Dear Diary – Chapter 5
There was a knock at Jace Valentine’s bedroom door. “Come in,” Jace called from his cross-legged position on the floor in front of the Xbox. The door slipped open and Ashley Simmons took a step inside. Jace paused the game. “Ashley! What are you doing here?”
“I came to see how you were doing,” she said honestly, “but it looks like you’re just fine.” She eyed his arm, still in the cast but obviously healed and moving with ease.
He looked at it too, and struggled for words. Uniformed football stars stared down at him from the walls. “Uh… yeah, the doctors said I healed really fast. It wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone thought it was.”
“So you can come back to school?”
He hesitated. “Well, it’s still not strong enough for football.”
She made a face. “So football is the only reason for you to go to school?”
He didn’t see the issue. “Yeah…”
She sighed and flopped down on the bed. Jace sat beside her. An image of a car exploding was frozen on the television screen. “Jace, what do you plan on doing after we graduate?”
“Well,” he began, “I was planning on getting a football scholarship somewhere, before that piece of junk Ender ruined the season for me.”
“And now?”
“I’m hoping I can do well enough next year that they’ll overlook this season.”
“What if they don’t? What if you can’t get a sports scholarship? Then what?”
He scoffed. “Hey, don’t worry about that. Why are you asking about it anyway?” He stretched his arm around her shoulders. His fingers curled around her shoulder and pulled her closer. She twisted away, arms folded across her chest. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Jace asked, looking offended.
“Jace, what are we doing?” Despite Jace’s lack of sense, her tone got the message across. His face drooped as she continued. “All you care about is football.”
“That’s not true,” he defended. “I care about you, baby…”
“Then why don’t you come to school?!” The words burst from her mouth a little more forcefully than she intended. “I never see you anymore. Have you just been sitting here playing video games since the accident?”
“No, I’ve been… resting, too…” he muttered.
“You couldn’t even let me know you were better?”
“Well…”
“You might have been hurt but it only takes one hand to talk on the phone or knock on my door.”
“Ashley…” He stood up, obviously exasperated. “I don’t need this right now, okay? I’m just trying to take it easy and get better so I can go back and save the team from taking last place. If you didn’t come over here to be my girlfriend, then don’t be here.”
Ashley gasped. She stood to glare into his eyes, although she was a good six inches shorter than him. “You can’t be serious! ‘To be your girlfriend’? What am I, your property or something?”
Jace forced a laugh. “Of course not! Stop being ridiculous, Ashley.”
“Me stop being ridiculous?” she flared. “Do you even hear the words coming out of your mouth? What is your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem!” Jace retorted. “It’s you who always makes a big deal out of everything! Why’s everything always have to be so important?!”
Ashley took a long breath and sat down on the bed. It squeaked beneath her. “Can I ask you something?”
“If you must.”
Her eyes, wide and brown and glittering with emotion, met his, still hard and defensive. “Why are we together?”
Jace took a long time to reply. His expression didn’t change much, but his voice was softer when he finally spoke, “Why wouldn’t we be?”
She looked into her lap and exhaled slowly. When she looked back up, she had determination set in her eyebrows and jaw. “I don’t want to do this anymore, Jace. There’s no reason for any of it. It’s pointless. We’re over. Okay?”
For what seemed like minutes, Jace stood, a vacant expression on his flat face. Ashley wondered if he’d heard her in the first place, or perhaps if he had suddenly lost his ability to comprehend the English language. She figured it would happen one day. But then he hissed, “No.”
“Excuse me?” She stood.
He looked at her now, fire in his eyes. “You can’t leave me. I won’t let you.”
The absurdity of the situation brought a chuckle to her lips. “How exactly does that work? I can leave you anytime I want to. And I just did.”
With one sweeping forward motion, Jace tore off his sling, grabbed her wrists, lifted them above her head, and pressed her back against the wall, hard. A picture frame fell from its place and cracked on the floor. Ashley yelped. She wanted someone downstairs to hear her, but she knew Jace’s mom, the only one home, was hard-of-hearing and watching television in the front room with the volume at nearly maximum. She tried to squirm away, but he had a strong grip. His face was only inches from hers.
“Jace!” she screamed. “Let me go! Right now!”
He leaned in. She felt his thick, dry lips on hers. Once she had loved his kiss, but now, it repulsed her, and she tightened up, squeezed herself against the wall as hard as she could to get away from him. Her mouth was shut tightly, and although he tried to open it, she refused. After a moment, he leaned back and fumed.
Ashley glared into his eyes, jumping from one to the other. “It’s over, Jace.”
Enraged, he threw her to the side. She hit the floor, knocking her head against the frame of his bed. She saw stars, and felt a sharp pain in her left arm. As she waited for her vision to clear, Jace picked her up again with ease and threw her onto the bed. “It’s not over until I say it is!” he roared. “You will be my girlfriend for as long as I want you to, understand?!”
She could again see his veins bursting and his red face, and she looked at her arm. Blood was oozing from a deep cut. A steak knife, tipped in crimson, previously on the floor and resting on a forgotten plate, now lay on the bed next to her. Looking at it made the agonizing sensation ripple through her arm and chest and head, almost made her lose sight again. She stifled a scream.
The anger had left Jace. Now he stood, like a werewolf that had changed back just a moment too late. He saw what he’d done. “Baby…” he cooed. “Ashley… Oh my… No… Ashley, I… Not again…” He came forward, sat on the bed gently, and tried to get close to her. Ashley scrambled to back away into the corner, eyes open wide and face pale. “I didn’t… mean to… It won’t happen any more, I…”
“That’s right. This is the last time.” Pressing hard on her wound to stop the blood, Ashley crawled away from him, always with her eyes glued to him and ready to jump at any movement. She stood from the bed, backed toward the door, opened it, and backed out of the room, and out of Jace Valentine’s life forever.
