Fifth period meant two things:
1. Mr King's painfully boring History class.
2. I sat next to Ryan Taylor.
On the surface the two could not be in further juxtaposition from each other. However, they were both in fact formidable tests of grit and determination.
The first to stay awake and engage in any sort of opportunity to learn something from a man who personified the word 'dull'. From his mustard coloured bargain store tweed suit to his embarrassing attempt to hide his sorry case of baldness with an outdated comb over. Mr King was about as interesting as dishwater and taught most of his lessons via PowerPoint presentation. He made no attempt to disguise the fact he was as passionless about teaching as the majority of his students were about learning.
However, this still didn't compare to the daunting challenge of having to stop myself from turning an alarming shade of crimson and yelping like a puppy dog every time Ryan looked remotely in my direction.
I'd had a crush on Ryan Taylor for the past two years. In that time he'd had four girlfriends, all of which were annoyingly gorgeous. I on the other hand had failed to even kiss a boy, I had never even come close. No doubt as a result of my being such a socially awkward idiot. Yes, a dingy one bedroom apartment and six million cats were what lay ahead in my romantic future.
Ryan's type was very obviously not me. He always dated 'mega bitches', a comforting fact that I (and Clara) had reminded myself of often. Ryan and I would never be 'Ryan and I'. I was not his type and that should have been enough to stop my little crush in it's tracks two years earlier. Instead it had served only to fuel my adoration of him.
He was every bit a cliche with his deep blue eyes, his sandy brown hair that fell adorably across his forehead and his athletic physique which I had admired often. But cliches are such for a reason.
I had on multiple occasions during his 'legendary' contributions to school sports attended such events. Simply to feed my obsession, to dote from afar. Pathetic I know. So much so that Clara had forced me to go cold turkey and give up Ryan when he began dating Carly Reynolds in the Summer.
Just last week Ryan had broken up with Carly Reynolds, the Queen of all mega bitches. She had been devastated for all of about two seconds before sticking her tongue down his best friends throat. Ryan was officially no longer taken. He was available.
Not that I was ever going to do anything about that. It was simply an observation I had made.
"Do you have a pen I could use?"
Startled from my own thoughts I realised who had spoken to me. I felt the familiar rush of heat to my cheeks and dipped my head, attempting to hide my face with my hair. I reached forward for my pencil case with such urgency I sent it flying off the table.
KILL ME NOW!!!
My mind screamed. As I slid off my seat to reach for the case I bumped into Ryan who had also (like a gentleman) gone to help. That single second of contact between us sent a further rush of heat throughout my body that sent my stomach into tail spins.
"I''m sorry," I stuttered, barely recognising the pathetic whimper of my own voice.
"It's okay," he was kind enough to reply as he helped collect the stationary back into the case until all that remained was a single pen.
Instead if allowing him to take it I took it in my hand and gave it to him, as I did I felt an unfamiliar rush of daring. Looking up, I forced myself to make eye contact with Ryan Taylor and smile.
"Thanks," he said, smiling back with his perfect set of white teeth.
"Keep it," I stated, a sudden strength and calm in my voice that I didn't recognise.
"Alice if you wouldn't mind taking a seat, I have a lesson to begin." Mr King requested in his very nasal, extremely monotone voice.
I sat back in my seat feeling as though I'd conquered Mount Everest, that had been the longest conversation we had ever had. I smiled to myself and searched for Clara a few seats over. Of course she had witnessed the whole thing, the biggest grin was fixed upon her face as she gave me a thumbs up signal.
I shook my head and laughed quietly to myself before I began copying from the board into my book. All the while I was unable to shake the feeling that Ryan was still looking at me. Of course the idea he would take a second glance at me was ridiculous but the hairs on the back of my neck told me differently.
***
"He was so obviously checking you out but the way he was looking at you it was like he had never seen you before or something," Clara insisted, shoving a mouthful of popcorn into her mouth.
I took a handful myself, probably not a dinner Angela would greatly approve of but she was working late again. I reached for the TV remote, switching the channel from the cheesy low budget horror we had just endured.
"Well...don't you have anything to say about it?" Clara pushed, I simply shrugged much to her frustration, "You should send him a message on Facebook or something, get talking before some other slutty bitch gets her nails into him!"
I shook my head at her crassness, "I don't know what to say to him Clara, I'm no good with boys," I responded, chewing the inside of my lip in discomfort.
"Don't give me that Alice, if you just realised how pretty you are and gave people half the chance to get to know you then you'd be good with boys too!" Clara replied, a tinge of what seemed like frustration in her voice.
