#65: Stacey's Big Crush
Just the cover of this book is checking all of my boxes:
Stacey (!!!)
Boy-craziness
One of the four thousand dances held in Stoneybrook annually
The fanciest tuxedo you could possibly wear to a middle school dance
LET’S. FUCKING. GO!
Stacey the math whiz finds out that her class is getting a student teacher for the last month of school. (From the master’s program at Stoneybrook Community College. Okay…?) His name is Wesley Ellenburg and she thinks he sounds like a huge nerd, an “inexperienced dweeb.” Only… turns out he’s a 22-year-old hunk who looks like Tom Cruise and loves math and cracks dad jokes. Sam Thomas who? Stacey is obsessed.
“He could have been reading the phone book, and I would have found it scintillating.” - Stacey, page 41
Wes is charming, witty, and a good listener. Stacey is head over sophisticated heels. Her friends all think she’s a little crazy (after all, she’s thirteen and he’s twenty-two and her teacher) but she can’t be tamed. Charlotte Johansson also has a crush on a boy, named Bruce Cominsky. Stacey catches her experimenting with makeup and Charlotte asks Stacey for advice.
“A crush is… something that hits you right away. Love takes longer. It has to grow.” - Stacey, page 53
Stacey starts dressing up for math class and working extra hard on her homework. She becomes Wes’s star pupil and he gives her extra attention, calling on her a lot. It makes her feel great but the other girls in her class (and probably some of the boys) are jealous. She’s also built up an elaborate relationship with him in her head so that when he asks her to stay after school and help him organize his files, she basically considers it their first date. One day after she’s stayed to help him he gives her a ride to Claudia’s for the BSC meeting and - gasp - their hands touch as he shifts gears. (So, as a teacher, I would NEVER be alone in a car with a student - nor would I let a student average my class’s grades. Yikes.) Of course, Wes probably means nothing by any of this but Stacey interprets it as the beginning of their love story.
Sam calls and asks Stacey to the spring dance at SMS, and Stacey thinks it’s sweet but she turns him down and says she’s already going with someone else. She is holding out hope that Wes will ask her. Oh, sweetie, no. But also… relatable. Stacey feels so strongly that she writes a love poem and gives it to Wes. (Girl is brave. In my day, we just put up vague away messages on AIM. Probably with Taking Back Sunday lyrics.)
Honestly, it’s a decent poem, and Wes reads it right in front of her. But Stacey’s kind of crushed when Wes kind of stutters and then goes to a meeting without really acknowledging it. Charlotte tries the same thing with Bruce, and gets the opposite reaction - Bruce starts overdoing it, writing Charlotte a million poems a day, and Charlotte’s kind of over it. After a week with no answer from Wes, Stacey cracks and tells him she thinks she’s in love with him. He is just kind of shocked and doesn’t say anything, so she runs out of the room before he can see her cry. (Wes - you HAVE to tell Stacey that nothing will ever happen. YOU ARE THE ADULT.) Stacey rationalizes and rationalizes and keeps in mind that Wes is chaperoning the spring dance, so she thinks she still has a shot with him.
And good on Stacey, because she asks Wes to dance and he says yes. (Apparently dancing with teachers is a thing at SMS because Kristy is dancing with Mr. Fiske… what?) It’s not until Stacey asks Wes to slow dance that he finally pulls her aside and explains gently - way too gently, honestly - that they can’t be together because of their age difference. Stacey finally accepts it, but she definitely cries herself to sleep that night. Luckily she has a boss best friend, Claudia, to help her through it!
(The side plot in this book involved Mary Anne and Dawn baby-sitting a neighbor’s baby goat named Elvira. It was cute but I was too wrapped up in Stacey’s romance drama to pay much attention.)
