The up-coming, annual homecoming festivities bring a lot of weaknesses out of dorky teenagers like you, Em. Such personal flaws include, but aren’t limited to, saying yes to someone who asks you to the dance despite the fact that you were the second girl he asked, the dearth of confidence to ask a peer to be a date, and/or the lack of appreciation for any of it. You don’t care about this traditional showcase of school spirit; it’s all ankle-deep and meaningless. There are plenty of opportunities to socialize during the run of the school week, and it’s much easier to do when you’re not yelling over the low frequency but high volume of an electronically produced base-line.

“I HATE THIS SONG.”

“WHAT?”

“I, HATE, THIS, SONG. IT’S, ALL, DUBSTEP, CRAP.”

“WHAT ABOUT CRAP?”

“I THINK DUBSTEP IS CRAP.”

“WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE MUSIC, BUT THIS SONG’S PRETTY LAME IF YOU ASK ME.”

At the end of the day, the date doesn’t matter, the invitation is forgotten, and the celebration of a soccer game in the middle of September isn’t any different than any other athletic match before it. What resonates aren’t the pictures on Facebook after the fact, or the chaperones standing awkwardly in the corner, or how much the dress cost. In the back of your mind, through the entire weekend, the resounding thought is:

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are it might’ve been.”

But you quickly tell yourself, “No, it couldn’t have happened in the first place, because he lives on another continent and you’ll only go to homecoming with him in your wildest fantasies.” But even so, that’s a lie; in your craziest rêves (dreams) you’re married with kids, who have blond, curly hair, strikingly-lovely dark eyes and pretty French names like Sylvie or Alexandre, and you go to work each day teaching English to French students while he pursues his intended career. That is your radiant, domesticated hope for the future. But it’s already ruined; it won’t ever happen because, as your closest friends reiterate to you bimonthly, HE IS NOT AN INHABITANT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THAT YOU SEE ON A REGULAR BASIS. Nor does he have Facebook.

And that’s what you think about in the stands of the big game as your classmates run around shirtless with the letters J, A, G, and S painted on their chests. You yearn for the classic high school cliché moments with “that French guy” (as your pals say) while you sequence through the yearly school-spirit customs. He’s the one you want to impress as you put on your makeup and squeeze into the dress you bought at Rag-O-Rama for $15 two months ago. The evening with your friends is nice, but you’d swap it for 10 minutes with the tall, animated mec who thought you spoke French better than Madame Baker. And, of course, you imagine him, far away, likely sitting in front of a computer playing a videogame, while you watch the adolescent couples sway and stumble during the one moment that the homecoming date is essential: the slow dance. You eye the couples from the open window in the corner, the make-shift AC, and think, They don’t really love each other; it’s all fake.

Then you remember that the relationship in your imagination is completely invalid. You haven’t spoken to him in a year. It’s not even over because it never actually started. Yet you can’t help but have a heavy heart, even though he was merely the exchange student who went home. It’s a one way relationship with a reverie, you remind yourself as you watch the boys and girls hold hands and laugh and be merry. Yet you can’t help but let the green-eyed monster taunt you as you drive home through the dark streets, alone, during the essential, conclusive moment of the yearly, unnecessary weekend.

Those teenage couples may not love each other…but at least they have each other.