CHAPTER 9
FRESH MAYFLOWERS?
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"Which is?" I asked, trying not to get my feet on the big stones near the school gate.
"Last night, she laid out a rule that I could never drop you home while she's alive." He exclaimed that he broke her rule. Boys are all about breaking rules, aren't they?
"Actually, you are walking with me." I pointed out, letting the breeze hug me.
"Technically." He nodded and gave a short chuckle. "But I am still breaking her rule."
"Yeah, you better not tell her about this. She would kill you," I replied to his confidence. He gave me a funny stare. "Are you sure you can walk till your home?"
"Don't worry about me. I'll take the short cut through the corn fields after your home. It's good to walk once in a while." He sounded energized.
We walked past the church, and I saw the leaves moving in the wind as if they were giggling. Short pulses of moving their vein, apex, and then the base. The short pulses that the dogs did, shaking the wetness off the body from head to tail, and when the shakes reached the tail, the shakes would become short, quick pulses. It was that kind of short, quick pulses that the leaves were moving. I think it was the influence of Damon on me. I smiled. Those movements of the leaves made me think that the leaves were happy about the wind and that they were happily giggling at each other. The branches looked like yawing ships in the sea. I remembered Aiden being quiet last night when I left Irsia's home. I had to apologize to him. He was the collateral damage in the drama. After all, the rumors were about Aiden and I.
"I am sorry," I blurted out. I knew he'd ask me why. He didn't seem to care about the rumors, but there was something that disturbed him last night.
He looked down at me with a frown. "For...?" he dragged.
"For all the gossips and rumours that you had to endure."
"Oh that..." He laughed. "I don't care about those. And I think many know that it isn't true."
"May be..." I sighed. "But still, it wasn't fair to you."
"Ohhh... Come on. It's fine. It's not your fault. But if you are still sorry you have to do something for me."
"No, I am not sorry anymore." I grunted mockingly.
"No no no... but you have to tell me something..." He intertwined his opposite fingers against each other and bent them against the other hand's knuckles, like he was praying. "Please," he said.
"What is it?" I chuckled, pushing a chunk of hair behind my right ear, and I saw his giant shadow. I knew he was tall, but the evening sun made the shadow on his right a giant.
"What were you thinking when you were looking up at the mayflower tree?"
I closed my eyes for a second in embarrassment and uttered, "Aiden... only you can ask such questions..." I had to yell a little because of the noisy truck that passed us by.
"Oh! Come on!" He had to yell too. "I'm confident it would be unshakably interesting."
"Well, if you insist. But if it turns out to be cheesy, you should let it go this minute and you are not to mock me for it." I warned him with my index finger pointed.
He placed his closed right fist across the left side of his chest and pledged, "never."
As we reached the Freezing Point, a sudden craving took over me. I wanted a butterscotch.
"Ice cream first!" I exclaimed. "You want one?"
"Sure..." He followed me.
After a brief moment of arguing, he let me pay. We walked out. He got chocolate and I got butterscotch.
"Can I get a spoon of butterscotch?" he pleaded.
"No way," I muttered, licking the spoon -so unladylike. Uncool me. Now that I had ice cream in my hand, I had to be extra careful in walking to avoid stumbling and falling on my face. That was a real possibility given the condition of the road, and add that to the muddiness the road had become with the rain.
"Come on, I'll give you chocolate. Two spoons..."
"N...O..." I had to enunciate.
We crossed Beauty and Dine. It was our favorite shop. Elec, Irsia and I, we got our hair cut there and the rice cake there was our favorite. When I saw the spot where Edric pushed Elec into the muddy water, it felt like it had happened just yesterday. So near and yet so far. So much had happened since then.
I was almost done with my ice cream. I had one last spoon. "Do you want? Last spoon?"
He got that from me with such a smile that I had lost a long time ago. That was one other thing that I missed about my childhood, the ability to get excited about small things. Ugh. Why did I grow up...? Maybe I should be more like Aiden. Mature in handling tough situations and sweet and excited about every other freaking thing.
He stretched his hand, offering me his chocolate ice cream. I said, "nooo... I don't want it. Why do you keep doing that when you know I hate it...?" I frowned.
"Well, it's funny." He chuckled, with the ice cream stuffed in his face. He scooped the last spoon and stuffed it in his mouth. "Okay, don't dodge," he said, looking around. And I guessed he was looking for a dustbin to throw away the paper cups. "What were you thinking when you were looking at the mayflowers?"
