A few years ago I changed schools, removing myself from an already familiar environment. Within the summer, I lost contact with all but one of my old friends (maybe that was partly due to the fact that I lived for the whole time like an antisocial hermit, six hours on the computer every day – but we won’t go into that) and the rest had moved on. Perhaps because everyone else used to live within half a mile of each other and it took me most of an hours’ worth of walking to get to one of their houses, I saw my old classmates very rarely, and only on the way to school and on public transport at that. There was this one boy I wanted to ask out, but he was in love with a bitchy girl from my old school (ain’t it always like that?) so I never ended up gathering the courage to do so. All the gossip and rumours of who was going out with who I got from my remaining friend by email, but by the end of the next school year our emails became sparse and few in between. She’d changed too, and ended up doing perverse sexual acts with the nerdy fat guy – I’m telling you, no one saw THAT one coming!

Then a bit of time passed, and one day I’m heading to the bus stop when I see this really hot guy ambling towards me. Hello … I look up slightly to check him out and suddenly his face seems awfully familiar. Oh my god, I do a double take, it’s Jack from my old school! Last time I saw him he was a weedy little thing, stick thin awkwardness and gangly limbs. Somehow that memory had mutated into the confident, broad shouldered hottie heading in my direction. Jack, I call out, long time no see. He studies me for a moment from behind these ridiculously long lashes (I am so jealous!) and there is a flicker of recognition in his dark blue eyes. He breaks into that wide smile that, funnily enough, I had never thought was so gorgeous before, and says my name. Ah, that’s who I am, the weirdly intelligent new girl. Well, I’ve changed too, hopefully for the better, and out of the restrictive familiarities of school we have a civil, look-how-you’ve-changed kind of conversation. Be still, my beating heart. He seems nicer too, like with a newfound sense of maturity. It is then that I start to miss all my old friends and our close-knit community.

We go our separate ways, but occasionally I see him around the shops, sometimes working at the local chemist, sometimes perusing the aisles of the supermarket. I don’t deliberately strike up a conversation with him every time (he’s cute but not that cute) but every time I marvel at how much someone can change so much in such a short time. I wonder how much I’ve changed?

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