I bit harder into my lip. I knew her intentions were in the right place but Clara knew me better. She knew why I was guarded, why I didn't just open up to anybody, why I didn't trust others especially boys. She knew my freakish secret, the part of me I hated even more than my gawky boyish figure or my dull brown hair. My 'sensitivity' had made me a born weirdo and I had fought to keep it a secret ever since I can remember. I couldn't help but feel betrayed by her frustration with me, as if my insecurity was a petty annoyance to her.
As was almost always the case, Clara must have read my mind. She mumbled an apology before laying her head against my shoulder. Instinctively I began to stroke behind her ear, to comfort her as I had done since we were kids. When Clara's parents would fight which happened all too often, Clara would come over to mine, climb into bed with me and cry. I'd stroke behind her ear to soothe her until she slept. That was our way.
Even now she spent most of her time at my house as her parents marriage had never improved. Even when her father died suddenly of a heart attack when Clara was thirteen nothing much changed. Her mother still dedicated her time to drinking and self pity.
"I know why you're afraid to let people in Alice. But it's not like you drink tea with dead people. You're just a little...unique," Clara stated in her own attempt to soothe my concerns.
I couldn't help but smile a little. She was right. I didn't see ghosts, I wasn't haunted by the task of having to help them to decipher their unfinished business like some rip off Jennifer Love Hewitt in 'Ghost Whisperer'. I wasn't a full blown medium or psychic but what I did have had not been easy to grow up with.
Feeling the pain and suffering of others had not been something a young child was equipped to handle. It had let to episodes of strange behaviour and emotional outbursts from a little girl struggling to understand why she was different to the other children.
Like the time when I was seven and my mother had been called and ordered to collect me from school early because I had been hysterically crying for hours. When she got there she found that I had locked myself in the girls bathroom, she saw several teachers trying to negotiate with me through the door as my peers look on in confusion, she heard their comments about how "weird" that Alice girl was. I could hear their thoughts too despite being in the next room but I didn't care. It didn't compare to my feelings about Mrs Simmons.
I was insisting that I did not want my favourite teacher Mrs Simmons to die much to the horror of my teachers and classmates. Somehow that day I knew that Mrs Simmons heart was hurting her, that she would die because of it. I knew that I would miss her if she was not in school the next day and at seven years old I felt I had to stop her pain. My promised she would help if I just opened the door. She didn't help, she apologised to the teachers for my "disruption" and took me home.
Mrs Simmons was in school the next day but I wasn't, Angela kept me at home. I didn't know whether it was to save my shame or hers. I was agitated the entire day and angry at her for keeping me from seeing Mrs Simmons.
By Monday I returned to school but Mrs Simmons was not there. By mid-day I remember two teachers talking, one of them gasped in response to the other as the news broke that Mrs Simmons had taken a lethal overdose over the weekend and drowned herself in the bath.
She had been unable to cope with her husband leaving her for another woman and so decided to take her own life. Though I did not understand the entire conversation at the time, It had become engrained in my mind just as the look that teacher gave me once she heard the news had. She looked at me with such an expression all I could feel was overwhelming guilt. As if I had killed Mrs Simmons myself.
My childhood is littered with such outbursts. For years other children looked at me strangely and always conveniently forgot to invite me to their birthday parties. Parents commented on my "behavioural problems" in discussions with my teachers and attributed these to my mother being a single parent. My mothers patience turned to frustration followed by desperation as she prayed for me to just be "normal".
When I was eleven it occurred to me that if I just kept my feelings to myself and stopped the outbursts at home and at school then everyone would be happier. If I didn't talk to the other children (just Clara) and instead kept my head in my school books, then I could become invisible. So I did and the other children were only too happy to let me disappear. For the past five years I have remained this way, safe in my own little invisible cocoon.
The sound of Clara's phone receiving a text message filtered through my thoughts. She jolted upright and yelped with excitement as she read the screen.
"I've got to go!" She said, throwing the blanket we shared aside and jumping to her feet.
"Brett?" I questioned casually, annoyed she was blowing me off for a boy but trying not to let her see this. This wasn't the first time after all.
"Uh yeh he's online now," she said as she pulled a pair of ballet pumps onto her feet, "I'll txt you later with the details," and with that she was gone in a flurry of giddiness.
Reaching over for the bowl of popcorn on her side I was dismayed to discover it empty. I suddenly became aware that I was very much alone in my very empty, very dark house. I pulled the blanket up to my chin and sunk further into the sofa. Angela would be home soon.
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