“Baby breath. . . Mama breath. . . Daddy breath. . .” I whisper to the empty library.
“Just out of curiosity, what comes after Daddy breath?” a voice asks right in my ear.
I whirl around and attempt some self defense by trying to hit the origin of the voice with one clean karate chop. The resulting act was my arms flailing about violently but harmlessly in the air.
The boy, who was laughing now and plopping down in a seat, rubs the top of my head (messing up my beautiful shampoo job) and says, “Such a violent little flower.”
“Andrew.” I say his name like a curse word.
“Oh come now, you know you love me.” He batts his eyelashes, clasps his hands, and smiles his most dazzling smile in futile hopes that I will forget my anger.
It works.
“Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh” I exasperate pointedly in Andrew’s direction.
“Yeah, yeah. So how was your weekend?”
“You know, same as it always is.”
“Staring at the ceiling, reading four or five books, contemplating running away, and a last minute homework dash on Sunday night?” He chuckles but looks over at my as if expecting a breakdown right in front of him.
“I’d like to say that I ate in between those sessions of ceiling watching and book reading.” I reply while sticking out my tongue.
Andrew asks, “What did you eat this weekend, Fiala?”
“Oh you know, breakfast, lunch, dinner. Repeat.” I try to laugh nonchalantly while averting my eyes.
He just looks at me; not blinking. I stare back at him, unadmittedly becoming a little flustered by his unfaltering gaze. A minute passes while I wait for him to drop his eyes.
“That’s really unnerving, you know.”
Silence.
“Blinking is good for your health!”
He stubbornly refuses to look away or blink.
“Oh fine, I had a butter sandwich and some chips on Saturday, a soda on Sunday, and a ton of water, naturally.” I say to my lap, not wanting to see Andrew’s expression.
“Fia-”
“Please don’t” I interject. “We already know where this conversation is going to go.”
“That doesn’t mean we don’t need to discuss it!” Andrew was becoming oddly worried and angry again. I have almost become used to it. Almost.
“Listen, Andrew-”
“And please don’t feed me some other lie about you being fine and you not needing help. Can you honestly think I believe that? How hard is it to have some self control and just eat?”
“That would be loosing self control!” I yell and then pop my hands over my mouth. Between tense fingers I murmur, “I didn’t mean that.”
“You think that-”
“No, no, I was just joking. You know, lightening up the mood!”
Andrew just gives me one of those looks again. The kind of look that makes me feel like he is looking right through me, reading my thoughts and plundering in my heart ruthlessly.
It’s scares me how well he knows me. We haven’t even been friends for long since we only met at the beginning of the year in English class but already he knew an astounding amount about me. Things I fear and love, what I like and don’t like; everything. Of course, I know a lot about him in return. I have a knack for getting people to open up to me. Andrew calls it magic, I call it trustworthiness, but whatever it was, it was really helpful. And, up until the beginning of Junior year, I had never met anyone who could get me to talk the way I do with others. Generally, things stayed bottled up inside me. Nothing ever broke except maybe my heart or soul or whatever.
You see, when I met Andrew it was a big shock. First off, he could form a complete sentence without saying, “like” unless he was making a simile and that in it’s self is a huge accomplishment. Second, he made reference to The Series of Unfortunate Events, one of my upmost favoritest book series. Then, he even smiled at my during class when I’d analyzed a chapter of Of Mice and Men correctly. I’d never admit it, but that dazzling smile might have been the reason I decided to befriend Andrew.
“Hey guys!” an excited voice bursts the silence. “Do you like my outfit today?”
We throw each other a glance that means, “Oh god not her” before we turn to see Stella Evans bouncing in a green and purple floral dress that didn’t quite fit her peculiarly shaped body. A giant soccer bag is slung over her ity-bity shoulder colored a fire hydrant red that matches her paper thin lips.
“Hey Stella. Yeah, your dress is cute.” I say rolling my eyes.
“Ha ha, really? What about my lipstick?”
“Yeah that’s really cute too.”
Stella begins gabbing about how much time it took to pick out her outfit this morning and just how different she is to have chosen such an outfit while I smile and nod, attempting to tune her out. Then, something nudges my elbow. I look up to see a piece of notebook paper resting between Andrew’s hand and mine. I open it up and see,
Yes, because I’m just so different and [hair flip] awesome that I can dress like a deranged toddler hehehe!
Does she not notice that she literally begs for compliments everyday?
I stifle a laugh and quickly fold the paper back over because Stella is wandering over to our side of the table, trying to see what was written on the paper.
I snort, Nosy little witch.
Andrew sighs and knocks my knee with his in agreement.
“You know, guys? I think another thing that makes me different is-”
“Oh my goodness, look at the time, Fia!” Andrew suddenly bursts out while grabbing my wrist, jerking his head towards the clock, and rising from his chair.
“My oh my, you are right! We’ll be late!” I agree in fake alarm while grabbing our bags and standing up along side him.
“Oh, where are you guys going?” Stella asks, reaching for her bag too but no worries, we are prepared.
“We have a kind of rehearsal down in the commons today for a skit we’re doing in Drama class, I say with false sympathy in my voice. “Love to take you along but Samantha will be down there and she’ll want to be working the whole time. No distractions, sorry.”
“Ah, well I guess that’s ok. . . I’ll just wait for Aaron and Maria to get here.” She dramatically sighs, plopping down in her seat once again.
“Yepp. Have fun waiting!” Andrew says. He then grabs my hand and we rush, giggling from the library while ignoring the snotty librarian who’s reprimanding us for exiting through the wrong door.
After we run to the end of the hallway, out of sight from Stella, Andrew takes his book bag from my hands and slings it over his shoulder. Grinning, he takes off down the stairs towards the drama room for first period. Just as I begin my chase after him I think,
“That was the cutest moment ever!”
That peculiar thought stops me in my tracks.
“What? No. Any moment with Andrew can’t be cute. We’re not going through that again Fiala.”
I shake the odd thought out of my head and sprint after him, a grin growing on my face anticipating the undoubtedly eventful class we were about to walk into.
