Big Girl Problems by Emily Schultze

I’m going to make an embarrassing confession here. In seventh grade, I was majorly obsessed with a boy. Now, when I say majorly, I mean majorly, and when I say obsessed I really mean obsessed. I know being a bit dramatic about a crush at that age isn’t exactly shocking. Unless you get all puberty fueled psycho about the whole thing.

Danny was my first kiss. He had seen a picture of me in a pink tube-top and had become enamored. So my friends set it up. After school one day we all went to Paul’s house, walking through the busy, yuppified streets of Park Slope. It happened on a dare, all of us nervously sitting around Paul’s living room coffee table. Danny and I had to kiss for ten whole seconds. His small body leaned into mine and our lips came together. For those ten seconds I tried desperately to remember everything I knew about kissing. I had seen Cruel Intentions. I knew there had to be tongue. Our unsure mouths clung to each other until finally, it was over.

I guess that’s where it started. From that point on, I was in love with Danny. And so you can imagine how mortified I was when my best friend Lori e-mailed me an AOL instant messenger conversation between her and Danny in which he clearly stated that I was a horrible kisser. I cried myself to bed that night, thinking about how my life was ruined. I’d never get a boyfriend, I’d never get another chance, and worst of all I’d never be with Danny.

The next day at school I looked away when I saw him coming down the hall. He was at least two inches shorter than me. I was a long and lean figure proudly wearing an A-cup bra, but Danny, like most boys, was a little behind in the developmental process. It didn’t matter than he could have passed for a fifth grader. It didn’t matter that I had almost towered over him during our first kiss. Regardless of his size, my unrequited, boiling love for Danny made me feel tiny and small, and his unspoken rejection was enough to make me want to vanish.

But, time wore on. Danny and I remained friends and hung out with the same people. Before long we were in eighth grade and my A-cups had gone to B-cups and I was beginning to hear from more than a few adults that I “looked much older than my age.” I learned how to properly apply makeup, how to dress in a way that was considered “cool,” and how to act when I wanted to get attention. I was transforming, and so was my love for Danny.

While I was turning into a young woman, my crush was morphing into an obsession. We were in the same class now, so I saw Danny all the time. I began hoarding mementos from him. I waited until after he had left the classroom before snatching up the piece of paper he had been doodling on. I saved anything I could get my hands on: countless notes, the stick of gum he gave me, the gum he had chewed himself and then rolled into a paper scrap and left on the desk, his marker, his rubber-band. Quickly I realized I would need a special place for these souvenirs. At home I discovered a near empty tin box of cookies. I ate the remaining two or three or five and rinsed off the crumbs. This was now the Danny Box. I closed the door to my room and sat on my bed. I went to work on making this box as special as its contents. Construction paper, glitter, drawings of hearts with Danny’s name inside; the result was glorious. Before I began placing my precious objects inside, I got up and walked over to my boom-box. I carefully put in my Mariah Carey CD and skipped to the track that I knew would make this moment special. The signature intro began and then the first verse, Mariah’s crooning voice singing just for this moment, just for me and Danny.

I delicately laid each object in the box, closed it, then took it in my arms. The chorus of the song erupted and I stood, clutching the box as if it were Danny himself, singing aloud with my eyes closed and my face turned up in passion. “Boy don’t you know you can’t escape me! Ooh darling cause you’ll always be my baby!”

I told no one of my new treasure chest, except I had to tell my four best friends. Once they were in on it, things got easier. Like when we were all in McDonalds on our lunch break and I whispered to Chrissy that she had to stay with me after everyone left so that I could steal Danny’s fork. “No way. You’re crazy!” But I hushed her objections with a wild, pleading look. “You have to. Please,” and how could she object? Clearly I was desperate. When Danny and our other friends left, Chrissy and I casually stayed in our seats. I briskly grabbed the fork from the table and tucked it safely into my backpack, quietly rejoicing to myself. “You’re sick, you know that?” But I ignored Chrissy because she just didn’t understand.

His bottle cap, his pen, his fork, his gum, his notes, his sketches, I carried them all home with me and initiated the same ritual (Mariah Carey song and all) every time I put my new treasures into the box. Digging through trash to find a drawing or chewed pen cap that Danny had absentmindedly discarded was not beneath me. But I didn’t see myself as psychotic, crazy, or out of control, all words and phrases my best friends had begun to use when I spoke about the Danny box. I was feeding my boy-crazy desires without expecting anything back. It seemed helpless and fun, until one day during French class, it turned serious.

