"Okay, who stole her favorite toy and made her like this?" Sid asks Claire.
"Leave her alone," Claire says.
"She has been moping around for a week now."
"She'll get over it. Just leave her be," Claire says.
"What happened, anyway?" Sid asks.
"She watched a sad movie."
"A movie? Really? She's like this because of a bloody movie? How sad that movie could have been for her to be like this? What happens in the movie?"
"Everyone dies at the end."
"Which movie is that?!"
"Don't know the name. It's a foreign movie. She watched it with subtitles."
Sid looks at me who is lying on the couch in the living room. "It's just a movie!" he shouts. "Get over it! You're making the whole house depressing."
This is how sensitive my brother is towards others' miseries.
But he's right about getting over. I should get over the camp incident. In fact, I should be happy I had my first kiss with my very hot mate under a starry sky.
If you exclude the fact that he has a girlfriend, and we'd rejected each other, the whole thing was very romantic.
––––
Our Math teacher, Ms. Portman, is making us do calculus today.
I always sit with Claire in this class. She's a B student in Maths. She is good with probability problems, also with matrix computations. But I don't know where her brain goes for vacation when she has to do integration.
Just draw the integral symbol, find the limits, and start integrating using the formulas! Why does she have to start sweating over that?
After our class ends, she calms her nerves with a cola from the vending machine.
"Hey, Claire," a tall boy says. He's Zeke. One of our fellow seniors. Also, Claire's ex.
Claire has a lot of exes. She was never serious with anyone, in case she found her mate. A lot of teens are like that.
Which means she exclusively dated boys who preferred casual hookups themselves. And although all of them were the typical playboys, they were pretty cool – except Zeke.
He's still a cool guy for everyone else. But not in my eyes.
I always thought he was possessive of Claire. Not openly, but in a sleazy kinda way. Others couldn't have noticed that because I'm the one who hangs out with Claire the most.
At times it even seemed like he emotionally blackmailed her to make her spend time with him.
I was glad when she stopped seeing him.
And she did it because I asked her to. That may have been selfish of me, but the heck, if I don't like the dude, the dude doesn't get to be with Claire.
Last year, I saw Zeke's then-girlfriend in the school restroom. She was sporting a bruise on the corner of her mouth. When I asked her what happened she said she had accidentally bumped against a door. Like anyone will believe that.
I think it was Zeke who hurt her. That's the kind of psychopath vibe I get from him.
"There's a party at my home tonight. You coming?" he asks Claire.
"Will see," she says.
He nods and leaves.
––––
