Entry #516345, added on 01-14-10 @ 9:55 pm EST
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"God, what is with this weather?" The skylights above our head in the cafeteria have my complete attention. The terrifyingly dark clouds stare back at me. "Yesterday it was blue skies and sunblock, and now this? Why can't it just stay sunny?"
"Grace, this is Texas. Since when is the weather ever constant?" Even though she's arguing, I know Morgan doesn't want it to rain either. Getting her hair wet is a tragedy.
"Right, I forgot, another stereotype." I pull my gaze away from the sky but keep thinking about the angry clouds. Rain and I don't really get along.
Morgan looks up from where she's squirting ketchup straight from the packet onto a single french fry. "What stereotypes?"
I shrug. "You know, like how we all have hick accents and ride to school on our horses in our cowboy boots and stetsons?" I can barely get the sentence out without laughing.
"Girl, where did you hear that?" Her attention has strayed past my head. I figure there's probably some hot guy behind me, so I start putting mayonnaise and ketchup on my hamburger.
"Remember the summer I went to California? Someone there told me that's what they thought Texans did. They probably thought we all own farms and spend all our time branding cows and such." I snigger to myself, but it seems I'm talking to myself. "What are you staring at?" I finally ask Morgan, who keeps glancing past me and back down at her lunch.
"He's staring at you," she mutters to me under her breath. She ducks her head as if whoever she's talking about won't be able to hear her if she does so.
"Who?" I don't want to seem to obvious by turning to look, but I almost can't help myself. I lean forward and cross my arms on the table in front of me. I try to look inconspicuous as I glance around at the people in the cafeteria. I've known most of the people since about middle school or even earlier, but not a single soul is staring at me.
"Wren," she breaths.
"Wren?" I take a deep breath and swivel my head in the other direction, toward the spot where Wren Stoner sits every day, alone. His dirty blond hair falls over his right eye and his left eye is on me. He sits slumped in his chair, his arms crossed, and his lunch sitting on the round table in front of him, untouched. He doesn't even pretend he isn't looking at me. He stares at me, and I stare back.
I don't even have the sense to take my eyes off of him as I lean forward to talk to Morgan. "You don't believe that stupid rumor about him, do you?"
"Which one? There are so many," she answers, licking yogurt off a spoon. She's joined in the awkward stare-fest with us.
All the rumors run through my head. She's right, there are tons of them. I pick the first one that comes to me. "The one about his last name being some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy."
She looks away from him, and I see the shudder that moves through her. "I don't know about a prophecy, but he's definitely on drugs."
He doesn't look dangerous to me. In fact, he doesn't look scary at all. He just looks like a guy nobody wants to sit with. Everybody has been against him since the day he stepped through the door two years ago, and all because of some stupid stories.
"I heard he killed someone," Morgan says, almost as if she is reading my mind. She says it like it's a sceret, but everyone in the school has heard the same thing.
I look back at him once more. He's gorgeous, I think to myself, but everyone is too afraid to notice. His eyes shoot from me to the other end of my table. I want to keep looking at him, at his blonde hair and the shape of his face, but I'm too curious to see what else caught his attention.
I regret the decision to do so as soon as I spot the crowd that is setting up residence at the opposite end of the long, rectangular table Morgan and I are sitting at. I look over just in time to catch Sean looking over at me. He slouches over to the table with his arm around a beautiful blond I have Government with. His eyes stay fixed on me as they take a seat amidst a crowd of Sean's loud cross country buddies.
I look away from him, clenching my teeth together to contain the sob I feel moving up my throat. The longer I stare down at the food in front of me, the more I know I won't be able to eat it. "I'm gonna throw my trash away," I mutter, barely able to even hear it myself.
On my way back from the trash can, I try not to focus on my ex and his new girlfriend, or whatever she is. Instead, I look up at the skylights again. As I walk, I stare up into the dark abyss above me, blocking everything else out as I watch it get darker. Why doesn't it rain? I wonder. Why doesn't it just open up and pour down on us?
"I have Government fourth period," I tell Morgan when I sit down.
She stops eating and looks up at me. "Um. I know." She stares at me for a long time, until I look down at the empty table in front of me. In my peripheral, I see her look over at Sean and his friends again. She must think I can't see her, but I definitely can. "Are you okay?"
Resisting the urge to bury my face in my hands, I nod. "Yeah, I'm fine."
I am not fine, however, when I walk into my fourth period Government class and Little Miss Blondie looks up at me like she I'm the most pitiful creature she's ever laid eyes on. I slouch over to my seat in the back of the room, and on the other side of the room from her, thank God. I've always noticed her there, on the other side of class, but I doubt she ever noticed me. She noticed my boyfriend though.