Jace returned to his Xbox.
Ashley wore long sleeves for the rest of the month.
My phone rang. It startled me – I was trying to concentrate on my algebra homework, which I didn’t get in the least. I had even turned off my music to think, which was why the shrill ring tone was so loud and unexpected. After taking a deep breath and calming myself down, I carefully stepped over piles to get to the phone, and I picked it up on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Alex?”
It was Ashley again. I froze. I thought of Ender, wondered if he was somehow watching me, or listening in on the phone. I almost just hung up right then. But I could tell something was wrong with her. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
She didn’t say anything. The line was completely quiet.
“Ashley. Are you there?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
More silence. I waited for a reply. I wondered if I should say more, but worried that at the same time I opened my mouth, she would start to talk, so I was patient. I kept my eyes on the clock. I watched the seconds pass by. All the while, she said nothing. My ear started to hurt, so I quickly switched, eager not to miss a word. For ten more seconds, nothing happened.
She made a noise, the beginning of a word, but she stopped. Then I heard a click.
“So.” Chloe and I were at the usual table, eating the usual (or unusual, in her case) food. “Got any more mysterious threats from that homicidal freak?”
I shook my head and munched a fry. “Nope.”
“Think we should tell anyone about it?” Today’s special was fish chunks and baked beans, in the same container. She scooped it up and downed it like it was breakfast cereal.
“He’s supposed to be in jail,” I said, more to myself than Chloe. “How the heck did he get that message into my locker?”
“Maybe he got one of his buddies to do it for him?”
“What buddies?”
“Good point.”
“He must have thought those flowers were from me, just like Ashley did,” I theorized. “But how did he even know about those in the first place? It’s not like he was around.”
She shrugged and tipped her bowl to drink the last of her meal.
“It just doesn’t make any sense.”
When the bowl and her mouth were empty, she said, “She got another bouquet.”
“Really? Probably from the same guy, right?”
“Definitely,” she nodded. “This time, there was a note.”
“What did it say?”
“There was one less flower than last time, apparently.” She looked up, trying to remember. “The note went something like, ‘When a single bloom remains, there also will your true love be.’”
“Wow. That’s pretty cheesy,” I chuckled. “How many flowers were there this time?”
“Six. If you ask me, it sounds like she’s getting asked to the Winter Ball.”
I hadn’t thought of that. And the fact that these flowers could mean nothing more calmed me down. Ashley was quite popular, after all. What guy didn’t want to ask her to the Winter Ball? And despite her recent state (which seemed to be increasingly negative), I still heard boys whisper about her in class and after school, and even out shopping and at restaurants. But even so, if Ender was still under the impression that I was the one delivering them… he wouldn’t be happy about it, and, according to his note, I’d be the next one with a bullet in my arm. For a moment I pondered the possibility that I actually was the one delivering the flowers, but my memory was somehow incomplete. But that was sci-fi stuff. It didn’t happen in real life. Did it?
“Is it possible that I really am the one delivering the flowers, and I don’t know it?” I asked Chloe.
She gave me a serious look. “Crap. You weren’t supposed to find out.”
“…What?”
She sighed and gravely put down her carbonated pickle juice. “I’ve been secretly controlling your brain for the past two weeks. I hoped you wouldn’t figure it out.”
Then she smiled, and we both laughed.
Yeah. Stupid idea.
That was when she casually mentioned: “Did you know that Ashley broke up with Jace?”
I nearly spit my milk across the table. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “Yup. Three days ago. She went over to his house and dumped him.”
I was amazed. “How is it that you know these things, Chloe?”
“I don’t know, to be honest,” she confessed, taking another swig of pickle juice. “People tell me things, I overhear things… and it helps to have the entirety of the girls’ bathroom stalls memorized so whenever a new sketch shows up, I know about it.” I couldn’t tell whether or not she was joking.
But it was great news. And not just for me. I looked over at her spot in the cafeteria. Again, there she sat, this time sleeping, head in arms, an entire tray of uneaten food pushed aside. She was slowly falling apart. And now that Jace was out of the picture… maybe there’d be room for me. And I knew exactly what I’d do; I’d show her how she deserved to be treated.
Dear Diary – Chapter 4
“So, I noticed Ashley’s been avoiding you.”
That was Chloe Tyler. She was taller than I was, and almost as skinny. Her hair was this long, straight sheet that always seemed to catch the light just the right way to make it sparkle a brilliant amber color. She was on the girls’ basketball team, but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at her. When she wasn’t on the court, she wore nothing remotely athletic, and was never seen around the other basketball girls the way the others stuck together. And she always had this spacey look in her eyes, like she was always imagining herself somewhere else. She was beautiful, to boot. She had a few classes with me, and I remembered thinking of her as very attractive, even though I was preoccupied with Ashley. I suppose that’s what made it not-so-strange when, as I was eating lunch inside alone (it was another stormy day), she set her tray down at the seat across from me and said, “Ashley looks pretty down, huh?” one day soon after the shooting. It was almost like I expected her to do something out of the ordinary like that.
“Yeah,” I’d told her honestly, as we both looked over at the spot where she sat. She was alone too. Usually she had a small gaggle of friends around her, but not after the shooting. She was picking at her peas absent-mindedly. “I can’t blame her.”
“No kidding,” Chloe had said. “Your boyfriend getting shot is kind of traumatic.” Then she added, “Just think, if you’d tackled Ender a second earlier, it wouldn’t have happened.”
I felt a pang of guilt. “I know. I’ve thought about it a lot.”
“But the thing is, it did happen.” I wondered where she was going with this. “And if it hadn’t, Ashley wouldn’t be sitting there by herself. Jace would be there with her.”
I gave her a puzzled look. “So…”
She grinned. I was dazzled by her perfect smile. “Just let me say, sometimes, things aren’t always what they seem.”
I had no idea what she meant by that, but I accepted it all the same.
