So I have a crush on this guy (N). We’re both 13 right now, but I’m 9 months older than him. He’s tall, smart, athletic, and funny. He also has the most beautiful brown eyes. Anyway, I’m not sure how he feels about me. We first met in preschool, but the only thing we really knew about each other was our names. I didn’t see him during kindergarten and first grade. In second grade I saw him again, and in third grade he was in my class. I didn’t see him very often again until sixth grade. I ended up having three classes with him, which isn’t that much. But in those classes I usually sat close to him, probably because the teacher was hoping I would get him to stop talking so much. He would always tease me, but definitely not in a flirty way. He did this to literally every single girl. But in the middle of the school year, I had a few dreams that changed what I thought of him (they weren’t sexual dreams). The first dream was simple. Basically, everyone at school knew that we liked each other, but we weren’t dating. We were doing a group project in ELA, and he was in my group. We were standing on one side of one of the high tables in the pod while the other three group members were on the other. I laid my head on his shoulder, and then he put his arm around my waist. And that’s the whole dream. It may seem like, “So? That’s a normal thing while dating someone”. Well, remember, we have never dated and he doesn’t even know I like him. In the second dream, there was a party at my house with lots of people from my grade, and my crush was one of them. For some reason, there were people out on the deck even though there was ice on it. My crush slipped on the ice and fell. I was super worried about him and was frantically asking if he was alright. He responded with “Yes! I’m fine! Stop asking!”, which is what his personality was like back then. And that was the end of that dream. At first, I was very confused about my dreams because I was sure that I hated him, mainly for being an asshole, so I didn’t understand why I would have dreams where I feel exactly the opposite about him. But then, the whole “love and hate aren’t so different” thing happened and I realized that actually, a lot of the things he did and said were pretty cute, it was just that I was taking everything he said and did too seriously. But there was another boy (S) that I had already liked for a while, and he was my N’s best friend. Over the summer between sixth and seventh grade, I tried to convince myself that I shouldn’t like my N, and that S would be better for me. It worked, until the second month of seventh grade. N asked me if I could give him the answers to a worksheet in Social Studies. I said yes because I’m a nice person and because I was sure that he already knew everything that was being asked about. As I was turning to head back to my seat, he touched my arm, stopping me, and said “I love you”. He tells a lot of different people that he loves them; peers, teachers, boys, girls, his best friends, and people he just met. But it was his touch that got me. The touch was soft and gentle, completely opposite of what someone would think. If you just heard the way he talked and acted, you would expect him to grab rather than touch. His touch showed me that inside, he’s just a big softie. Then I started liking him again, but I still had an argument with myself that S was better. At the Winter Wonderland dance, I asked S if he would dance with me, which in my school is basically the same as telling someone you like them. He shook his head no and walked away. I cried for a few days, but got over it pretty quickly. I still think he’s a bit better than all of the other boys (except for N) but I can’t say I like him anymore. When I stopped liking S, I realized that I liked N a lot more than I thought. We were doing this thing called Future City (FC) together throughout the whole seventh grade year, and he was on my team. Since we started working together, he became really nice, and it seemed genuine. He said he would teach me how to solder and we worked on moving parts together and asked for my number. In the mean time, my friends were constantly shipping me with him, even though they didn’t know I liked him. They apparently saw lots of signs that he liked me. They said that he always listened to me and looked at me while I was speaking, but he didn’t do that to anyone else. They told me that he kept sneaking glances at me and that he defended me when people were trash talking me during Model UN (I didn’t do MUN). He also said that he wouldn’t have been able to get anything done without me and that I was his rock. Ever since then, he’s been really nice to me, even though we’re on different FC teams this year. I was thinking about him all summer. In August, I went to a picnic. S’s little sister was their. While I was on my phone, she took it and asked who she should text. I told her to text N because I knew he wouldn’t care. She then clicked on his contact and ran away. When I got my phone back I saw that she had indeed texted him, saying that she stole my phone and was texting people. Later, my bff’s little brother stole my phone and texted him too. Afterwards, I texted him an apology. The next day, I apologized in person and he said “No, it’s fine. I actually thought it was kind of funny. I actually snap chatted a screenshot of it to S.” I was surprised, I thought he would be annoyed, but I took it. Then, about a week ago, he came up to me while walking to lunch and said “S is so slow! Actually I have a story to tell you. So someone, I think it was ——, told me this happened. So you know how A is Jewish, right? So apparently, Mrs. L heard him say that he accidentally didn’t celebrate Jewish new year and said ‘Oh your Jewish?’ That will be great for the Holocaust unit!’” He usually doesn’t talk to girls in the hallway, so what he did was unusual. A few days ago, during gym, I noticed that he usually looked at me whenever the teacher said something funny or roasted the boys, which was often. But I saw that when he didn’t look at me, he always looked at M, a girl that he’s liked since fourth grade and, according to other people, still likes. Here’s the thing though, M and I have literally nothing in common, so it makes me think that he might not like me, even though his actions sometimes suggest he does. Today during gym we played prison ball and he was on my team. He always threw to me when I was out to get me back in, and always thanked me when I got him back in. But I also noticed that before we started, M was standing and talking with her friends, and N was sitting close by behind her, seemingly looking at her butt. My questions are: Does he like me or not? Why is he giving mixed signals?When should I tell him I like him? I was planning on telling him on the second to last day of school because I don’t think he likes me.