One Year of You and I

January 17th

Friday, January 17th, 2014

Holly

   During my third period English class, Mr. Quarten asked me if I could come to his classroom at the beginning of lunch. I spent my fourth period math class filled with worry of I could have done this time. What assignment wasn’t to his liking. 

  I had been writing every night after I finished my studies. I was writing love stories. If I couldn’t have any hope in the genre, at least my fictional characters could. The fact that Luke had lost interest in me, even as just as friend, was hard to bare. Consider writing my distraction. 

  With each day, I was getting better at it. My sentences began to flow with more ease. My characters and their situations were becoming more realistic. I may have been nervous to hear why I was being called to Mr. Quarten’s office again, but if it was to rewrite yet another assignment, I was most definitely up for the task.

  Nonetheless, the thought of Luke and him now so clearly ignoring me always found a way to creep into my mind. It found a way to tie knots in my heart. Send my stomach to its queaziest state. Turn the corners of my lips downward. Make me remember that to him, I had become just another girl, and that I had to accept that he was just another boy, pretending I didn’t exist like all the rest. 

  I couldn’t accept it though. 

  Once the bell rang in my math class, signaling it was lunch time, I ignored the trajectory to my locker and made my way to my English class instead. I pushed past tall seniors and miniature freshman. The pathway finally came to a clearing and there I was, at Mr. Quarten’s closed door. 

 I wasn’t alone. 

  Standing in front of the door with their own books in their arms was a very familiar face that I hadn’t been seeing much of. My nerves were no longer directed to assignments. They had found a new interest. With my heart beating fast and my fists clenching, I tried my best to walk to the door as naturally and breezily as possible without tripping. 

  Seeming to have heard me, Luke turned his head. Seeing that I was now beside him, he took a quick intake of breath. Literally. He parted his lips and quickly sucked in air, showing how obvious it was that he was shocked to see me. 

  He shifted his books into one arm and put his free hand into the pockets of his dark jeans. He had paired these jeans with a knit cream-colored sweater with thick red stripes going through it. He reminded me of candy-canes. I hated that. 

  I didn’t know whether to be mad or sad, so I guess I found myself somewhere in the middle. I thought to myself how terrible it was that we don’t have a word for such a feeling. How we are left with being forced to feel this confusion as we are stuck in this in-between state.

  That’s what I’d call it. The In-Between State. 

  My heart ached horribly, but it beat quickly in my rage. He ignored me. He made me feel like I was worth something, when in reality, I was absolute nothing. 

  “So, uh,” He said, glancing at the ground and ignoring my face. “Did Mr. Quarten call you here too?” 

  So, he speaks. 

Luke

  Her hair was done up in a bun on the top of her head. Thin little hairs had fallen out, poking out at the top, while others fell in front of her face and down the back of her neck. She wore the same burgundy skirt that she had the one day I decided that she was a ballerina, now with a pair of black tights, which had a hole in the knee, and a white top. My ballerina theory still stood. The most kick-ass ballerina that had ever walked the earth.