“For instance,” she continued. “You don’t seem to like Ashley, but I know you do.”
I nearly choked on my French fry. How did she know? I hadn’t told anyone, and I’d been careful to avoid being obvious about it.
She laughed at me. Again, her smile was incredible. “It’s actually not that hard to see. You can try to hide it all you want, but the more you try, the more awkward it seems to everyone else. Once you get feelings for somebody, it’s nearly impossible to hide.”
So the word was out that I had a crush on Jace Valentine’s girlfriend. Great. Just what I needed. But Chloe didn’t make that big of a deal about it. And I figured she was probably one of the only ones who knew. She did seem to have extraordinary perception. And besides, who paid attention to the workings of Alex Winters’ love life? No one even knew my name at that school. Not yet, anyway.
The thing she’d said about things not being what they seem stayed with me ever since that first strange meeting. Afterwards, we formally introduced ourselves and had a chatted casually until the bell rang. It turned out, she didn’t really have any close friends either. Everyone was chased away by what she called her “eccentricities.” I took it to mean that spacey look in her eyes and the way she always seemed to be able to read my mind. That and the fact that she replaced the jelly in her PB&J sandwich with hot sauce. But I didn’t mind. In fact, it was strangely endearing. She seemed to have no walls whatsoever around anything in her life. She was completely open with me and talked to me like we’d been best friends since middle school. It wasn’t as disturbing as you might have thought.
It wasn’t long until we really were best friends, albeit of an unusual sort. We didn’t see each other much outside of school, but during school, we spent a lot of time together. We had more classes together than I’d thought, and in classes with more lenient teachers, we’d changed seats to be by each other. It made the days much easier to get through.
Now we were sitting at lunch once again, me with my usual French fries and her with an avocado- and orange-topped piece of chocolate cake (she called it “chocolate fruitcake”), and she pointed out, “So, I noticed Ashley’s been avoiding you.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Usually she waves back when I wave in the halls, but not since what happened after the choir concert.”
When I’d told her about what had happened the very next day, she said she already knew. I was surprised when she admitted that Tommy Watts, the frightfully scrawny boy from health class with the gauged ears, had seen us from inside. That wouldn’t have mattered if Alicia Talantar, self-proclaimed Gossip Queen, hadn’t overheard him mentioning it in passing to his buddies. Unfortunately, Alicia hadn’t heard all the details, so now the word on the street was that we’d full-on made out. In some versions, we’d gone home together. It wasn’t looking good. I hated high school.
“Well, from a girl’s point of view,” Chloe said, gulping down a piece of her horrid concoction, “I’d say that she’s trying to live it down. I mean, you’ve heard what everyone’s been saying, right?”
I nodded. Of course I had.
“She was caught ‘making out’ with you, when she’s already got Jace. I’m sure he’s upset enough as it is, and now you two are the talk of the town. She’s gotta keep clear of you until this thing dies down so people don’t get any more ideas.”
I looked back at Ashley again. For a second, I thought she glanced up at me, but before I could tell whether it had really happened or not, she was back to poking her peas. I cursed myself for what I’d done. If I hadn’t gone after her after the concert, she wouldn’t be looking so down. And, I remembered once more with chagrin, if I’d tackled Ender a second earlier, she’d still be happy, surrounded by friends. I only wanted to make her happy, and I only made it all worse. I was a curse.
*
Mr. Salazar had gone home for an emergency, and there was no time to find a substitute, so his algebra class was to be combined with Mrs. Brown’s advanced class. As Chloe and I crowded into the back of the classroom, I noticed a small bouquet of white flowers sitting on one of the desks. I was curious, but as the room filled up with kids, no one sat there. The kids on either side of the desk looked for a card, but there was none. The tardy bell rang, and still, no one sat in that chair. Mrs. Brown stood to begin her lecture. Then the door squeaked open, and a sullen-faced Ashley shuffled in. I remembered the first day in biology where I first saw her, and how much she’d changed. Instead of looking tan and healthy, she looked pale and sickly. She no longer smiled at everyone with confidence, but kept staring at the floor, hunched over, almost dragging her bag behind her. She hurried across the room to avoid the stares. A few kids whispered and giggled, and I knew she heard what they were saying. I felt so bad for her. And again I was reminded it was all my fault.
The flowers were on her desk. When she saw them lying there, she hesitated to even approach them. When she sat down, she just looked at them, surprised and confused. There were more whispers. Finally, she grabbed the bouquet by the stems, the stiff plastic wrapping crunching loudly, smelled them once, and set them beneath her chair.
I thought they must be from Jace. Maybe he was apologizing for being a jerk, like she’d told me about. I wondered why he didn’t leave a card, though. I saw someone look back at me suspiciously. They thought I must have done it. Chloe actually leaned over and asked me if those flowers were from me.
I shook my head. “No. I have no idea who they’re from.”
“Bet you it’s Willy,” she joked. Willy was the super-nerd a few math classes up who recently had taken a shine – more of an obsession – to Ashley. He was convinced that the stars told him they were a perfect match. No matter how many times Ashley tiredly explained that she already had a boyfriend, he kept trying to ask her out.
I laughed. It was likely. Still, even if they were from Willy, they would have had some kind of card with them. Mrs. Brown began her lesson, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was still watching Ashley, head on her arms, blocking out the light and sound around her, and thinking about the mysterious flowers.
*
That night, I sat down with my guitar to think. I’d let my calluses weaken over the past few months because of various factors that kept me from my guitar, so now my fingertips hurt a bit when I pressed down on the strings. It was satisfying to feel the familiar curves of the instrument under my arms, though. It felt like hugging an old friend after being away for a long time, or slipping into a favorite jacket after dying to wear it all summer long.
