Scarlet Season

You Don't Know Me

You quickly walk to the corner where the bus stop is and sit down on a nearby bench. You're glad that you've remembered where the bus stop is, the Uber driver drove past it last night on the way to your new apartment. 

After taking a moment to catch your breath you check your phone, *7:05am*. There's still ten minutes until the bus gets to your stop.

Sighing, you slump into the bench with your hands in your jacket pockets, looking down. You're so nervous for your first day, you haven't had a great educational past. 

What if midtown High is just like Chelsea Academy? (Your old school.) What if every corner you turn there's another person waiting to kick or trip you?

As you let all of the dreaded 'what if's' fill your head, you pull your headphones out of your pocket and jam the cord into the almost broken headphone jack in your crappy old phone. Scrolling through SoundCloud, you decide to listen to your usual depressing low-fi music. 

Every year since you were ten years old your Psychosis has gotten increasingly worse, the voices just won't stop coming. Listening to loud and, preferably sad music, is the only way that you know how to keep the voices from filling your head. 

You sit and wallow in the music as you watch the cars pass by on the unpaved street; New York is nothing like England. 

After a few minutes of sitting and staring into the street you notice a shadow appear over your shoulder. Before you have time to look up you hear a voice from above you. 

"Uh, hey. Are you okay?" 

You jolt your head upwards and see a cute boy, maybe fifteen, looking down at you. He breaks eye contact as soon as you meet his eyes. He's wearing a light blue sweater and jeans and he has a single headphone jammed in one of his ears. 

You quickly take your headphones out of your ears. You had been completely zoned out when he first spoke to you, so you didn't hear what he said. 

"S-sorry, what?" You mumble while you anxiously fiddle with your bracelet. He awkwardly shoves his hands in his pockets and looks back down at you. 

"I was just wondering if you're alright." He mumbles back.

"Um, yeah. Why wouldn't I be?" you ask him, shading your eyes to keep the sun from blinding you. 

"Are you sure? You're crying." He remarks.

You immediately bring your hand to your cheek and your palm is met by a small water droplet. You feel a single warm tear slowly make its path from your eye to the edge of your jaw. You're crying, you just didn't notice until he said so. 

"Oh, yea, no, I'm fine. It's just um," you try to come up with a good excuse. You're not one to show emotion in public, especially in front of strangers. "I have like, really sensitive eyes and... the wind was blowing really hard. So my eyes were just watering, I'm okay." Right as the words leave your mouth you wish you could take them back, there is and has been no wind blowing. What a cheap excuse. Now this cute guy is gonna think that you're an emotionally unstable person and a liar, what a great first impression. 

"Oh, okay." He says as he looks down at his scuffed up navy blue Nike's. You can tell that he has really low self confidence. Neither of you say anything for a good minute before he speaks up again. 

"I'm Peter by the way," he stutters as he juts his hand out of his pocket, waiting for you to shake it. You don't have great self confidence either so you decide to just look away and leave him hanging. First thing that people should know about you, it takes you awhile to warm up to them because of the tragic past that you've had with old 'friends'. Peter clearly doesn't care, and he tries you again. 

"I um, I go to Midtown High, what about you? I've never seen you around here before." He says, looking around the busy street. Oh gosh, you go to the same school as him? Well there's no turning back now, right? You may as well make the best of it. 

"Yeah, I'm new. I just moved here from England," you say as you look up at him. 

"Oh," he says smiling, "that explains the accent." he says with a small laugh. He seems like a really nice guy, but you're not one to befriend people easily. If he wants to be your friend, he has to prove it. 

"Yeah, I'm the only one in my family that has it. I was the only one that was raised in England." You're trying to make conversation without letting him think that you care too much about getting to know him. 

"What part of England?" He asks you, he's not giving up. 

"It's a suburb of London, it's called Chelsea." You look back down at your legs and fiddle with your bracelet again. 

"You're so lucky, English people are so so nice." He says with a happy tone. 

You snort and reply, "That could be heavily debated." 

He doesn't seem to know how to respond to that, so he goes silent again. 

"What school are you going to?" he asks again, you hesitate before responding. 

"I'm starting at Midtown today," you say. He walks over and sits down on the bench beside you.

"Well that's cool, now you know at least one person," he laughs a little as he says that. 

"Yeah, I guess," you reply with a dry tone as you check your phone, *7:23 am.* 

The bus should've shown up eight minutes ago. This is the most boring conversation you've ever had, but it's your fault. Peter wants to talk, you don't. 

After a minute or two the bus finally shows up, and Peter speaks up again. 

"Well um, are you getting on here?" he asks, trying to start a conversation again. 

What a stupid a question, you think to yourself. Of course you're getting on here. 

"Yeah," you reply without looking at him. Standing up you see him look back over at you. 

"Wanna sit with me?" he asks. His voice gets noticeably higher when he asks this. You can tell that he's nervous, he probably doesn't really talk to girls very often and you're not making it too easy on him. 

"Sure," you respond as you and Peter climb the steps onto the big smelly bus.