Straight-Faced

my first kiss

The show that was created for me was called "Ladders", and it was about a middle school boy who was trying to gain popularity. He was a nerd and teacher's pet, and he had a total of about two friends. One of which was his mom. That character was me.

I got to wear crisp button-up shirts that were always tucked in, clip-on ties, neon suspenders, and horn-rimmed glasses with fake lenses. My hair was combed with a part instead of up in my usual style, and I wore an unholy amount of hairspray. The tube socks and the dress shoes were my personal favorite accessories.

At the start of season one, my character was a total loser. He had a mouth full of braces, and he talked like there was too much saliva in his mouth. He even had a nerdy name. Norman. I felt like he could have been me in an alternate universe, one where I didn't act.

This whole show was a bunch of cliches. It wasn't until after Ladders finished that I understood that the point was to make fun of all these stereotypes. Norman was the picture definition of your stereotypical nerd, except that I wasn't white, and I didn't have bad acne. Norman was extremely awkward, and he panicked if he couldn't get to class with at least sixty seconds to spare. I wasn't perfect for the role, but I do think that I nailed it.

The idea was that the episodes were "rungs". Something would happen in each episode that made Norman move up or down the school's social ladder. There were a few setbacks, but mostly, he was going up.

The finale episode of the entire show involved Norman getting together with the school's cheer captain. When I saw the script, I started to panic.

By that point, at fourteen years old, I had acted a lot of different things. There wasn't much that I wasn't comfortable with. But, in that script, highlighted in neon ink, was a kissing scene.

The girl who I was supposed to kiss, Allison, was fine with it, which made me even more nervous. The kiss was only supposed to be a solid second, not a full-on makeout session. Still, it would be my first kiss. I tried to act professional during our table read, but I was sweating through all the layers of my clothes.

I ended up kissing someone before the big filming day, but it wasn't Allison.

It was a quiet day on set- one of those days where the tech people took ten hours to set everything up while the actors sat around doing nothing. It was supposed to be a long day, so a lot of crew members brought their kids to hang out here. One of the kids happened to be a sound guy's adorable son.

The kid was probably a couple years younger than me, but he was cute. His blond hair and piercing blue eyes made him look like a doll. He seemed extremely likable, making friends with anyone the second that he started talking to them. Since I was fairly introverted off-camera, I kept waiting for him to approach me. When he didn't, and I got tired of waiting, I dragged my pathetic ass to my dressing room.

As soon as the door was shut and locked, I pulled out my phone and called Logan on speed dial.

"Logan, there's a cute boy on set today."

"And that was important enough for you to call me during a funeral?"

"Are you really at a funeral?" I asked.

"Nope, but what if I had been?"

"Then you shouldn't have answered." I leaned back in my chair and propped my feet up on a counter. "Anyway, since you picked up the phone, you get to hear about this cute boy."

"Joy," Logan grumbled, but I heard shuffling, so I knew he was looking for a place to sit. "So let's hear about about your new crush."

"I don't like him!" I looked up into a mirror, and sure enough, I was blushing. "I haven't even gotten to talk to him. He's just cute, and I really want to."