This was just like junior high. A flashback to a school dance, sixth grade. Julia had been wearing a peach sweater. She remembered because she’d associated the color with shame ever since. The boy she liked, Jimmy, was wearing a striped button-down shirt. He’d been leaning against the wall too. Slouching in the back of the gym with some of his friends, hands in his pockets, too cool to join in dancing.

And that’s how he’d always seemed to Julia. Cool. Definitely too cool for someone like her. But in a moment of weakness, probably brought on by hair spray fumes and the sugar high from too much cheap fruit punch, Julia had made the mistake of telling her friends that she thought Jimmy was cute. And before she knew it, she was getting pushed across the gym floor. A crowd of people seemed to grow around her, the closer she got to Jimmy.

By this point, his friends had picked up on the situation, dropping their veil of indifference long enough to join in the fun, grabbing Jimmy’s arms and yanking him toward her. They met in the middle of the dance floor, still more people crowding around, forming a circle. Jimmy glanced at his friends, shrugging them off before turning to face her.

In that moment, the music changed. A slow song came on. Oh, God, was the DJ in on this too?

And even as she stood there, hot and itchy in her peach sweater and wishing she was anywhere else, Julia couldn’t help hoping it would happen. That Jimmy would notice her. Notice her. See her in that magical way it happened in the movies. He’d see the real Julia hiding inside this horrible peach sweater, recognize her as the one meant for him, and then he’d ask her to dance.

But he didn’t. He just stood there.

Seconds ticked by. People began to whisper.

Unable to handle the awkwardness a moment longer, Julia cleared the gravel from her throat and decided to do the unthinkable. She’d ask him to dance. She’d be the rebel girl who flouted tradition and wowed him with her confidence and daring. And then he’d see her. Really see her.

She did it. In front of everyone. She asked Jimmy to dance.

And he said no.

“No thanks,” were his actual words. The casual, offhand politeness was somehow worse than open disdain. As if she wasn’t worth that much energy.

And Julia had known with a searing certainty that the movies she loved were full of lies. Nothing but empty promises woven by Hollywood myths.