My stomach turns, and I do my best to keep any attention away from me during class. I don't raise my hand to answer any questions, even though I almost every one, and I certainly don't join in the discussion about the day's current politics.
When the bell rings, I can barely wait to get out of my seat. I just want to go home. Is that so much to ask? I grab up my stuff and wait for the people in front of me to vacate the aisle so that I can leave. When I finally get out and head for the door, I wish I had waited a second longer. Because just as I step through the threshold, so does Sean. We almost bump into each other, but I stop short and he looks embarrassed.
"Hey, Beth," he says with a nervous smile, as if we can all just forget that he dumped me for a ditzy blond, using a bogus excuse about long-distance relationships.
I clamp my mouth shut so that I won't tell him to go someplace a little more south of Heaven and burn there. In fact, I don't utter a word. I stare for a second, my hands shaking as they clasp the strap of my messenger bag, and then watch him walk by me, toward her desk.
My shoes might as well be cemented to the ground. My body feels weighted down and light at the same time, as I watch them stand close together, whispering. He kisses her on the cheek and she smiles like a little girl.
A lump lodges itself in my throat.
Forcing my way through the hallway proves practically impossible. People move in a flood toward the exits, moving in all directions and making pushing through quite a task. When I finally get to the bathroom, I pray nobody is in there. I can already feel my face pulling together, the way it does when I'm about to cry. One girl stands in the middle of the bathroom, leaning against a sink and staring at herself in the mirror on the wall. She glances at me as I rush in, but I ignore her.
I head straight for the last stall, the biggest one, and lock the door. I try to breathe while listening to the movement of the girl on the other side of the door. It's only a few seconds before she's done, and I hear the door shut behind her. After that, I can't hold it back. Slumping against the tile wall, I bury my face in my hands and bawl.
I'm not one of those kinds of girls that cries over guys because they reject her or because they don't give her enough attention. I'm an independent type of person. But when you date someone for two years and then they dumb you for someone else, only to flaunt it around the school like you don't even matter. Well, that hurts, and I'm not a robot, for God's sake.
After a few moments, the commotion in the hallway becomes noticeably quieter. I unlatch my stall door, afraid to look at myself in the mirror. I hate the way I look after I cry, all red and puffy. I take a few deep breaths and splash my face with cold water. After enough daubing, I decide I can pass for having an allergic reaction to someone's perfume and leave the bathroom.
I find Morgan at the end of the near-empty hall, chatting it up with a boy I've never seen before. As I approach, she excuses herself from the conversation and comes to stand by me. "You okay?" she asks, her eyes scanning my face.
"Fine," I answer. "You ready to go?"
She nods and we head toward a side door at the end of the hallway. I throw it open and stop when I see the water raindrops hit the cement in front of me. It takes me a second to realize that it's not actually raining. It has only just stopped and the water that drips before me is the excess rain sliding off the roof.
"Whoa," Morgan says behind me. "I didn't even hear the rain. It must have been during fourth period."
Or right after it, I think to myself but can't exactly place where the thought came from.
Morgan shrugs and opens the door beside the one I have propped open. Glancing at me, she ducks under the spray from the roof and makes her way to the parking lot. I watch the water drip for a few more seconds before preparing to step out into the muggy air.
Before I can, however, I make the mistake of glancing behind me for a second, and seeing Wren Stoner at the end of the hall, staring at me. He leans against one of the window sills that lines the hallway on the other side of the bathrooms and all the way to the cafeteria.
When our eyes meet, lightening crashes outside the window, lighting Wren's face up for a second and catching his attention. I spin around and look out the door I'm still holding open, as if I might catch the lightening before it fades. All I catch is the deafening sound of thunder.
I know I should just leave, follow Morgan and drive us both home. But my instincts win over, and I turn to meet Wren's gaze again. This time, when lightening strikes, it startles me, and I gasp.
"Beth!"
I look out at the parking lot to see Morgan waiting at the passenger side of my car. I force myself not to look back at Wren. Instead I jog out to meet Morgan.
~*~
I can't sleep that night. It rains all evening as I curl up on my bed and cry out what was left from my previous sob session. It slowly dissipates as lay in my room, still gasping for breath and listening to my mother bustle around in the kitchen.
She won't come into my room. The only reason that she would ever enter my inner sanctum is if I scream or she is coming to lecture me. Under any other circumstances, I could stay locked in my room forever and she would never interrupt.
At times I think this is a blessing, but right now I wish she would come through that door and ask what's wrong. Maybe she would comment on how the weather seems so bleak. Maybe she'll even understand why I'm so upset about losing Sean. I imagine her telling me that us strong women don't need guys and telling me I'm beautiful no matter what.
But she would never do anything like that, because she believes that we need men to survive.
I let out a sigh and turn over to turn off the lamp beside my head. Maybe in complete darkness I can convince my brain to let me sleep. |
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