Words I Dare Not Speak • Zarry

1. Scripted

She stared back at me with her bright blue eyes and rosy cheeks and her two long, brunette braids plaited on either side of her head beneath a black beanie. Taryn flashed me her killer white smile afterward, now lazily lounging up against the locker next to mine with her laid back skater style - her tight skinny jeans, my green and black plaid on, a pair of worn out vans - clutching her galaxy painted skateboard deck that I painted for her birthday under her arm.

She removed my headphone on one side to speak to me. "You gonna come over and play Left 4 Dead? Got the new one waitin for ya."

I closed my locker behind me and began walking slowly toward the stairwell as Taryn followed behind me, waiting for the answer she probably already knew I'd give her. "Can't. Promised Harry I'd help him with that English paper on Siddhartha."

She rolled her eyes. "Course. This is like...the fifth paper you've practically written for him this semester."

I shot her a flat look. "I don't write his papers for him."

"No but...you do though," she countered.

"No but...I don't. I just toss him a few ideas and edit some shit. It's not much," I reasoned out loud while Taryn snorted under her breath.

"Kay."

We began trampling down the brown stairs to the first floor of our school, now pushing through the other kids that I didn't care even a little bit about.

"Chill bro. He needs to get a B," I reminded her.

"Yeah I know, I know. Harry getting his motorcycle - the top priority," said Taryn with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

But I was dead serious. Harry had made a pact with his mom in the beginning of our senior year that if he graduated with no grades less than a B then she'd help him get a motorcycle as a graduation present, which was his dream.

"Exactly."

Taryn was also my other best friend. She and I met in eighth grade when she moved to Beachwood Canyon (or just the canyon as I liked to call it) from Brooklyn, New York and she hated the west coast and everyone here, so we got along right away.

She was pretty fucking sick on the drums, too, and she skateboarded like me. She also loved video games, comic books, tagging buildings with graffiti, listening to good music and swore as much as I did; so basically Taryn was kind of like the female version of me.

Or at least that's what Harry always said.

Her and I were also in a little band that we put together a few years back called Wild Fox Medicine, which we were in with Harry and our other friend Ian. Well...Ian was more so Harry's friend than he was mine, but I tolerated him because he shredded on the guitar.

Harry and I discovered at some point (once we hit puberty) that we could both sing really well, and so we took over vocals in the band along with him on rhythm guitar and I played bass.

Wild Fox Medicine was only known around the Hollywood Hills part of LA, though. We weren't that popular or anything. We were just your local group of skateboarding stoners with a cool pop-esque, groovy type of sound - like our take on a sixties psychedelic rock band for the millennium - but sometimes we'd switch it up for a little smooth rock or heavy Gorillaz when I'd throw in a rap verse.