As I strummed out the opening riffs to a milder version of “Don’t Wait” by Dashboard Confessional, my mind wandered back over everything that had happened over the past week and a half since Ender shot Jace. Ashley’s life had gone from good to bad that quickly, and it hadn’t taken long for it to show. I wondered what Ashley meant when she’d talked about Jace being a jerk. Was he hurting her? I hoped not. I didn’t imagine a cripple would really be able to hurt her too badly. But then again, he still had his left arm. Actually, he should have been back in school by that time, but I’d heard that his parents were keeping him home until he fully recovered. They were with him on the whole football obsession, apparently – if their son couldn’t play football, then what was the point of sending him to school? I wished my parents were that cool. It didn’t seem fair that Jace had not only the girl, but the cool parents as well. Maybe he deserved to be shot. Karma, and all that.
The sky glows
I see it shining when my eyes close
I hear your warnings but we both know
I’m gonna look at it again.
That got me thinking about Ender, and what must have been going through his mind right before he pulled the gun. A lot of anger, obviously. But anger, they say, is a secondary emotion, a reaction caused my some other emotional stimulus. He was jealous. He was probably scared. He was lonely. Even the kids who’d known Kadmus didn’t know much about him, other than he liked to draw. It seemed like that was all he ever did. His life was in that sketchbook. I knew what that felt like, to put your life into something. It was a lot easier to do than actually living. After I lost contact with Becky… I’d put my life into my guitar. Ender and I really weren’t so different.
Don’t wait, don’t wait
The road is now a sudden sea
And suddenly, it’s deep enough
To let your armor down
To let your armor down
To let your armor down.
As if on cue, the phone rang, loud and shrill. I stopped playing and just stared at it for a moment, suddenly scared of who might be on the other end. It rang again. I carefully set down my guitar and walked over to it. I didn’t have caller ID in my room, but decided to answer anyway. It could have been Chloe calling to ask a question about homework, or Jessica calling from college to catch up with Mom.
“Hello, is this Alex? Winters?”
The last voice I expected to hear on the other end was Ashley’s.
My heart sped up, like it always did. I worried that she could hear it over the phone. It sounded very quiet over at her house, or wherever she was. She was barely more than whispering. Immediately I thought something must have been very wrong. “Yeah,” I say, as casually as possible, Chloe’s voice in the back of my head, repeating, “the more you try to hide it, the more awkward it seems to everyone else…” “What’s going on?”
“Um… This is Ashley,” she began. “I just wanted to say… I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For… Monday night,” she admitted. The next part came in a rush. “I mean, what happened after the concert, how I… kissed you. I didn’t mean to, it just sort of happened, you know…”
I had to strain to understand everything she said. Her voice didn’t sound so good, like she’d been yelling a lot. Or, maybe it was like Ender’s voice – it was getting hoarse from disuse. That thought frightened me. “Yeah…” was all I could think of to say.
“I was just having a really bad day, and you were there, and I just… lost it, I guess. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for leading you on, because…” she paused. I braced myself. “I… don’t even know you, you know? I barely learned your name…”
I nodded. When I realized she couldn’t see me, I repeated, “Yeah,” quietly into the phone.
“So… that’s all I wanted to say,” she confessed with finality. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
I wanted to know how she’d been and how Jace was doing (even though I wasn’t happy about the idea of him being her boyfriend instead of me, I knew she still cared about him and I wondered how she felt about the whole thing). I wanted to apologize for the things that people had been saying about the two of us. To be honest, I wanted to ask her if she’d like to go grab some dinner and a movie with me on Saturday night, but I didn’t say any of this to her. Instead, I just listened to be buzz of static quiet from her end of the phone.
“But thank you for the flowers.”
“I didn’t… do those.”
She paused. “It wasn’t you?”
“No,” I told her honestly. I left out the part where I wished it was.
She didn’t say anything after that, except that she had to go, and I heard the connection end. That was it; it was over. Like the kiss, I’d always wanted her to call me, but it didn’t feel as good as I’d thought it would. Instead of me giving my number to her, she’d probably found it in the student directory. And she didn’t call to try to convince me to ask her out, she’d called to apologize for the other thing I’d always wished she’d do, and to thank me for the first gift I hadn’t actually given her.
So far, a lot of firsts were being ruined by my stupid mistakes.
I picked my guitar back up and kept playing.
Well, you get one look
I’ll show you something that the knife took
A bit too early for my own good
Now let’s not speak of it again.
*
Chloe and I approached my locker, both in fantastic moods, considering everything that had been going on, following our regular morning routine before first period. We were talking about the movie she’d just gone to see the night before. It was an intense thriller, and I’d been wanting to see it, but she kept spoiling bits of the plot for me. I hummed defiantly as she tried to tell me who died next and I worked with the combination lock.
When I opened it, we both stopped.
On a thick sheet of white art paper that looked like it was torn from a spiral binding, a message was scrawled in red ink.
Stay away from her, or I’ll have to shoot you too.
Dear Diary – Chapter 3
The boy’s name was Kadmus Ender. Once I heard it, I remembered hearing it in biology, and felt horrible for not remembering. The few kids who ever talked to him said he always wanted them to just call him by his last name, Ender. It was easier for people. I tried to imagine how it might feel to have a name no one could remember. I suppose it made it easier for people to forget about him altogether. Of course, everyone had their own theories, but I think that was what pushed him off the edge.
It took about a week for the school to quiet down about the incident. Well, there were still whispers in the hallway, but now kids were looking a little less frightened as they entered the cafeteria, as they passed the table where it had happened, as they passed the spot on the tile where Jace’s blood had been spilt. The other outcasts still warranted suspicious glances from all but the least informed of the students. Of course, no one saw Ender anymore. He was lucky if he wasn’t in jail, let alone expelled. I wondered what would become of him. Strange as it sounds, I felt bad for the kid. It wasn’t just because I sympathized with the boy for wanting to shoot Ashley Simmons’ boyfriend, but because I knew that people didn’t do things like that without going through some rough times beforehand.
