March 7, 2000

Okay, Matt definitely likes me. Now the question is only when he is going to ask me out. I wrote notes back and forth with James in Social Studies, which were all about Matt. Later, he gave them all to Matt! I had suspected he was going to do that, so I didn't really get mad.

All my friends are very against the idea of me going out with him because they think he's a dick. And I can see why they think that. Yes, he spent the better part of two years trying to ruin my relationship with Zach. But he and Zach aren't really friends anymore. People do change, and Matt deserves a second chance. I am very interested in him, and in how he works and what happened to make him the way he is. I know that his dad was murdered a few years ago, and people say his mom beats him and his brothers up. [Matt's father was one of many victims of a very famous white-collar criminal. Nobody in my town really spoke of this incident.]

People can't look past his outer shell into his real self, and that is what I want to try to do. I believe that everyone is the same on the inside, it's just that our experiences have changed us on the outside. I want Matt to stop playing games with me like he does with everyone else and let me in. I don't think he'll be that difficult. I'm pretty sure he wants someone to know him.

On another note, my friendship-building with Tyler is progressing quite nicely. In study hall today, I sat at a table with Steven and Jenna. Tyler was sitting at a nearby table with the kids who were getting extra help. Steven said, "Tyler, why don't you come over here, man?" I knew very well that the reason was because he didn't know how to act around me. But he couldn't refuse Steven's offer, so with a little hesitation, he walked over and sat down next to Steven, kind of across from me. He asked me about the Science homework and we worked on it together, joking about random things, like we used to a long time ago. I liked it - we were kind of breaking the tension barrier.