tangled up in blue

05

"Shut up and help me," I hissed. Just as I was about to hand Bethany the cake, the front door opened. We froze.

"Um, what's going on?"

The voice of a very confused looking Helena Chan caused me to jump in fear, making me drop the cake. It all happened in slow motion. Lee throwing a hand over his mouth, Bethany holding her phone out to capture every excruciating moment, Pacey laughing and being of absolutely no help, and me, in the middle of it all, staring in shock at the most popular girl in our school as a gigantic cake landed face down in front of her, splattering her front steps with white and blue icing.

Well, at least it landed face down.

I snapped back to reality and gawked at her. "Uh, hi." I said, breaking the quiet tension. "Hello. I'm Helena. I mean, um-" I stammered as my friends snickered. "I'm Noah. You're Helena. Obviously."

Nice one, Noah. You don't sound like an actual fucking idiot or anything.

After a painfully long moment of her staring back at me without a word, I reached forward, and tried to scoop the cake up with my hands. Much to my horror, Helena bent down and turned the cake over.

Please be ruined. Please be ruined.

Frowning at her now hauntingly deformed yearbook photo, she ran her eyes over the smudged icing and started to read it out.

"Virgin... I want to... kill you. Love, Noah."

My eyes widened in dread.

Why me? Why today, Satan?

As Helena looked back up at me from where we both crouched on the floor, I heard Lee snort behind me. It seemed I had forgotten how to breathe.

"Uh, that's not what it... It says kiss, not... shit, I am so sorry. I didn't write that."

She blinked, her eyebrows furrowed. "You literally signed it with your name."

I scratched the back of my neck. "I promise there's a totally sane explanation. And the whole... dead virgin thing. One that doesn't involve me putting on a black robe and sacrificing you in the woods."

I awkwardly tried to laugh at the last part, but her expression didn't budge. If anything, it made her look even more like she'd just done six tabs of acid, and was waking up to a horribly disturbing trip. "You're really weird."

I grinned sheepishly, trying to subtly tuck a giant home made card with the multi coloured words 'MARRY ME HELENA' written on the front behind my back. "Yeah. I get that a lot."

We slowly stood up, and she eyed me cautiously as she stepped back into her house. "Okay. This was... surreal."

"Yeah..." I breathed out, wincing as I prayed for the cake splattered ground to swallow me whole.

"Can you, um, clean this up?"

I nodded stupidly, not knowing what to do with myself.

"Okay. Um, see you around. Bye."

"Yes." I fumbled as she slowly closed the door. "Thank you."