Danny passed me a note, which I opened eagerly. In his crooked penmanship were the words “Will you go out with me?” There was a YES and a NO scrawled on the next line. I circled the yes, trying not to scream. Danny read my response and smiled. He drew a heart and passed the note back, and when he wasn’t looking I tucked the paper safely into my pocket. I was in a state of disbelief and confusion. What had brought this on? But I didn’t overanalyze. This was what I had been waiting for, this was what I deserved! For the next day and a half, Danny and I were boyfriend and girlfriend. Then, on that Friday, the second day of our official romance, he asked me to meet him in the stairwell after sixth period.

“It’s just not working out,” he said seriously, as I sat on a step and he stood before me.

“Why?”

“It’s not you. I’m sorry”

“Why!”

“Well,” he said grimly. “There’s someone else.”

My heart swelled and my body quivered as the tears came hard and fast. Danny stood there solemnly, playing his part well. He put a hand on my shoulder and waited for the episode to pass. “I’m sorry,” he said a few times.

“All I wanted,” I stuttered through tears and mucus and near hyperventilation. “All I wanted was to be your girlfriend.” But it was no use. As the day wore on and the bell finally rang at three, the dark truth sank in.

I did the only thing I thought would help. I corralled my four best friends. We killed a few hours wandering around the gum stained streets of Brooklyn, until it was late enough to make our way to the bodega. This bodega was the bodega because they would sell us beer and cigarettes, regardless of the fact that we all looked fifteen at best. One of us would go in and wait until the store was empty before placing our order with the man behind the candy and lotto stuffed glass partition. She’d pay, then idle by the potato chips as the man took a black plastic bag to the fridges and filled them with 40’s and six packs of Smirnoff Ice, never forgetting to throw in a few coffee cups too.

That night, we found a discrete spot in Prospect Park and I proceeded to do what I thought adults did in these kinds of situations: I drank as much as I could. I’d seen the movies, I’d read the books. I knew how real women dealt with lost love. They would elegantly tip a bottle back and through blurry eyes remember the man who had left them. It only took a few Mike’s Hard Lemonades before I was in hysterics. I cried, screamed, cursed at Danny. Each sip of malt liquor made me more furious and emotionally unstable. What I had envisioned as an adult-like response to heartbreak had become a child’s tantrum. It was only nine o’clock when we left the park and headed towards Lori’s house, my friends telling me to shut up for god sake, there were people looking at us. I had already fallen off the cliff of age appropriate behavior, but was about to go even farther. When we passed the movie theater I ran up to two older boys, grabbed one by the face and kissed him. My friends stood shocked as they watched me kiss this stranger until finally they dragged me away. We stopped at the bodega on Lori’s corner to buy some snacks and I stayed behind after the others had left to buy two mini packages of Advil. By this point, if you’re thinking that I watched too much TV then you’d be absolutely right. I was in the midst of a big girl problem and I was going to deal with it the way big girls did: by drinking, philandering, and numbing drug use. Outside, as I popped the four pills into my mouth and dramatically threw my head back to swallow, I ignored my friends as they demanded to know what I was taking. “That’s it!” screamed Chrissy. She stomped over to a pay-phone. “I’m calling your father!”

The green mini-van screeched to a stop at the curb. My dad rushed out, forcefully throwing me into the backseat. With his cellphone cradled between shoulder and ear he opened my eyes with one hand and shone a bright light into them with the other. “No, her eyes look fine. Ok, thank you Dr.” My pediatrician assured him that water and rest was the best cure.

The next morning I woke up with a mild headache, and as the events of the previous night came back to me in waves I buried myself farther under the covers wanting more than ever to disappear. Of course I told my dad everything, to which he replied that he was going to break Danny’s legs. I told him no. I was going to settle this in a mature way. Later that day I got my Danny box out from the closet. I did not turn on Mariah Carey. I opened the box, took one more look at its contents and then closed it shut, knowing it would be for the very last time.


Emily Shultze is a writer from Brooklyn, now living in Chicago.  Her work has appeared in Hair Trigger 34, Gapers Block, Every Day Fiction, Zine Columbia, The Cadaverine Magazine, and By The Overpass. Her short story, “Pretending,” was nominated for the 2012 AWP Series Award and winner of the Roger and Sylvia McNair Travel Writing Scholarship. Emily recently interned for Akashic Books and is now working as a Marketing Assistant for indie publisher Elephant Rock Books. She graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a BFA in Fiction Writing. She dreams of one day owning a dog and a turtle. Visit her at emilyschultze.com.

Hypertext Magazine & Studio (HMS) publishes original, brave, and striking narratives of historically marginalized, emerging, and established writers online and in print. HMS empowers Chicago-area adults by teaching writing workshops that spark curiosity, empower creative expression, and promote self-advocacy. By welcoming a diversity of voices and communities, HMS celebrates the transformative power of story and inclusion.

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