Ashley never forgot about it, though. Now when I saw her in the halls, she was looking down, shuffling along like she had nowhere she really cared to be. She let her appearance go a bit. She no longer wore makeup, and her hair wasn’t quite as straight. She also seemed to be alone more often. I understood that it must have been difficult for her to take, but something told me there was more to the story than I knew. I could tell she was trying, though. She still had some spirit left in her, and I had confidence that she would be okay. Still, it didn’t stop me from worrying.
I waited for her to come out of the back room after the choir concert a few days later, at the edge of the crowd of parents and friends, trying to catch the first glimpse of their little singing angels. She’d done marvelously with her solo. When I saw her walking up to the mic, dressed in black and white to match the rest of the choir, trying hard to smile for the crowd, I expected to be amazed, but when she took in that first deep breath of air, when she closed her eyes and her chest rose and she kissed the microphone and that first note floated out of her mouth, my blood started flowing a bit quicker, my hands got wet, and my eyes were transfixed on her. She was lost in the beautiful foreign song, rich and deep with eight-part harmony, and for a moment, I swore she looked happy again, the way I was used to seeing her, the way I saw her on the back of my eyelids. I didn’t understand the words, but I knew she was singing about love, about happiness. No other subject would be worthy of those sweet tones.
The other choir kids were pouring out of the room, finding their families and passing out hugs. I stood on my toes and tried to find her. I wasn’t tall enough to really accomplish anything with this. The stream of kids was ending, and she still hadn’t come out. Had her family ambushed her somewhere with flowers and taken her out for ice cream? I had almost given up hope when I caught a flash of caramel at the other end of the crowd. I pushed my way through the crowd and got a better view of her. She was free of the mess, walking briskly and pulling on her jacket as she headed for the door. No one was with her. She flipped her hair out from beneath her collar and reached for the handle. I called out, “Ashley!” But she either didn’t hear me or she wasn’t interested in talking. I couldn’t give up. I followed her outside into the crisp air that hinted of winter. She was looking both ways, ready to cross the street to the parking lot.
“You sang beautifully tonight,” I said.
She stopped. The car she was waiting for passed, but she stayed on the sidewalk, staring down at her feet, clad in black clogs. She kicked the ground lightly with her toe. “Thank you,” she said without turning around.
I kept walking toward her. “Why are you leaving so soon? There’s a whole crowd of people in there who—”
“Who what?” Ashley said. “They’ll just tell me how amazing I was, I’ll thank them, they’ll give me a hug and I’ll let them because I don’t want to be rude, and I’ll move on to the next adoring fan.” I’d never heard her be sarcastic before. “It’s just kind of pointless.”
I couldn’t argue. “Well, what about your family? Are they in there?”
She shook her head, and finally slowly turned. “No, they… they couldn’t come.” A lock of hair blew in front of her eyes, and she pulled it behind her ear.
“Busy?” I ventured.
“No. They’re… gone.”
Gone. That could have meant a few things, but none of them were pleasant. I didn’t press it any more.
She continued. “And now Jace is gone too, and he’s acting like a total jerk, even though I didn’t do anything…” She shook the idea off. “I’m sorry. I’m just… kinda stressed out, you know? What’s your name, anyway? I’ve seen you around school a little.”
“Alex,” I told her, then added, “Winters. Jace is being a jerk?”
“Yeah, I… don’t really get why. I guess he’s just upset that he won’t be able to finish off the season or something. And he keeps talking about what he’s gonna do to that Ender kid when his arm is better. I’m just sick of hearing about it.”
“I bet,” I sympathized. “Seems like a kid like him can be difficult to get along with.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t even get me started. All he cares about is football, and the stupid 49ers.”
The conversation stopped. I never fully realized what I was doing in the first place, only that I’d wanted to talk to Ashley and I had acted on that desire, but now I didn’t know what I wanted to say. But I opened my mouth anyway, and out tumbled, “I’m sorry about what happened to him.”
She didn’t say anything. She just looked down at the ground, biting her bottom lip. After a moment, she looked back up at me, her eyes wet, and whispered, “Thanks. It’s… fine.”
She was crying again. She was alone, and she was crying. My heart broke. She looked smaller even than she usually did, standing at the edge of the street in a jacket one or two sizes too big, with her hands resting in the pockets, tears and a hopeless look in her eyes. I stood on the brink of indecision. I knew what I wanted to do. But we didn’t even know each other. If I freaked her out now, she would never want to talk to me again, and all future chances would be completely ruined. And yet as the tears kept squeezing from her eyes, as her lips curved into an involuntary smile that wasn’t a smile at all, as her shoulders started to shake, I knew I couldn’t just stand and do nothing.
I lifted my arms, a small gesture of a willing hug. I wasn’t sure what I expected. For a second, she looked at me. I tried to smile and look inviting, but I couldn’t help from feeling a bit like she looked.
She walked forward, up to me, close enough for me to smell the crisp perfume on her skin and the scent of her shampoo. My arms closed around her, touched her for the first time, pressed her closer to me. She didn’t take hers out of her pockets for a moment, but when she did, she held on to me so tightly I wondered if she would ever let go. Not that I minded. Her body was warm against mine. I felt her heart beating, reverberating with mine, pounding in my ears. Then I felt her pull away slightly, and her face turned, and I felt her lips on my cheek. Electricity shot through my head. They squeezed together gently, and then pulled away, the lightest of kisses.
I let her go, and we took a step backwards and looked at each other. Shock was written all over my face. I could tell by the way she was looking back at me, confused, like she hadn’t realized what she’d just done. Then it dawned on her, she clasped one hand to her mouth, and panic flooded her eyes. Without another word, she turned and ran across the street, narrowly avoiding being hit by a screeching car with rumbling music. I wanted to call to her, but I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? The girl of my dreams, who’d I’d been unable to get out of my thoughts since school started, had just kissed me on the cheek. And she’d only just learned my name. A few different possible explanations ran through my head, but none of them made much sense. Of course I was happy. But part of me felt robbed, cheated. I hadn’t done anything to earn it. Had I? Talking about her boyfriend was the last way I expected to land myself a kiss.
