North & West

Eleven

July fifteenth.

West's birthday.

After volunteering at the animal shelter a few more days – this time, of my own choosing – I'd come to know West's sister and I'd found that she was just a kindhearted as he was. They had so much in common that it almost made me uncomfortable. They had the same dark hair color and the same skin tone, a fact I'd mentioned to West before – he didn't seem to find that nearly as funny as I did.

The most striking difference between the two of them were their eyes. Krissy's were a much brighter color than his, and she often outlined them with a charcoal colored pencil to make them seem bolder, brighter. But West's were a much darker blue than his sister's, almost borderline black, and sometimes at night, the times in which I always thought the deepest and longest, I wondered if the dark shade had anything to do with the dark things he kept bottled up.

Along the way of volunteering side by side with Krissy and resisting the urge to take every unadopted animal home – I'd discovered that I was a complete sucker when it came to innocent animals – Krissy and I had planned for West's birthday.

She'd told me that his birthday was the fifteenth, and she'd told me so just five days before. She'd also hinted that his favorite band was playing a big concert nearby on the very same day that he turned nineteen. I'd quickly searched online, bargaining my way through it, but I'd managed to get two tickets to West's favorite band: Arctic Monkeys.

At first, I'd been a little surprised to find that it was his favorite band, something about the soft grunge feeling to the band not quite connecting to West, at least not in my mind. But then I thought back to the first day I'd met him and I remembered past the boots and the usual jacket, I remembered that he'd been wearing an Arctic Monkeys shirt, and I almost felt bad about not having remembered sooner.

When the tickets arrived in the mail – I'd gotten them online from some teenage boy who lived in the town over – I quickly took the envelope and package containing the shirt that I'd also ordered before my mother could get to it. I'd threatened the boy that if the tickets were fake, I'd be paying him a visit, so I was fairly certain that he wasn't going to cheat me.

The tickets – the kid's price had been a bit steep, but considering how my timing had been rather last minute, I'd just went with it – combined with the t-shirt that I'd ordered just about blew the already small paycheck that I'd earned from the cinema. But I wasn't sweating it, not when I could already imagine West's face upon receiving the news.

The concert started at 7, so at roughly six, I pulled the shirt over my head and then threw a light jacket on over top in case it got chilly after the show. I grabbed my mother's car keys without her knowing, deciding that it was a dire enough situation, and headed over to West's house.

I'd only been over once before, oddly enough to drop off the flyers Krissy had asked me to make for her.

I knocked on the door, hoping that West would answer the door, backing up a step when his mother answered instead. She was nice, probably more nice to me than she should have been after I'd skipped out on the dinner, and didn't appear to have a problem with me – despite that, there was still something a little unsettling about stopping at a boy's house and asking his mother if he could come out for a surprise concert.

“Uh, hi, Miss Monroe, but is West here?” I asked, paying careful attention to how I addressed her. I remembered her mentioning something about not wanting to be referred to as Mrs., and I figured that it had something to do with West's father not being all too great of a man. I'd yet to ask, but I'd gathered the pieces and come to my own conclusion.

She turned around, yelling a quick, “West!” and then another, “West!” When she didn't receive an answer, she sighed, stepping back a bit and gesturing for me to come in.