The Evolution of a High School Flirt

The first time Maya was called a flirt, she was so young the memory came to her second hand, passed down to her from her mom like the ancients did to ensure the survival of their history and themselves.

The way her mother told it, Maya was at the local splash pad. The day was hot, and Maya was wearing a hot pink and baby blue swimsuit with frills sewn into the bottom. Dozens of children were there that day, delighting in the spray of the wiggling flowers and turning the bright red crank to send a jet of water out of the pipe’s spout at their friends. Maya flitted from attraction to attraction, one of which, per her mom, was a little boy with ginger hair and dinosaur swim trunks. Maya followed him like an ant follows its leader, giggling at whatever gibberish his 2-year-old mouth produced. When her mom called for Maya to leave, she whined and only agreed when she was able to give a hug to Billy. Or was it Bobby? Bernie? Her mom couldn’t remember, but apparently, Maya’s hug made his cheeks match his hair.

“You’re a little flirt,” her mom told her then, and in her retelling with a pride Maya took note of. As they walked the zebra-striped crosswalk, her mom kept Maya’s hand tiny clamped in hers, as Maya was more focused on waving than walking safely. “I think he likes you,” her mom said and swore that Maya lit up like a 1,000-watt light bulb was in her chest.

Looking back, Maya pinpointed that as when it all started, when she began chasing the high that came from the gaze of a boy and of the mom who so rarely gave to her.

The name “flirt” stuck with Maya as she grew, but evolved, labeled as “boy crazy” or “smitten” or “friendly.” Sometimes they said them with an unpleasant tone she hadn’t heard before, with a snicker, and a laugh. It was almost the same way kids on the playground spat the phrase “smelly” or she overheard parents say “well, doesn’t he like to eat.”

Like many things at her age, the reason for their judgment went over her head. Wasn’t being friendly a good thing? Wasn’t she supposed to be kind? Help them to share? Be their friend? If her mom encouraged it, why would it be bad?

In fourth grade, she learned in a vocabulary lesson the word “connotation,” and that words could have different meanings depending on who was saying it and how they were saying it.

In the eighth grade, in the hallway of Forest View Middle School, she learned the word “slut,’ — well, specifically that it could be directed towards her. She was talking with her boyfriend, Thomas, and her friends—which, she had recently learned from her peers, that she should call her “guy friends” for another reason she didn’t understand. The conversation was innocent, just talking about going to see the latest installment of the tween mystical power series they all liked. Greg, her friend—her guy friend— said she did more than the others, and the only reason she wanted to go was because she was in love with the male lead.

Maya did like him. Harley Matthews was handsome in that James Dean kind of way, but it was more than just Harley Matthews. Maya liked the movie storyline, too, and that was what kept her coming back. Which was what she told Greg with a laugh and bat of his arm, while remaining within the loop of Thomas’ around her shoulder.

Once, Maya’s girl friends had asked if she liked Greg, like like liked him, and if her touching his arm or giggling at his jokes was her flirting.

“Ew, no,” she replied, cringing. She had as many feelings for him as someone did a brother (which she hoped to God were few and never veered beyond sibling because otherwise, gross). Nothing anywhere close to flirting. That was restricted to Thomas, who made her body buzz and her mind fuzz when he kissed her.

“Slut.” Maya heard the word through a fake cough.

At the back of her neck, she felt a prick, the hair noticeably raised when her fingers grazed it. Her eyes shifted with them, and across the linoleum marred with tracks of dried slush, black scuff marks, and a piece of gum imprinted with a sneaker tread, her gaze locked with Carly Nelson, a girl in her grade who had a penchant for commentary that made everyone laugh, no matter how cruel.

Carly smirked, coughed again, this time mixed with a laugh, and never broke eye contact. “Slut.”

Maya felt the word slap her across the face, and blinked, trying to keep the burning in her eyes from spilling over.

On her right, Greg snorted. “I think she’s talking to you My,” he said and a wave of laughter rose and fell again through their circle, crashing at Maya.

Thomas caught the absence. “What?” he said, amusement in his voice. “Come on. It’s a joke. Obviously you’re not one. Everyone knows that.” He jostled her shoulders, shaking a titter from her; but if it was a joke, Maya didn’t understand it. Because jokes weren’t supposed to feel like a jab at her integrity.

Connotation, she thought again, and this was not a positive one.