I didn’t move until she was out of sight. Then, I stuffed my hands in my pockets and headed for my car, lost in thought. My cheek tingled all the way home.
Dear Diary – Chapter 1
Dear Diary.
I’ve been called many things throughout my high school years. Punk, loser, jerk, freak, are all categories I’ve fallen into. I suppose, to an extent, they are all true. Most of all, I’ve been called one thing: Emo. I believe this is a result of a combination of factors:
a) I wear skinny black jeans 365 days of the year.
b) I also wear a black and white striped scarf whenever I can get away with it.
c) My hair is your classic black emo swoop.
d) I play the acoustic guitar.
e) I believe that people can’t help how they feel, and that acting on emotions is healthy and cathartic.
I known what you’re thinking. Do I take a razor to my wrists every night, tears streaming from my eyes, the incomprehensible screaming of grown men and heavy guitar riffs blasting from my stereo, thoughts of love lost running through my head at breakneck velocity? Do I wear black eyeliner to school because it reflects the inner pain of my heart and I don’t give a crap about society’s unwritten rule that says boys don’t wear makeup? Do I believe nobody in the world understands how I feel and that I’m destined to be alone for eternity in some lonely corner of hell?
Sorry to say it, but no. I think I’m on the more regular end of the emo scale. I don’t scare people very often, and when I do, it’s only because my legs look so skinny in my jeans that they wonder how I keep myself standing up. People tell me I’m friendly. That is, people who actually give me the time of day. Hate to say it, but my high school, Reeds High, is incredibly cliquey for a small-town school. There are a total of one hundred kids in each class (one hundred and six in the Junior class, to be exact), but there are five clearly-defined groups that almost every student falls into.
There are the jocks. You know all about them. Heck, everybody does. That’s just how they are, always living in the spotlight because they play team sports. I think everyone knows they get a lot more attention than they deserve, but no one’s man enough to stand up and say it, because they know the jocks basically control the social sphere. The thing is, sports are the only thing they’re good at. I guess it’s to their advantage that colleges offer scholarships for sports, because there’s no other way a jock is going to make it into higher education. Their grades are too horrible for them to even be on any extra-curricular teams, according to the official rules, but of course, those don’t apply to the superstars.
The jocks and the preps. They rule the school. The preps are the seemingly perfect kids, who get top grades, but are too pretty to be nerds. Everyone wonders if they bribe their teachers, since every one of them has parents worth millions of dollars, and houses worth about as much. They’re the same six kids that get elected to student office every single year since sixth grade. They’re the ones that host the parties in their backyard (roughly the size of three football fields), who have a fire pit, and a pool, and local bands, and an occasional appearance of alcohol, and fifty rooms where couples disappear into for the night, but no one ever seems to care about that. Everyone in the school is invited every time, but the problem is a combination of two things: One, if you don’t know where they live already, it’s hard to find out. And two, it’s an understood rule that only cool kids attend these parties.
Which brings me to the three un-cool factions. There are the nerds and geeks, who generally get grouped together, but insist that they are, in fact, separate. They’re the ones that get A’s without trying. They’re the ones that have little fairies in their heads that give them all the answers, those lucky jerks. A few of the fantasy geeks actually do believe they have fairies or some other small woodland creature in their heads. But, of course, for every strength, there must also be a weakness. These kids are the ones with embarrassingly little fashion sense, and even worse hygiene habits. That and the fact that they tend to do some very strange things sometimes keep them off of the coolness radar for the most part. The preps are nice to them, but other than that, everybody else despises them. My guess would be because they’re jealous, and they know that they’ll all be working for one of the nerds one day. They’re even horribly cruel to each other, in a futile attempt at one-upmanship to gain some status. It’s sad, really.
Then, of course, the drama club. They’re not actually un-cool, but they have their own separate social sphere going on and are often excluded from the regular race, which they seem to be fine with. These are the same group of kids that star in every school musical and play. Nobody sees much of them, because they have their own hall where they spend a majority of their school time. And after-school time. They always seem to be constantly rehearsing for something, and every time a production gets closer, the same thing happens. Everybody gets mad at each other, things escalate, and the only time anyone talks to each other is onstage. Yet when it’s over, everyone gets together at the cast party and has a great big cry-fest. Apologies are handed out like Christmas cards, and everybody’s hugging everybody, and puddles of tears are all over the floor – honestly, I wonder if these kids are more emo than I am. It’s about that time that rehearsal for the next production starts, and the whole thing starts over again. Such is the life of a drama geek.
And that brings me to the Outcasts. These are the introverted artists and the scary children who seem to have three times as many shadows as they should. Even the preps are afraid to talk to some of these kids. There are also scattered groups of clique-transcending kids who seem to fit everywhere, who are generally grouped as outcasts. I suppose this is where I belong, although to be honest, I’ve never approved of the whole clique thing. I just am who I am. I suppose that’s how most kids in this group are, they’re just being what they want to be, and it just doesn’t happen to fit in with everybody else. But I think kids like us are generally friendly, despite our sometimes scary appearance, and if people would just give us some time, I think they’d grow to like us.
Which is just what happened with Ashley Simmons.
There are many, many things I like about Ashley.
1) I like the color of her hair, this perfect caramel brown that looks almost edible.
2) I like the way it falls into her face at just the right angle.
3) I like the curve of her cheeks and how soft they look and oh, how badly I wish I could just cup her face in my hand and feel the softness of it.
4) I like the way she talks. Her voice is smooth. She has a slight accent, difficult to place. It could be Icelandic. And she’s part of the choir. I’ve never heard her sing alone, but I bet she would sound like an angel. I have dreams about the two of us singing a duet.
