Unspecified Rage

Tick Tock, Damn Clock

The weekend passed in a quiet rush. Julia's friends stayed around as much as possible, offering their support. Despite the percocet pain killers, Julia spent much of the weekend in throbbing agony, thoguh her face was alrady much better on Monday morning. The one eye that had been almost swollen shut had started to clear up remarkably quick. Of course, Julia's battered appearance caused a huge hubub at school and hte principal called her out of homeroom to talk to her. But Julia couldn't recall any details and really jsut couldn't bring herself to fret about it too much. Worrying about it only added to her ever constant head ache, so she let the anxiety go and focused on surviving each day with an ever increasing amount of pain.

Physically she was healing and getting better, but the usual pain was actually getting worse. Her skin felt like it had been shrunk and now it pulled and stretched in sharp twinges. Her joints felt broken and swollen and hte muscles felt twisted and torn. The pain kept her movements slow and Ju tried to keep from having to move about too much as even an easy walk across school could leave her wanting to throw up from pain. And still she endured.

The calendar turned over into October and classes started to gain momentum, becoming more challenging and more exacting. In Drama, the class was getting ready to start presenting their play of Little Red and Big Bad. Despite herself, Julia found herself enjoying the production and the play itself was very entertaining. They had the child friendly version they were doing for hte grade schools, and the more darkly disturbing version for the highschool itself. And the rest of the student body was gearing up for the Annual Halloween Costume Dance. Deciding to take advantage of the Dance's popularity, the Drama Teacher decided to hold opening night of the play the same night so that a lot of students would come to school in costume, stay to watch the play and then head to the dance as soon as the play ended. Considering that the stage was part of the large auditorium where the dance was being held, it was a genius plan.

Tiff wanted to do a group theme for their costumes, but the guys vetoed that idea right off the bat. "I could come as the Spanish Inquisiton, no one would expect that." Enrique suggested with a sly smile. Everyone laughed. They were all sitting at a table they'd pulled to the other side of the football field so they could sit while Julia smoked her joint. Even Graham was hanging around now. He stayed because he didn't trust Enrique's attentions with Julia, and Enrique knew this and tried to make Graham as jealous as possible without ever cluing Julia in. It wasn't that hard, all he had to do was bump knees with her or 'accidentally' jostle into her and he'd gotten into the habit of 'playing' with her hair since it always made her sleepy and made the girls laugh. Graham knew what he was donig of course, but had no real strategy to counter it.  But he was developing a plan.

Bell rang and hte group, scattered, heading to lockers then class. Julia wasn't paying attention as she walked up to her, but then found a card tied to her locker with a ribbon. With rampant curiosity, she untied the card and opened it.

I'm going to ask you to the dance.   Yours Truely ~~ Guess Who?

Despite herself, Julia could feel a blush spread across her face. Someone wanted to ask her to the dance? Seriously? But who would want to take her? It made her feel really girly to be happy that a guy wanted to take her out, and it embarassed her to realize she liked that girly feeling. But then again, why should she feel bad about enjoying being a girl? Yes, she was a tom boy, yes she was a bit of a loner, despite her growing circle of friends. But she also enjoyed being female and wasn't a ditz by anyone's standards. So what if having a secret admirer made her feel girly, that was the point! Julia turned hte idea over and over and decided she wanted to try and figure out who it was that wanted to ask her.

So she flipped the card over and quickly wrote on it:

I like to keep my options open. You can ask me to dance, but you may not take me there. Unless you tell me who you are.