CHAPTER 17
THERE IS DISBELIEF
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I walked out feeling the weightless drops hitting the ground getting heavier by the second. I wore my raincoat, tied my hands against my chest as a natural reaction to the cold, and I ran home. Woah! I defeated the rain. I wanted to talk to Aiden to hear the full story. As I walked in, I saw my mom and dad in the hallway. I ran upstairs. As I reached my room, the reality hit me that I couldn't call Aiden because I technically didn't have a phone number to call him. I decided to sleep on it.
It was Saturday morning. The morning whispered a breeze in the mellow sunlight. I called Elec from the window to ask her about the essay. She told me that she was going to finish the essay with Irsia because Irsia didn't want to finish the essay anymore with Aiden.
"I've got a juicy picture," she said in a cadence that was toneless.
"Of what?"
"Aiden Wilder."
I stared blankly at the vagueness of this information.
"I warn you. You may not look at him the same way after you see it. You may even decide not to finish the essay with him."
I rolled my eyes and shut the window.
The weather was pretty clear. A breezy, calm morning under a big clarion of a blue sky. Birds were singing and the sun was ablaze. I got ready and informed my parents that I was going to Irsia's house to finish the essay. I lied because my parents didn't like me being involved with boys. Not after what happened with Kyle, not even for school work. Elec was already waiting in her garage.
As she drove, she handed me her phone. It had a picture of Aiden and Fiona. They were sitting next to each other on Kyle's couch. Another picture was captured at a moment when Fiona was leaning in over Aiden. Maybe she tried to kiss him, or maybe they did kiss. Some form of novel animosity toward Fiona's promiscuity formed a root, but what baffled me was the fact that Kyle had posted the pictures on the wretched school page with a caption that addressed Aiden as the Casanova.
Casanova? The word just never made sense to me. That word should be wiped out of the dictionary and from the face of the earth. Why not use the word fornicator? Does the job. Plain. Fits Kyle to a T. What's the purpose of calling a guy Casanova? Pampering his fornicating/soliciting nature is indirectly objectifying women.
Kyle needed a vocabulary lesson. All sorts of lessons, right from how to be a decent human being. He always told me writing poems and stories was not going to take me anywhere high. Well, at least I was not doing things behind anyone's back. I think Kyle took the pictures too. He had a way of making everyone look ugly by taking pictures at really trashy angles.
"Are you sure, you want to finish the essay with him?" She shoved her phone into her denim pocket.
"Elec, I don't care if he likes Fiona. Why is that bothering you and Irsia?"
"I don't care if he likes her or any PSB. I'm just concerned that he went to Kyle's party just after he hurt Irsia and bombing us with that story that you are in danger. I am just concerned that he is being insensitive."
"Shut up, Elec. He isn't insensitive. He's just being a boy." Now, I was defending him. "Can I call him from your phone? I need to inform him that I will be finishing the essay with him."
"You are my protégé, Walker. Boys are insensitive. I can't believe I'm sexually straight."
I laughed hard at her exasperated tone. She joined me with her exquisite laughter. I prayed Aiden wouldn't pick up when I had laughter hiccups.
It was 10AM. I had a feeling that Aiden wouldn't even have woken up. Mrs. Wilder opened the door for me.
"Hi, Mrs. Wilder. I am here for the English assignment with Aiden."
"Hey, Margo. Aiden told me. You will find him upstairs." She pointed in the direction of the stairs.
His home was a clone of Irsia's. Downstairs was the hall with a dining area leading to the kitchen. Spacious and cozy. The other end of the hall had a study.
As I was climbing the stairs, his mom asked, "do you want some tea, Margo?"
"Oh... uh... no. Thanks for asking though." I wondered if I should tell her that I hate any form of tea.
His room was to the right of the staircase. There were 3 rooms upstairs. The door was open. He was sitting at his computer. His smile grew into something impish as he saw me. I knew that he would love to take every opportunity to mock me.
"Hey," I chirped, trying to keep my annoyance out of my voice.
"Hey..." he dragged, looking at my hands as if searching for something.
"What?"
"No rain jacket?"
I gasped at the realization. Oh! No! It would definitely rain today. I made a sad face by pushing my lower lip down as if I were crying.
"Stop making that face," he said, in a firm voice, and he turned to his computer.
"I'm gonna need your umbrella when I leave."
"Sure." He nodded. "Do you want tea?"
"I hate tea," I declared.
"Sorry." He gave his chair a slight shove and stood up. "Let me bring you another chair."
This was the first time I was in his room. It was super clean and everything was in order. Not what I expected. I imagined books piled on the floor and laundry baskets spilling in every boy's room, but this was pristine. His computer screen had a document opened with only the words 'English Assignment'. Bold and underlined. He came back with a chair for me to sit next to him.
