It really only took a few seconds in reality for me to run through the events in my head. When I’d opened my eyes again, Nate was staring down at his nails.
“Are you listening to me?”
“You’re not saying anything.”
“…”
I looked at him blankly. I had become completely absorbed in thought as I was just dreaming off for those few seconds.
We just sat there not saying much, we never had to say all that much, a comfortable silence was good enough, I put feet up on his lap and sat back, while we just stared at each other for awhile. I made faces at him, making him chuckle, my favorite chuckle.
All of a sudden I saw Nora staggering over. Staggering? Nora doesn’t stagger. She looked kind of, well, dazed.
“Nora!” I shouted at her lost expression from across the room. Her head snapped up and trotted over to us with her pizza in hand.
She plopped herself down in the chair while still staring into space. Nate and I simultaneously looked at each other, and then at Nora.
“Hath thou encountered a horrible beast on thy travels, O Nora?” Nate joked, I loved it when he did that, Nora did not.
“Shut your face Nate,” she was slowly coming back to reality. I leaned over and kissed his cheek. She looked at me and said hoarsely, “You should have seen it,” I just stared at her, queuing her to continue, “this guy in line, in front of me, he was… was,”
“Smelly?” asked I.
“Green?” questioned Nate.
“Beautiful,” she made sure to stretch the word.
“Explain,” we demanded instantly.
She was obviously trying to calm herself down, I was almost sure I knew what was coming. She looked down at the table.
“Uh, gorgeous black hair, dreamy blue eyes,” she leaned on her fist still looking blank, “perfect pale skin.”
I stiffened.
“What? Oh, don’t tell me that’s him, Dee.”
My feet dropped from Nate’s lap, I glared at her
“Are you kidding me, Lydia?” Nora accused, “How can you not like him?”
“Because I don’t! He’s obviously rude and conceited!”
They glanced at me a second.
“He didn’t do anything to you!” Nora raised her voice only slightly.
“So?” I grabbed Nora’s pizza that had been sitting there uneaten. They sighed and stopped right there. Nora grabbed the pizza out of my hand before I had bitten into it, took and bite and then handed it back to me. We all knew I was stubborn, and it would take too much effort to convince me otherwise of my current argument.
I stuffed a huge bite of pizza into my mouth and refused to carry on any further. So the subject stopped there, and we jabbered on for the rest of lunch. We would usually stay in the lunchroom until free period which we all fixed to be after lunch, giving us extra long lunch periods. I had fixed that, my dad was a counselor and that gave us a lot of easy and useful connections.
While we were sitting there I noticed another color glimmering out of Nate’s already multi-colored hair. Most of his hair was dyed jet-black, it used to be dark brown, but he wanted it darker. His bangs that fell across his forehead that he had cut at eye length and swept it slightly to one side, were red, with more orange at the tips. At the back of his head, near his neck was blue underneath his long black hair. Now I saw a glimmer of purple. I put my hand on his neck and ran my hand through his newly dyed hair. I loved it.
I hadn’t noticed what they were wearing today either, even though I usually did.
I gazed over at him. A black “mewithoutyou” shirt over a red long-sleeved shirt clung to his tall, skinny frame. He was wearing my other drainpipes with the whiskered pockets, which we both claimed he looked great in. I’d been wondering where those went. On his feet were his terribly over-worn vans that he had spray-painted black after most of the color had already faded.
He rolled up his sleeves. Revealing the doodles and rough writing all over his fore arms, mostly his lefts arm. I wrote a few things on his right arm during first block. Obviously he got pretty bored during second block, very bored.
There was a scar above his right eyebrow where a piercing he’d had, had met with misfortune. He had big light brown eyes, a cute nose, and cute ears. I told him he had cute ears once, he didn’t really get it. Nate and Nora were some of the beautiful people. They had mature, wonderful features. I envied them.
My best friend, Nora, was in a very tattered over-sized white t-shirt over a black tank top. It sat squarely on her shoulders and silhouetted her frame. The shirt hung over her torn jeans. They were bleached and we had contributed in covering them in random things that had to came to mind written in sharpie. Black nails, dark brown hair with blond roots. She topped all this off with knee high orange converse, oh how I coveted them. I borrowed them every chance I got. It was amazing how she was able to make every outfit she wore, no matter how bizarre, work. To put it bluntly they always looked absolutely stunning.
