chewed off part of a worm. So yeah, pretty much the exact same lunch. Freaky, huh?

6) Serendipity. We keep running into each other everywhere. Like, I saw you at your sister’s birthday party. Random, huh? I didn’t even plan on going, until I saw that I had put it on my calendar five months beforehand and made a little asterisk with a note next to it that said you maybe might be there. Then I saw you at the mall at the store you work at, even though I totally didn’t know if you were going to be working or not because sometimes on Saturdays you leave early to go over your friend Sharon’s house, but you tell them it’s because you have to pick up your little brother even though you don’t have one, but you totally didn’t do that the day I stopped by, which is kind of amazing when you think about it, because you leave early a lot. Oh, and then I ran into you into you in school today, even though our lockers are on opposite sides of the building and we have no classes together and we probably won’t ever either because God hates me. Coincidental meetings? I think not.

7) We both have gay brothers. I mean, mine’s not out yet, but I bet once he comes out, he could totally date your brother, and we could go on, like, an outing together, pardon the pun. It would be like a double date, maybe, but without the pressure. We could go somewhere where our brothers could hold hands and nobody would care—like that place on Cape Cod where Eugene O’Neill lived and everyone’s gay? I mean, I don’t really want to go there, because I like girls, but I’m totally not intimidated by gay people like your brother, or my brother, who I’m very supportive of in every way, even though he swears he really likes girls and will I stop trying to get him to be gay so he can date your stupid brother—that’s him saying your brother is stupid, not me at all. I hope one day he’ll stop fighting who he is, and leave his girlfriend of four years, but until then, just know that I’m very supportive of gay people like your brother, and very secure in my sexuality that is of the hetero nature, and…I’m not sure where I was going with that.

8) We’ve both dated people who’ve traumatized us. I mean, you broke up with a ton of guys this year, and I’m sure that was like, wicked traumatizing for you to have do that. I mean, to break all those guys’ hearts must have really been tough. To keep thinking you like someone and then realizing you don’t and having to break it to one after another after another—twice in one week even—I just can’t imagine having to do that. Luckily, I haven’t had to ever, not even once. My girlfriend from another school broke up with me when she realized I was telling people that we were dating, and apparently she had a problem with the word ‘dating’ since she claims she quote ‘sort of only, like, said hi to me once and that was because she thought I was someone cool’ unquote. So yeah, we’ve both had some hard times recently. Between boys standing at your locker crying and begging for you to take them back and me showing up at the Sadie Hawkins dance and waiting outside just in case any girl happened to need a last minute replacement date, it’s been a rough year.

9) Matchmaking. Everyone keeps telling me we should be together. Like, I’ve told my best friend Paul who lives next door to me but doesn’t go to school because he gets homeschooled because his parents think that when Christ comes he’ll take the public school kids first—I’ve told Paul all about all these reasons that we should be together, and he says that fate and Jesus are definitely on our side. He says we should get married right away and then procreate and hide our kids in a bunker because the Lord will smite the Earth of the unwed fornicators first, and we don’t want to get caught in the backfire. I don’t totally agree with everything he says, but someone who speaks in tongues that often should definitely have their recommendations taken seriously. Plus, my Dad saw you once and said you and I would make a really good couple. He could have been talking about Shelly Langerford who was standing next to you, but I hope not, because Shelly sits next to me in English, and I’ve seen her peel skin off her elbow and eat it, so I hope my dad wasn’t saying she and I would be good together, because really, I don’t see how that could work. Finally, Mr. Lodge told me that you and I remind him of when he and his wife were young, before they got married and she divorced him because she found out he was having an affair with a woman in New York who turned out to be a man. I say we get it right where Mr. Lodge went wrong. And just so you know, I will never have an online affair. I only go online to write my meta-fiction.

10) Silly stuff. This is all stuff that I don’t necessarily find compelling in terms of making an argument for us to be together, but I thought I’d mention it all the same. I love your perfume. You always smell like a department store right around Christmas time when they bust out all the classy stuff. I love how you hold your hand over your mouth when you laugh like a geisha or something—not that I think you’re a whore. I just think it’s cute. I love how you don’t run when it’s raining, you just walk like you don’t mind that you’re getting rained on—I like getting rained on too, it feels refreshing, some might say. I like that I saw you help Short Arms Girl—who I think is named Phillippa—when her books fell. That was really cool of you since nobody else would help her because they were scared she would touch them with her creepy short arms—I mean, that’s what I’m sure everyone was thinking anyway. I love that when you walk into school everyday, you look over at me standing by my locker, and you smile, even though I know I’m a big loser who could never actually get you to see that we belong together. You still take the time to show me that I’m a person, and that I’m worth a smile. I love you for that, and for all the other reasons I put down. I might never actually send this to you, but seeing it all written down makes me feel like the world is on my side. Like one day all these reasons will form some cosmic plot in the universe, and you’ll walk into school, smile, and then for the first time, stop and say ‘Hi.’