5) I like the way she dresses. Never immodest, but rather… cute. Particularly during the winter. She wears soft jackets and scarves and, my favorite, hats with big pom-poms on top that bob when she laughs.
6) As bad as this sounds, I like her curves. There’s really no other way to say it. She’s short and small, like some big guy like Justin could break her in two without much effort. I’m attracted to that sort of fragility. Her waist is absolutely intoxicating.
Unfortunately, this was all I knew about her at first. Physical attributes. All I knew of her was based off the few heart-pounding times I’d seen her in the halls and a brief experience on the very first day of Junior year.
It was third period, biology. I walked into the room and stuffed my class schedule into my tight pocket, with some difficulty. There were about ten kids in the class already. As is normal on the first day of school, when everyone is still coming out of their awkward summer shells, everyone looked at me and I looked at everyone. I wanted to get a good idea of the kind of class this would turn out to be. More than that, I was scoping out at least one person I could convince to befriend me, who wouldn’t be intimidated by the tightness of my jeans or the stripeyness of my shirt. Just one kid I could sit by and talk to, to make the class a little less awful. There was one kid with a dirty blond mop on the back row who wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was drawing in a sketchbook. I couldn’t tell what he was drawing from where I stood, but he was apparently into it pretty deep. There was no seating chart taped to the white board. The chair next to him was empty, and I knew I’d feel comfortable around this artist kid, so I made for it.
I sat down and put my bag under my seat. The chair in front of me didn’t have a basket for me to put my feet up on. Minus one point for that, but the points the seat had for being in the back, behind everybody’s awkward staring eyes, were still clearly in the black. I took a look around the room. There were an abundance of awkward posters covering the walls, including one about the human female reproductive system that seemed out-of-place, but what did I know?
The kid next to me coughed and sniffed. I looked over at him. He was still deep in his trance, doodling away in his book. I knew it was impolite to look at what he was working on, so instead, I left him to it.
And as my head was turned that way, I saw her walk in. The door swung open and she swept inside, caramel hair waving behind her, a small stack of books held against her curvaceous waist. Her stride was so casual and confident, like she was simply walking around her house, instead of under the hot gaze of everyone in the room, with the exception of the artist. She didn’t seem to notice anyone else in the room as she scoped out the seats. That day, she was wearing a baby blue screen tee and jean shorts. She was freshly tanned from the long, sunny summer, and her smooth, bronzed legs seemed long, despite her height. I noticed that she gently bit one side of her bottom lip as she considered where to sit. Eventually, she started for the back row. My heart jumped. Was she going to sit by me? She hadn’t made eye contact with me, which probably would have happened. She stopped short and sat at the other end of the row. Luckily, my artistic neighbor was bent over a bit, and I could see her if I casually looked over his back. I watched her open her bag and pull out her class schedule and give it one last look-through. She seemed satisfied with what it said.
At that moment, she looked over at me. I felt my face go hot and I wanted to look away, but I knew it was already too late, that she’d seen me. To my delight, she smiled and waved. I smiled back, and turned forward again, feeling my heart pump wildly in my rib cage. I pretended to scratch at something carved into the desktop, and I prayed that she still wasn’t looking at me. But at the same time, I hoped she was. After a few seconds, I chanced another look. She was flipping through a notebook, pen in hand. I sighed in relief and decided to play it safe and just wait for class to start.
Over the next few minutes, a dozen more kids walked into the room, followed by the round biology teacher, who wasted no time in finding his roll and calling out names in his flabby, almost cartoonish voice. I expected my name to be last, so I sat back and watched the others call out, trying to memorize the names as best I could to make life a little better for me later.
A few names into the list, the teacher sputtered. “K… Kadmus Ender?”
The blond artist looked up and muttered his “here” in a raspy voice that sounded like it hadn’t been used in a while. Kadmus? I wondered as I watched him return to his drawing. I’d never heard the name before. A couple kids snickered. I wanted to punch them. Kadmus would sound cool, if spoken by the right person. I looked past him and saw the girl looking at him too, and once more, our eyes met. I chided myself for letting it happen twice. She would figure me out, she would know that every time I looked at her, my heart started beating three times faster and my palms got sweaty…
The teacher continued calling out names. The distance to Winters was getting shorter. The whole time, I was wondering what that girl’s name was. Every time he called out a Jessica or Rebecca, I waited for her to call out, but she never did. Turley… Underwood…
“Alexander Winters.”
“Here,” I grumbled, in what I hoped was a cool way, as I raised a few fingers from my desk.
“Is there anyone’s name I didn’t call?”
I looked over at the girl. She raised her hand, and the teacher called on her. “Yes, what’s your name?”
“Ashley Simmons,” she declared. It was almost as if she were singing a beautiful song, the way she spoke. Her voice was sweet, like her tongue was candy-coated and the words carried particles of sugar into the air. Ashley Simmons, I repeated to myself, committing it to memory.
“Hmm.” The teacher went over his list. “You’re not on my roll. Are you sure your schedule says biology?”
Her slender eyebrows came together in confusion. “Biology? I guess I’m in the wrong class. I’m supposed to be in Chemistry.”
A clean-looking boy in the front row turned around and stated proudly, “Chemistry is one room down.” I could see from the look in his eye that I had some competition.
“Thanks. Sorry about that…” she said confidently as she gathered her things. She could have blushed, and kept her head angled down so her hair would hide her face, but she didn’t seem to be embarrassed at all. She walked out the door just as casually as she’d came in, and that was the last time Ashley Simmons had been in any of my classes. I saw her around in the halls, but other than that time on the back row, she never smiled or waved at me. I doubted she remembered my name after hearing it only once.
But I was never one to give up easily. I’d make sure she’d be hearing a lot more of Alex Winters.