"Do you have a plan for the essay?" He slid into the chair.
"Yeah, I have."
"Of course, you have. It's English."
"Why? Did you have anything planned?"
"No..." He chuckled, succinct.
One superficial look at his hand when he placed the chair down and I knew it was swollen. Wrist and knuckles. Now, I wanted to ask him three things. 1. Was about his hand. 2. Was about PSB/Verena. 3. Was about Fiona. So, I decided to ask him about his hand after writing down hints for the essay.
"So, what's the essay about again?" He didn't show much of an interest in English as he did in programming.
"Umm... we have to recreate a Shakespeare's play as if it is happening in the present," I explained. "It has to be about 3 pages."
"What play did you choose?" He asked me, rubbing his palms together as a gesture to say that he was curious. I couldn't help but notice his hand again.
"I have chosen Romeo and Juliet." His face dropped.
"Margo, I think a lot of others too would have chosen that."
I nodded. "But let's make it different."
"Different how?"
Well, I've always hated Romeo and Juliet. This was the only opportunity to show how much I hated them, but in a very subtle way. I asked Aiden to type in the hints as I recreated the story.
The story would begin with Romeo and Juliet belonging to Montagues and Capulets. Romeo was infatuated with Rosaline before he met Juliet. Rosaline never responds to any of Romeo's messages. One day, as he logs into his profile online, he finds Juliet's profile in the 'suggested for you' tab. He clicks on it and sees that she looks beautiful –more beautiful than Rosaline; that he forgets all about Rosaline in a heartbeat. Juliet and Romeo chat online for hours and decide to meet. When they meet, they are so in love that they want to get married right away. Despite the feud betwixt their families, they elope to marry.
"Tybalt doesn't murder Mercutio and Mercutio doesn't die cursing the Montagues and Capulets."
"Why not?" he asked, with his hands still hitting the keys on the keyboard.
"It's a three-page essay. We can't include all those characters."
Romeo and Juliet live happily. Romeo gets message requests from some girl online. The girl looks so beautiful that he falls in love with her at first sight, just like he did with Juliet. He goes out to meet her. To his horror, it was Juliet who was catfishing as another girl online. She stabs him and herself. The moral of the story is -'there is no such thing as love at first sight.' If someone falls for someone at first sight, they pretty much just want to get laid. To put this in an alternate way, if Romeo and Juliet had lived, they would have fallen again for some other person.
"I mean, if a person could fall for someone at first sight, they probably fell for their appearance. Please do not start with the theory of souls speaking to each other in the very first meeting. That never happens. So, if a person falls for someone's appearance, it means they could do it a lot more times. Also they could have done that a lot more times before, too."
"Are you sure you want to type this as an essay?" He asked, arching his eyebrows with a mischievous laugh.
"Don't make me stab you." I laughed too. "Well, I don't like them both. And who falls in love at first sight?"
"Right."
I pondered for a minute to ask him about his hand. His wrist and knuckles looked swollen and it looked like he was in pain, too. He was the type of guy who looked at the positive side of everything, but I didn't know he could hide pain. He could hide pain, but he just wasn't very good at it.
"What happened to your hand?" I probed, failing to hold off my curiosity and my tongue.
"What do you mean?"
"Okay, Aiden. I may be a little dumb but I have been best friends with Irsia and Elec since forever. I may not notice things immediately like Irsia but I took note of your inflated wrist and knuckles."
"Ohhh... that..." he dragged. He sighed and looked at his hand. "I got into a fist duel..." he trailed off.
"A fist duel?" I wanted to laugh. "With whom?" I can never imagine Aiden getting into a fight.
"With Kyle."
I hoped my consternation reaction wasn't scary. I didn't know whether to ask him if Kyle started it or if he started it. I knew deep down that Aiden wasn't the sort to get into a fight, but if he did, Kyle must have pissed him off.
"Why?"
"Because he is the one that has been giving around your number to perverts and...." he dragged again and huffed.
"You know what, stop dragging. You are annoying me." I paused for a minute to rewind his statement in my head. "Wait. Did he start the fight?"
"No, he didn't."
"I am sorry. What?" I was nonplussed with an unfamiliar sting in my heart.
"I went to that party to make him bleed in his face for every rumor he had spread about you."
"I thought you didn't care about those rumors." Now I was confused to the superlative. "You said so yourself, Aiden. What triggered this?" I squealed.
"I don't care about what he says about me, Margo." His vociferous tone carried something that I recognized as tribulation of some sort and his face was accessorized with a glower. He wet his lips and sighed again, looking away momentarily. "I care about you. I care about you getting hurt," he said it with an intensity that I couldn't handle, and I had to steer my eyes away from his eyes.
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