In her junior year of high school, Maya is still trying to unravel the joke. Her phone lights up with notifications from her Instagram and Snapchat, each ping another ding to her self-esteem. All comments or DMS, some with that word again, others with synonyms—homewrecker, whore, skank, others so offensive she won’t utter them.

Tears slide out of Maya’s eyes in rivulets racing each other down her cheek. After days, they’ve covered so much terrain, there isn’t a centimeter that remains untouched. They started a few days before the incident that had her phone lighting up like a hyperactive firefly.

Over a dinner of Chinese food, she and Thomas had begun fighting.

First, it was about their plans for the night—he wanted to go to a party, she wanted to watch a movie—and then it was why they were never on the same page anymore, and anything else that was on their minds. Until they finally ran out of steam and on the same couch they had their first kiss, Maya told Thomas she was tired, and he said he was too, but he was more honest. He was tired of them.

Deep down, she was, too, and yet, she couldn’t admit that then. She tried to fight for them, for all they had been to one another and could, but when you’re boxing air, you don’t get very far.

Three years before, when Maya and Thomas had gotten together, she hadn’t thought they would be together forever. How often do middle school relationships last past eighth grade graduation? Rarely. She and Thomas had, though, and one year away from high school graduation, she thought that to make it this long meant they would forever.

Naïve.

Maya left with a quiet shut of the door, and drove home, wishing her eyes had their own windshield wipers.

So, when Maya’s girl friend, Dana, convinced her to go to a party the next night, Maya agreed, if only for a way to temporarily treat her depression. Thomas’s love had overwhelmed her, leaving her feeling warm and safe and wanted. Now, she was frigid, open to all enemy interference, and disposable. Utterly disposable.

In an attempt to fill the gap wretched open in her chest where the light had once been, Maya downed a beer. And another. When that didn’t help, suctioned herself to Greg’s side, and curled up in his lap like a toddler. She guesses she had never really stopped feeling that age.

He pulled her upstairs to a private room, petted her hair as she cried into his jeans, and told her he still loved her. She was wanted, but not in the way she wanted.

Maya’s phone bounces in her hand with a new text. “Hey, don’t let them get to you. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Greg’s message says. She rolls her eyes, and buckles her knees to her chest.

She didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t know he had gotten back together with his girlfriend, Nina, earlier that day, or that her friends were filming bouts of Maya clinging to him, making a fool out of herself, and sending them to Nina. She would’ve been more conscientious of how she acted if she knew, rather than thinking that they were commiserating over a shared wound.

Greg did know, and yes, he was helping her, but she’s the one inundated with toxic mail. It’s never the boyfriend.

Maya spikes her cell phone on the lime shagged carpet of her bedroom. It faceplants on the hardwood beside it. Given her luck, she bets the screen will look more like a spiderweb than the smooth glass it was before. She buries her face into her pillow to muffle the scream.

The door creaks open, accompanied by a sigh. “Honey, this needs to stop.”

Maya smears her tears on the sparrow-printed pillow sham, and lifts her head to her Mom in the doorway, disappointment etched in the wrinkles she has tried so hard to keep off her face.

Yes, it does need to stop. All these messages need to stop, Maya wants to tell her, but to do so, she’d have to be able to speak before her mom does, and that’s never been her strong suit.

“Just go over to Thomas’s and convince him you two need to get back together. That’s all that needs to be done. Don’t cry. Get him back,” she says, tossing a pile of laundry on the tiny black bench at the bottom of Maya’s bed.

Not “move on,” or “you don’t need him.” Get him back. Because that’s what matters to her mom, what has always mattered based on the carousel of men that has rotated throughout their shared life.

“Please leave me alone,” Maya says and retreats back into her pillow. Her mom sighs again, and Maya waits until she hears the click of the door to turn her head and take a breath. Beyond her bed, her phone dings again and again, and she can guess as to why without checking.

Maya doubts—no, she knows,—Greg has never been called a whore, or a slut, or “too friendly.” This time, she grasps the why without understanding it completely.

She did what she was told, what she had been taught by society, and pop culture, and her mom. She prioritized her life—her worth—in order of importance based on those lessons. She followed their rules, tried to play their game.

And where had it left her? Bawling in her room, with an echo chamber telling her who she is and without her knowing anymore, and maybe not ever.