Excerpt from Dark Chocolate
She was there the next day, too. When I walked in, I noticed her sitting at the same seat, watching another music video with boredom on her lips, but fire burning in her crystalline eyes. I wanted to sit on the other side of the room, but I knew Mr. Yasuki, the tiny hawk-eyed computer tech teacher, would be checking in on us, and he’d want us sitting close for easy surveillance. I set my messenger bag next to the chair two computers down from hers and collapsed into the seat, making a point to avoid looking at her. I was scared of those eyes of hers, and I knew that if we made eye contact only once, I would end up like I had the day before – crying, lonely, and hysterical.
With an air of business, I unclipped my bag, retrieved my purple spiral notebook, and flipped it open to the page where I’d copied down the makeup assignment. Today’s was simple. I was to create a basic web page using a few simple lines of code. I realized I’d watched my older brother Riley do things with code before, and it had never seemed difficult. It wasn’t until I actually read the instructions that the usual confusion and hopelessness flooded back in.
Helpless, I risked a sideways glance at my taciturn lab partner. She was still gazing at the little people dancing around on her monitor, a streaked sheet of hair hiding all from me but the final curves of her jaw line. I wondered why she was always in here doing “makeup work.” All she ever did was hunch forward and watch music videos; I’d never seen her do any actual work at all. If she was one of those slacker kids who never did anything productive, why did she even bother showing up? Didn’t most of those kids cut more classes than they actually went to? Why would she be compelled to show up?
I stopped myself. I was judging her. That was wrong. There were probably a million difficult things going on in her life that I wasn’t aware of. The instructions written in my notebook were still a foreign language to me, however, and I knew that if I wanted a passing grade for Mr. Yasuki’s class, I’d need to get some help. With a sigh, I stood and walked over to the girl.
“Um,” I began timidly, “do you know what this means?”
She looked at me. Automatically, I glanced away. It was rude, but I didn’t want to end up an emotional wreck again. She took the notebook and turned it around so she could read my wide, loopy handwriting. “Yeah. It’s HTML.”
HTML? Her answer only left me feeling more lost, and I told her so.
“It’s code to make web pages,” she sung patiently. I felt her eyes on me, but I decided to stare at my notebook instead. She continued, “Open Notebook and copy this down, save it as an HTML file, and you can open it in Firefox.”
She’d lost me somewhere in the first three words, but I was impressed with her knowledge/ Now I was at an even bigger loss as to why she was trapped in this technological prison with me every day. She talked smart like a geek, but looked more like a punk rocker. I realized I was judging her again, and stopped. I still didn’t know how to do my assignment, but I thanked her anyway, and reached for my notebook.
As she passed it to me, I forgot to anchor my eyes to the page, and they strayed into her stare. Again I felt captive and frozen, and now, afraid. Bright blue and sharp like icicles, her eyes read into me, and I knew she learned what had happened the day before, after she left. I didn’t want her to know, but it was hopeless – her gaze was infinitely more powerful than my resistance, and my chest began to tighten.
My notebook fluttered to the floor when I failed to take it. The sound broke the hypnotic trance between us, and we both looked down at the flayed spiral notebook. Ashamed panic shot through me. “Sorry,” I muttered as I bent down to pick it up. As I did, my heart jumped. The book had landed open on the wrong page. And inky drawing lay open to the world – a couple engaged in a passionate kiss. But the frightening, or perhaps fascinating, aspect of it was not the subject, but the way it had turned out. Instead of soft lines and light, warm curves, every stroke was black, sharp, and razor-edged, where I’d gone over it again and again until the ink bled through. It looked violent and hostile, like the lovers were trying to eat each other instead of make love.
I snatched up the book and struggled with its flapping flurry to find the cover and seal it. One page caught the tip of my finger and the slice it made instantly stung and bled. I finally conquered the spiral notebook, and I stuck my finger in my mouth to stop the blood. It tasted like metal. The girl was still staring at me, but I could look away now, as I felt blood and color rush to my face. I swore, bunched my things up in my free arm, and shuffled from the room, feeling the tears build hot and heavy once again between my eyes.
There had been something different in her look at that last moment. It should have been amusement. It should have been mockery. The more I thought on it as I half-ran to the nearest bathroom through the deserted hallways and fought back emotion, the more it had looked that way, but there was a distinctly opposite feeling, like she’s felt pity for me and my ridiculous drawing. That new gaze scared me even more than the first.
I crashed through the swinging doorway and let my things tumble next to a sink. The sound echoed shortly about the tiled walls and floor. With increasingly blurry vision, I spun both knobs and thrust my hands under the torrent. A second later, I turned both down, and the water reduced to a steady stream. The soap dispenser was empty, but I scrubbed my hands vigorously, without fully realizing what I was doing. Thoughts ran through my head at breakneck velocity, and my chest ached.
She’d seen the drawing. No, more importantly, I’d seen the drawing. I should have ripped it out a long time ago and burned it or shredded it. I hated myself for not doing it sooner. With a flurry of anger, I reached for the notebook with dripping, trembling hands and pulled at it. I wanted to rip it in half and in half again, until it was small enough to put into the sink or a toilet and flush it away for good. It would be a fitting symbolic gesture of throwing away the past and starting fresh. But the book wouldn’t rip. I pulled as hard as I could, my fists twisted with terrible rage, but even the adrenalin rush couldn’t strengthen me enough. The anger faded, and despair took its place. How would I ever get better if I wasn’t even strong enough to throw away the reminders of my past? Tears flowing freely now, I fell to my knees. As I did, my head glanced off the corner of the porcelain sink, and dull pain rang through my skull. It was stupid and embarrassing that I couldn’t even be distraught without something going wrong, but there was no more anger left in me. I sunk to the slimy tiles, my bag crushed uncomfortably beneath my rib cage. My head throbbed. I cried, I bled, and, eventually, I slept.