I sighed. He just wouldn't let it go. "I compared the mayflowers to the love or whatever I had for Kyle." I paused as another truck passed us by.
"Okay. Go on..." He gestured with his hand, just in case I didn't hear him.
We came to the Brightmaple signal. He dropped the ice cream paper cups into the garbage in the corner of Brightmaple Road. We had to cross the road. This was where I saw Kyle with his new girlfriend the other day - the day I found Damon dead. We crossed the road and came to a steady, stable walk again.
"What made you think such a thought...?" he asked with a slight impatience that laced his tone.
"Umm... as I saw the flowers so bright that it engulfed the greenness of the tree, I was thinking; well, wondered if the flowers knew that they could only burn bright so long that they could only cover the leaves for like 3 months or so." I stopped as I had to walk a little behind Aiden as there was only space for one person to walk. The road was being repaired there.
I continued, "I thought, the flowers of the tree are like the love I had for Kyle. It engulfed all the mistakes and his arrogance and his misogynist behavior and then it had to fall down and wither away." I had to slow my pace there because the road was slippery due to the rain and it had a muddy puddle. "It's a lot like love covers all wrong."
He looked at me in awe. With a smile, he shook his head in disbelief. I knew he wasn't mocking me, but I laughed.
"What? What is it?" I asked. Again, pushing chunks of hair behind my ears. The wind kept making my hair even frizzier, if that was even possible.
"I am just trying to pull words out my brain. I am star-struck at your ability to compare flowers to something like that."
I giggled. "That's high praise, Aiden." We reached my street.
"No... no... that's not praising. That's me describing your existence." Before I could stop another commendation from him for giving an insight on my embarrassing thoughts on comparing the full bloomed mayflowers to mistakes, he cut through and said, "I missed the old Margo so badly. Now I know she's back or at least part of her is back. I am happy," he gushed.
"You know that's exactly what Elec told me a few days back. Well, she didn't see the old Margo returning back then but that's about almost what she said."
"No, she couldn't have," he said. Confident.
"That's what she said -"
"But she couldn't have said what I am about to say now..." He paused, looking at the bunch of kids laughing at something, and we reached my block.
"Okay, let's hear it." I smiled, tossing my hair back in a merrily challenging way.
"I miss the Margo Fawn you were a year ago. You know around the time we became friends. You were like the pages of a beautiful book with the kind of words that could move anyone. You were that dreamy girl who made stars out of some chemical papers for Irsia's birthday. You had a spark in you that you could glue those stars to the sky. That's impossible but you'd still try. You were that girl who walked in front of us -walking backwards many evenings when we walked home, just to read a poem you wrote about a silly thing that had happened. You used to write your favorite quotes from books in chemistry text book because you didn't want to fall asleep. You used to be so full of life that anyone could get contagious from it. You have always had a deeply glowing passion to be someone good and you wax into an ardent comfort for people who need you. That's not a very habitual thing. I miss the Margo who appeared as if she was out of a book... clumsy but cute, awkward but attractive...."
I took a sharp breath in. I was sure my eyes were the size of the Oreo cookies. My gut did something. Maybe it flipped. Maybe it jumped. But it definitely told me not to overanalyze whatever he said. So many thoughts rushed through my mind. I had to unfreeze my freaking brain and say something before entering into my house and I replied, "yeah, she definitely did not say that...." I paused to take a breath in. "Like that." I smiled, swallowing whatever else I thought at that moment.
"I told you so." He chuckled.
"Well, we are here," I declared, as we came to a halt, reaching my home. "I'd love to invite you in. But -"
"But you can't. I know." He nodded understandingly.
We waved each other bye. Well, it wasn't the first time I heard someone say something like that about me. It was terrifyingly very specific, but yes, I had been a good friend and I loved being creative. I couldn't believe I even once heard Fiona say things like that about me. I was even friends with Fiona once. I would never feel certain of why people trusted me to tell their deepest feelings and sunless secrets. That was exactly how Kyle told me that his dad was his step dad and he never had seen or known his biological dad. He had somehow led all his friends to believe that his step dad was his biological dad. I also knew Fiona's older sister was in an asylum. I blocked my mind from thinking too much about it, and I went upstairs to my room.
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