48 Days: You'd think I was making this up . . .

I sighed as I pushed through the doors into the early morning chill. I'd been avoiding him all through the shift, but after taking apart the student commons, learning how to work the extractor, cleaning blood off a chair, and then resetting the student commons, I'd run out of things to do. So I walked through the breezeway and into the South Hall, pausing to grab a newspaper on my way in.

"Jessica!" He was happy to see me. He's always happy to see me, though after I've been giving him the cold shoulder for a week you'd think he'd start to resent me. I looked up at his voice and twitched my lips into a smile. Clark Kent was beaming at me, his hands on the recycling bin. Obviously that's not his real name, but I'd been calling him that in my head for weeks. He was just so farm-boyish.

Clark is a nice kid. Normally I wouldn't mind having to work with him. But he's a little too . . . high maintenance for a four o'clock in the morning partner. I'm only working with him until the boss hires someone new, but just the last four days have been driving me batty. He has a talking fetish; he can't stand to let more than three minutes go by without conversation. And despite the fact that I barely know him, he talks to me like we've grown up together and I'm his very bestest friend in the whole world. Probably after knowing him for a month or so, I wouldn't mind. But on the first shift together? It's a little clingy for my liking.

I join Clark walking down the hall, gathering recycling. My silence lasts for only a few moments before he gets fidgety. He sees the paper in my hand. "What's in the headlines today?" he asks, cheerfully.

I look down. "Um, well, there's 'One in Five Teenagers Suffers From Hearing Loss.' And, um," at the next headline I snort derisively, "There's this one from the etiquette series: 'Knowing Proper Courtship Etiquette.'" I have never been subtle, and I'm sure that something in my voice must be dripping with scorn, but Clark doesn't pick up on it.

"Really?" he asks, sounding intrigued. "What does the dating one say?"

I raise my eyebrow, but reading from the paper is a good way of making him think I'm talking to him without having to come up with my own words. So I start reading the article out loud. If I were with my friends, we'd be having a good laugh about this, but Clark seems genuinely interested in learning about the best ways to ask someone out, the rules for who should pay, and the question of opening doors for women.

I finally get to the end, and let the silence between us swell up like an inflatable wall. But in a moment, Clark pulls out a pin and punctures it. "So how do YOU like to be asked out?"

The air flies out of me. I wasn't prepared for this conversation. I can feel his eyes on me but I keep mine focused straight ahead. I stammer for a minute, laughing feebly, trying to pretend he's not serious. "I wouldn't know about that," I finally say. "I don't have a lot of experience in that area."

This seems to truly shock him. He goes on for a while about how we're so alike, custodians with no social lives and all that. I am glad to have dodged the question with my non-answer, but after another couple of minutes he asks me again. "You didn't really answer the question. How do you like to be asked out?"

More spluttering. I escape by exclaiming, "Oh! The preschool! I forgot to show you how to do recycling in the preschool!" Always eager to learn new things, Clark follows me into the preschool area and watches intensely as I show him where the bins are. After a few more minutes however, when I am convinced that I have successfully distracted him, he asks, "What do you think constitutes a proper date?"

His eyes are searching mine, and I look away, feeling ridiculously awkward and trying to find a way out of this conversation. This boy is far too interested in me, and even talking about dating feels like leading him on. And I have absolutely no desire to lead him on; for one thing, he's like a little kid and I don't want to hurt his feelings, and for another, the guy weirds me out!

"I don't know," I say.

"What do you like to do on dates?" he clarifies.

"Er, well . . . ." He's too patient. I burst out, "I don't think there's a rule!"

"Hm, interesting," he says. He opens his mouth again but by then I've found the bathroom crew and I run over to them, pretending to need to talk to my old partner, Damon. But they have real work to do, and they only provide a few precious minutes' escape. Eventually I'm alone with Clark again, pushing the cart onto the elevator. I look at the clock. Just five more minutes until I can excusably leave to clean out one of the machines.

The elevator doors open and I pull the cart through. While I'm busying fumbling with the heavy newspaper bin, Clark asks, "So why do you think you don't date much?"

WHAT?

This is beyond socially awkward, even for him. I look at him in disbelief, my mouth slightly agape and my eyebrows knitted in confusion. He smiles that old carefree smile at me, but his eyes tell me that he really wants to know. That's the thing with this kid; no small talk. What the devil does he expect me to say? Why on earth should I even know why I don't get asked out? It's not like any guy has ever approached me and said, "I considered asking you out, but you didn't quite meet my standards. Here's a list of things you can improve on."

But Clark won't let me go. He's staring at me, so I push past him with a feeble, "That's a really good question."

"I know, right?" he says, as if it's one of science's most perplexing dilemmas. "But what's the answer?"

I practically throw my hands up in the air, fed up. "Another good question!" I say, through the smile plastered to my face. Before he can say anything else, I shove a barricade of words at him. "Listen, I've got to go clean out the CFR for Chelsea. I used it on a couple of chairs today and night crew left it really filthy yesterday so I'm going to go now . . . and . . . yeah . . ." I've been backing away, and when Clark mumbles some sort of reply I shout, "Great, thanks! I'll see you later!" and run off down the hall.

When I get to the closet where the machine is stored, I lean against the wall and close my eyes. A single thought paces in circles around my head:

I am so sick of BYU and dating!

Today's Movie: "The Haunting of Deck Twelve" (Star Trek Voyager Episode)