120 Blind Dates... And Other Short Stories

Me Through Your Eyes

Here is the truth of it: I am not a romantic at heart. Whereas other people may think Valentine's Day is the greatest day of the year, a day on which they can celebrate their love for each other, I don't even believe in the concept of love.

I believe that you can have a crush on someone. That is why I admit that I like Jay Connor, our school's star basketball player. I like him because he has the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever come across and because he was my lab partner in Chemistry last year. Even though I proved to be a hopeless case in that subject, he never lost his patience with me and often saved the day and the experiment by doing most of it himself.

On the other hand, I didn't think until an hour ago that Jay even noticed me as a woman or someone he could potentially date. I thought that good-looking boy like him must have all the cheerleaders and hot girls banging down his door.

What happened about an hour ago changed everything, and I don't know what to make of it even now. Perhaps it was just a weird dream in which I woke up in Jay's bed in Jay's clothes and body on Valentine's Day. I'm not kidding you! 

Like a lot of girls, I've always wondered what it would feel like to be a boy. I think there is even an old Beyoncé song about it, "If I were a boy."

Now I know. I mean, my parents would freak out if my room was this untidy. Jay apparently throws his dirty clothes, shoes, books, video games everywhere he likes. So the first thing I did before I did anything else and before I thought about my situation was to clean up the room. I think this kept me from freaking out. 

What was wrong with me? 

Then I noticed that I should better get going because Jay needed to go to school. When I opened his closet, I didn't expect a whole lot of clothes to fall on me and literally bury me beneath them, but that is what happened. So I picked out a loose-fitting hoodie and pants and found black sneakers in Jay's quite impressive collection. He was a sneaker head apparently. 

I wanted to take a look at Jay's backpack and see whether it was packed properly, but then I noticed that I didn't know his schedule. Perhaps it was on his phone, which I could easily unlock thanks to that great invention called Face ID. 

My school uses this great app called "TinderHS2Go," which I tried to find on his phone among thousands of stupid gaming apps and social media apps. By the way, I know that it is some strange coincidence that my school is called Tinder High School, but on the other hand, I think Tinder Township has existed far longer than the popular dating app. When I finally found "TinderHS2Go," I discovered that he had Art class in the first period. 

It was quite fortunate that I noticed this because his drawing pad was still lying on his desk. I took it from there and noticed he was quite good at drawing. He wouldn't have taken him for an artist either. 

His diary lay underneath the drawing pad. Of course, people write very personal, private things into their diaries, things they don't want to share with anyone. But I wouldn't be snooping if I took a look at the things he had written. I was him today, and maybe I would still be him tomorrow, so I somehow felt I had a right to read his diary.

Oddly enough, his last entry was about me: "February 13. Passed Jen in the hallway. She is so sophisticated and totally unlike Sarah. Can you believe that she actually asked me to go out with her on Valentine's Day? She is getting really desperate, and she keeps on calling Mum. Mum thinks I should talk to her because she is such a nice girl. But I don't want someone 'nice.' I want a girlfriend with whom I can have a conversation that isn't about her, her future and her plans."

I whistled when I read that. Sarah Morgan was Jay's rumored girlfriend, and whereas I knew that they weren't together officially, I had had no idea how much he really disliked her... and was interested in me!

I couldn't believe it. 

So the next thing I did was to get on the school bus and write a romantic letter to myself in Jay's handwriting and pin it on my locker.

Naturally, someone caught me doing it. It was me!

"Hello there! It's a strange day, isn't it!" Whoever was stuck in my body said to me. 

"Yeah," I found myself replying. I couldn't but stare at "me." I was wearing pretty revealing clothes and the platform shoes my Mum had given me because she still had them from the 1990s and couldn't part from them for some reason. 

"Body switch, I assume," the person in my body said.

"You, too? You are not Jay, are you?"

"The one and only," Jay confirmed. "Do you have any idea how we can switch back?"

"Not really," I shrugged.

"Perhaps if we kiss?" he suggested. "After all, it is Valentine's Day, right? Perhaps Eros is playing some kind of a mean prank on us. Or do you have a better idea?"

"I don't think so."

"Okay, then let's kiss."

"Here?"

"Well, if we don't do it now, you have to do my presentation in Art class in less than five minutes."

And just like that, he kissed me, and it felt like the world stood still for a few seconds. 

When I drew back from him, I was in my own body again. "That was cool. We should do that more often... Kiss, I mean. Not the whole body switch thing."