The bell for next period and we sat there, perfectly stationary until the lunchroom and hallways were filtered out.
“Come on guys, get to class,” ordered a campus monitor who had been running by, yelling at kids to get to class.
“Yes sir,” we replied, staying in our current positions as he passed. He didn’t even notice that we had not moved, as he moved on herding kids into classrooms.
A minute or two passed. The halls were now relatively empty, and there was not a hall monitor in sight, they must all be in busier parts of the building.
We rose from our chairs, inspecting our surroundings.
“Ready Butch?” Nate turned to Nora, she nodded, a serious look on her face, “Ready Sundance?” I nodded, in our normal reply, “Then on your mark,” we formed a line, “get set,” we leaned forward in runner stance, he paused before his next line, paused, paused, “GO!”
“And they’re off!” I announced in my dramatic announcers voice as we ran, “and it’s Nate in lead, as always,” he slowed down a bit letting me get a head, “and now it’s Lydia and Nora in the lead, leaving Nate in the dust, yes that’s right ladies and gentlemen in the dust.”
At that, Nate picked up speed and shot in front of us. “Oh my gosh ladies and gentlemen! Look at him go, my god what a recovery!”
We all turned a corner, stopping immediately in case of certain people coming around the corner when we did. When we saw the coast was clear we set off again towards the theater.
I was in the back, tired from being the announcer as I always was. Nate stopped suddenly, Nora did the same, and I was unable to stop in time. Nate turned towards me and caught me in his arms before I was able to crash into the wall. He caught me and we stumbled about laughing for a minute, then it was back to business.
We were at the theater doors; the theater was usually vacated, except if they were building sets, and it was very easy to get into. For the teachers of our school think us too ignorant to find the keys that sit in unlocked box office next to the theater doors. Really now.
Well, we did in fact attended a very small school, in a rather small and quite boring town, there was not much of a record of theft here, the teachers trust the students way too much, and our janitor is very old and tends to keep thing unlocked, which is how Nora always manages to get into the sound booth and such.
When we got in unseen we sat in the far corner, the darkest part of the house. We sat there acting all mysterious and inconspicuous, perched like gargoyles on the railings.
I absolutely loved the theater, the smell and feel of being on the stage under the lights. Nora loved the working the sound and lighting in the little booth up on the balcony. She’s got the whole “techy” thing going, and you should see her with a spotlight. Nate loved the open light and dark, and being on the catwalks. God I love him.
No body ever caught us here, we made sure of that. Hiding the keys is not a hard thing to do, and it is easy to hear someone struggling to get into the theater. Nobody keeps anything important in here anyway, so people really don’t have a reason to come in here anyway.
We pulled two armchairs (pieces of an ample supply of props) from backstage into the spotlight Nora had pointed at center-stage. We soon heard “Beast and the Harlot” coming faintly, but audibly enough over the loud system.
Nate and I sat in the chairs on the stage. I took his hand and turned it around playfully in mine. Then I took my sharpie in hand and colored his thumbnail black.
We were wearing microphones so that Nora could hear up in the booth.
“Okay,” I yawned, “Nora, if you could describe me with one word, what would it be?” A fuzzy noise came from the loudspeaker, it was her sighing.
“Well,” she stretched the word, “I’d have to say,” pause, obviously she was pondering what she would say next. “Tuna-noodle casserole.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Yeah, ya know what tuna comes from, right?”
“Fish,” said Nate, wrinkling his nose.
“It’s fish!” shouted Nora over the speakers making us jump, “very good Nate, my lad, well actually it’s dolphin, I think, but anyway.”
“I’m not following, continue,” I said without pausing.
“Well, it’s fish, you like seafood don’t you? And you’re like obsessed with the ocean and stuff like that; I don’t know, anyway, noodles. Ya know the kind of noodles they put in those casserole thingies?”
“Yeah.”
“The curly kinda ones?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Anyway,”
“Yeah.”
“So they’re like curly, loopy kinda.”
