Freshman year — The Winter Formal. "He's just a friend," I had insisted for weeks leading up to the dance, in reference to the boy who had asked me. Six of us shared a limo to an Italian restaurant, and a table in our darkened gymnasium, decorated with a "Winter Wonderland" theme.

Adam and I look so awkward in the photograph. We're standing against a blue backdrop, between white columns and fake poinsettia, Styrofoam snow at our feet. The photographer posed us just as he had posed every couple that evening.

"All right, get in close. Put your hand on her waist there. And you, put your hand on his arm so we see that lovely corsage of yours."

We hadn't danced yet. As soon as we had gotten to the Formal, we got in line to take pictures, to get it over with. Adam and I had never stood that close to each other, our bodies touching, the whole front of my body pressed up against the whole front of his body. What had I thought dancing was going to be?

I tried not to breathe, as if breathing were a sign that I was comfortable with, or even enjoying, being pressed up against this boy who was just a friend. Adam looked at me, to silently ask permission to follow the photographer's direction. He rested the very tips of his fingers on my waist. His touch was so light that it tickled. I wanted to laugh, and that's when the flash went off.

Me stifling a giggle fit.

It's not that bad really. My eyes are a bit squintier than I might want them, and my jaw is tight, but I wonder if I could walk through that gym now, view myself in my life, if I might just whisper, "Look at me, I look fine."

Earlier that evening, my mother had painted my fingernails with red polish. She curled my long, brown hair on pink sponge-rollers, and brushed the tight ringlets into soft waves. I wore the dress I had worn a year earlier as a bridesmaid in her second wedding. My dress was emerald green satin, off-the-shoulder, full skirt, tea-length. My shoes were dyed to match. I had grown a couple of inches during that year, and the skirt had gone from tea-length to at-the-knee. It didn't look right. My mother had her friend sew me an underskirt trimmed in layers of black tulle flecked with little emerald sparkles. My dress was again tea-length, and I swished when I walked.

But at the time, all I could see was what made me different from the other girls. Their mothers had taken them to salons for professional French-twists and acrylic-tipped French manicures. I was sure that the other girls were more grown up in their little black dresses; none of them were wearing a dress they'd worn in middle school. They had stories to bond over about shopping for their dresses, where they had gone, how many dresses they had to try on before finding the perfect one. There were even rumors of girls who traveled out of the central valley to big cities three and four hours away, escaping the "timeless" dresses at our local mall.

When the limo dropped me off at my house, and Adam walked me to my door, his friends called out, "Kiss her!" I blushed and rolled my eyes as if to say I understood that my date was only interested in me as a friend. But maybe that was only to prevent myself from the disappointment of telling him that it was okay to kiss me, and him telling me that he didn't want to, that he really didn't like me like that.

Or maybe he would have given me a peck, and I would have spent all weekend reliving the moment, closing my eyes and puckering up to imaginary lips, and agonizing about what this all meant for our "relationship." And then on Monday, it might have meant nothing. It might all have been deemed a mistake, just one of those things that happened, as if we had accidentally fallen lips-first toward each other.

Mariel Howsepian-Rodriguez is a contributing writer to The Santa Monica Daily Press, writing a biweekly column called "West Dressed." She received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Antioch University and her B.A. from CSU Fresno in Anthropology. In 2007, Mariel performed her one-person play "Poison Apple" as part of Los Angeles' What's the Story Festival of New Works. Mariel teaches math and science at a Los Angeles middle school and lives in Santa Monica with her husband.