Diane Young [Camp NaNoWriMo July 2014]

Diane Young [16]

16

Now that Elijah West and I were fighting, I had nothing to do.

No chameleon to play with. Nobody to eat ham and tuna sandwiches or strawberries on graham crackers with (That being said, my brother was still at home, so I could probably force some things into him (but I doubt that'd go down well (literally, he has a very weak stomach))). I honestly realised how boring I was and I remembered how boring my summers were without him.

And that really ticked me off. I'd like to fancy myself a feminist (though I'm probably not truly a feminist. I'm just a seventeen year old slightly depressed girl who doesn't really understand anything (I should believe in myself more, I am 100% feminist), and I should think that I could have fun without someone else influencing me.

So I did what I could do to have fun: I played music and read books. And for a day or two, I had a lot of fun just doing nothing.

But doing nothing also gives your brain thinking space, and I always found myself unintentionally thinking about Elijah and his stupid dramatic head of artificial curly hair. 

Sometimes I wondered if I should go and apologise because it was inadvertently my fault. If I had told him about my brother, he probably would have found something to do. All would be okay again if I just said a simple sorry. Alas as much as I was feeling remorseful, I was also very prideful.

After a week of doing nothing, I decided to call Mrs Winters.

"Ah, Diane, how are you my darling?"

"I'm fine, Mrs Winters. And yourself?"

"Great. What's wrong?"

"I was wondering if I could come over and... Help you tidy up Ellie's room?"

She made a squeaking sound that brought a wave of sadness over me. Ellie used to make that sound when she was uber happy, and strangely, Mrs Winter's version sounded a lot like Duke.

"But of course! Oh let me go and get some strawberries!"

"Cool. I'll be over and out soon. Thank you Mrs Winters."

When I put on my jeans jacket and glanced out of the window, I saw Elijah walking to the bus stop. My initial reaction was to rush out there and join him, but almost after a week and a half of no talking or interaction, I decided that wouldn't do both of us any good. Besides, I wouldn't apologise, and he wouldn't either, so we'd probably just be sitting there browsing through all our thoughts and looking over our shoulders.

So I waited for him to go before I ventured outside. This meant that I had to wait another ten minutes for a bus but it was the easy way out, definitely.

I reached Ellie's house after a boring bus journey of music that I happened to enjoy, thought it wasn't as fun as a bus journey with Elijah West. Walking down the road was odd, because the last time -

"Oh - hello. Diane, was it?"

I realised I was frowning and the pavement and met vaguely familiar dark brown hair, and dark Hispanic skin to match. Tiffany.

"Hi there." I said to her with this uneven edge in my voice. I didn't really know what it was or where it came from.

".. Are you going to Lizzy's?"

"As in Ellie?"

"Yeah, Ellie's house."

"Mhm."