“Yer saying I’m loopy?”
“You are kinda,” Nate finally spoke. I glared him, he smiled down at me, making me giggle at him little smirk. “I like those noodles,” he said.
“Me too,” Nora agreed. “Anyway, we all like the loopy noodles, and finally, the casserole, you make so many different things taste so good together.”
Nate leaned in close to me and kissed my cheek, then chuckled lightly to himself.
“Technically that’s kinda three words, but I guess with the proper hyphenation I could accept it.”
We carried on like that until the bell rang. I described Nora as a lemur, because she’s so flippin energetic. Nate, with Nate I said blue. I don’t know why, I couldn’t explain it, it was just the first thing I thought of.
~
There he was again, in my block 3, world studies class. Again sitting with that smug sort of look on his face. Every time his head was turned, I looked up at him, biting my lip. He didn’t seem to notice. My head snapped back to my work. I couldn’t let him make it hard for me to concentrate, despite the fact he was unbelievably beautiful.
Coincidently, the teacher had in fact chosen to place him diagonally across from me, at another cluster of desks, where I would half to make a half turn to sneak a glare at him.
The girl at my desk cluster was a nervous nerdy type, kind of a shaky little thing, though. I asked her for a pencil, and she jumped.
The two boys were obviously “best buds.” They would not shut up. It didn’t take an idiot to see they were jocks, talking about some big game or something like that. They were wearing jerseys, one had blonde hair, the other had light curly brown hair, and were built like football players. I did my best to ignore that conversation.
I heard him tear out a piece of paper. He scribbled something on it, and then flung it at me. It bounced off my head and landed in front of me, leaving me flustered and angry.
I cautiously opened the folded piece of paper, making sure the teacher didn’t notice. On the inside…
What’s your problem?
What’s my problem!? What’s my problem he asks? I was too angry to ignore it, so I scrawled on the note.
What the hell do you mean my problem?
I folded it back up and flung it right in front of him, turning my chair so he could not make another attack to my head. I was proud at that moment and grateful I had spent all those painstaking weeks, during the time I had broken my leg several years ago, flipping cards into a hat with Nate.
He opened it and snickered at me. He wrote, and then flicked it back at me, and this is basically how it went…
You keep staring at me like I have leprosy or something
I do not! Who the hell are you anyway!?
aiden pierceson, pleasure
Well then, up yours Aiden Pierceson
haha, wow you’re kind of a bitch
and you’re kind of an asshole
Now why would you think that? You seem very sure of yourself.
As do you, and I’m pretty sure you are since you just go around simply assuming I’m a bitch when I’ve done nothing to you at all
Well you seem to be a loose cannon with me just acting so hostile.
I stared down at the note. Why was I carrying on this stupid argument? I left it blank, and folded it back up. My arm extended to fling it into the trash can behind him when-
“Are you passing notes in my class, Lydia?” Mr. Schneider held out his hand demanding the piece of paper I was holding in my shaky hand.
“Um,” was all I could manage. Schneider was so strict about passing notes during his class, even if we weren’t really working on anything at the time. He was always prepared to pass the maximum penalty for this “crime.”
I froze up. I couldn’t afford the sentence that he was about to pass upon me. If I got another detention, I would be grounded again, after I had just payed three weeks to my dad for all the detentions I had gotten. There was never any arguing with him.
I stared at Aiden, ugh Aiden, what kind of a name was that, hoping there would be an ounce of chivalry in him at this time. He looked at the teacher like he was going to say something. I was waiting for him to step in and say something, anything, which was really stupid of me. He sat there and said nothing.
Schneider simply toke the note out of my hand. “Thank-you,” he said and handed me a detention slip. “I’ll call your dad down in the office.”
He put the slip in front of me on the desk. I slumped down in my seat. Disgusted that he didn’t do anything to Aiden even though he must have seen we were both part of this.
I sat there motionless for the rest of class. Glaring at my books in front of me. I could feel steam rising from my head. Aiden tilted himself away from me and never said a word throughout the rest of the class. How is it I’m so utterly angry with him for not doing anything. I knew I was making a big deal about it, but why didn’t he get in trouble?
