Woo – watch your mouth – you don’t want a foot in it.
She takes another bite out of her apple, savoring the rare crunchiness, the vivid flavor, and stares far into the distance, watching the snowflakes flutter and dance and fall, blown haphazardly by the strong gusts of wind. She glances shiftily, staring out of the corner of her eyes, at the cause of the minor disturbance that shifted the balance of the bench she was sitting on.
He moves closer, and she stares coldly, unapologetically at him until he speaks.
“Hey, what’s your name again?” he says, in an odd, raspy voice. Scratchy, like nails on a blackboard.
She sizes him up, a habit she has. Though appearances really can be deceiving – she knew, she was the epitome of two-facedness – she was always rather accurate in her judgment of character, fictional or not; so she noted her observations. He was tall and slim, and easy-going in manner. She could tell by the way he sat beside her, comfortably as if they’d known each other for a while. His head is propped up on one large hand, and he leaned against it, with his elbow set firmly on the table.
She tells him her name, showing nothing else.
“We’ve met before.”
She nods curtly. “Briefly,” she says. She glances past his shoulder and waves, slightly relieved as her friend walks by with her coat clutched in tightly in her arms like a baby, her long, dull red, nearly brown hair hanging over one shoulder. She smiles as her friend sits down on the opposite side, smiling in that peculiar way of hers.
“You guys hang out with them right?” he then says, his large, dark eyes fixed on her friend. They’re set deep in their sockets, and casts shadows beneath them, adding to his almost skeletal look along with the defined bones structure of his long face.
“So?” she says, tossing her apple with one deft flick of her wrist, and they all watched it sail over his head and neatly into the garbage can.
“Yeah? Got any dirt on them?” says her friend, who’s been obsessed with relentlessly teasing two since she caught a whiff of a few months before.
“Some.”
She frowns and plugs herself into her music, catching bits and pieces of their excited conversation. She only realizes it’s over when her friend waves goodbye, and none-too-subtly.
She looks up, almost hopefully, but it vanishes like it always does when she was foolish enough to be optimistic against her better judgment.
He’s about to say something, but she cuts across. “You’re in grade ten, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “What math you doing there?”
“Not higher,” she laughs icily. “Don’t you remember?”
“Right. I thought you were joking that time.”
“Hm,” she says dispassionately, looking away and up at the darkening sky, wondering if there really was some sort of higher power in the universe that was listening right now, so that whatever they were, they would grant her wishes.
She turns back to look at him.
“I like your hair.”
She freezes, but recovers quickly from being caught off guard.
He changes tactics. “So why don’t you care about them?”
“Who? Them?” she sneers. “Why should I? Just because you find the news fascinating, doesn’t mean I give a damn about my friend’s pointless, and rather ill-advised investments of emotion.”
“Why not?”
She notes how he avoids the question, and does the same by throwing another at him, wishing it was solid and sharp. “Is it crucial to your existence?”
“I just think that we can understand people more if we study them.”
“Study them,” she repeated incredulously. “Right. Now that you mention it, I’ve got enough work to do without worrying about whatever kind of turmoil they’re caught in, in that ship of theirs.”
“Ship?”
“Friendship, relationship – ship, get it?”
“Ah,” he says, chuckling. “Smart.”
“No. Not really.”
She stares uncomprehendingly back at him, wondering how much more obvious she has to be before he gets a clue.
“So why don’t you care?”
“Why should I care?” she shot back, really annoyed this time.
He was silent for a moment, as he tried to find the words that would not really come to him.
“Why are you even talking to me?” she demanded, determined to end this as soon as possible, something which she had been failing to do for the past half hour he’s sat there.
She did not like failing.
“I think you’re interesting.”
She said nothing, and he continued.
“There are not a lot of people like you.”
He pauses.
“You’re very enigmatic.”
Right.
Now, thinking back on it as she tells her friends at lunch the following day at school, having a good laugh about it, someone voices her very suspicions.
“LOL. He was totally hitting on you.”
“No,” she says, after a moments short contemplation. “I don’t think so.”
And she briefly wonders why she’s so interesting to them in that way and not the other. She’s had countless encounters with guys, some intelligent enough, or at the very least, interesting enough to fuel her amusement for a while, but ultimately, she always grew quickly tired of their persistent psycho-analysis. It seemed, all they wanted from her, was answers as they tried to understand her in a way she didn’t want anyone to.
Well, not anyone.
There was someone.
Perhaps.
[p.s. feedback is appreciated]
