Today started when I was at lunch. I sat with the group I always do. Our time together normally begins like this:
*Israel sits down*
*A Dozen boys make sex and/or fart noises*
Israel: "Hey guys what's up?"
Someone: "Your mom."
*Every single person at the table actually pisses themselves from laughter.*
And then it's like we satisfied an unwritten prerequisite and we can talk about other things. Today, the topic of conversation was that Tommy, another guy at the table, got Sydney Gandt to go on a date with him. It was a pretty big deal. Why was it a big deal, you ask? Because this guy couldn't freaking shut up about her. He's a lot like me, except he feels the need to share his obsessions with everyone around him. It would be annoying if he didn't have an amazing habit of fucking everything up in every situation he's in, so the constant embarrassment provides great fuel for conversation.
But, shockingly, his date with Sydney ended up going kind of well, according to him. He ended up making out with her for (he apparently timed it) over three full minutes. With tongue. I gotta hand it to him, I'm not going to lie. Because somehow that occurred after he took her on a tour of a synogogue even though they are both Christian (which, I mean, why..? and also how?) and played the playlist he made for the date which included Beethoven's fifth and, not far after, an entire British trap album.
But hey, I guess that should speak to how much game he has. Not even he can get in his own way.
I couldn't keep listening to him brag about the date, though, because something took full control of my attention: a burst of red flashing past the corner of my eye. It was her. I told my friends I'd see them later, and rushed myself through the lunch tray line.
Tragically, the bell rang right as I was headed her way and a torrent of bodies closed in on me. Getting to her was like some twisted episode of Ninja Warrior. After my countless failed spin moves, roughly 300 I'm sorry's, and numerous people that I clumsily ran into, I found her.
"Oh, hey" I tried to start the conversation sounding like I was in for a cordial surprise. As if I just survived a freak tornado and was itching for some small talk.
"Hey, Israel!" she said.
"Hey... uh..." trying to make up a name for her on the spot.
"Emma," she responded with a smile.
"Oh, that's a cool name," I said as I reached my hand forward for her to shake it.
Okay, let me repeat this again with a little more detail: I, Israel Taylor, reached my hand towards the beautiful girl I have been obsessing over so that she would shake my hand. A handshake. Like I was greeting a parent or important businessman. Because it's super sexy when that happens.
She looked at me for a bit, and then laughed as she went for it. That girl shook my hand like she was a senator. "Israel, it is a pleasure to meet you. How's the wife?"
And there it was. I couldn't believe it. This breathtaking woman in front of me can not only handle my awkwardness, but she turned it into a joke.
"Ok, ok, I'm sorry." My face doubled in heat before I could let out my whimper of a laugh. "So, I'm assuming I should probably never do that again?"
"You know, as much as I loved using my dad voice, let's save the handshakes for professional meetings"
She laughed. I wanted to die.
"Note taken. Where are you off to?" I asked, trying to recover.
"Well actually, I'm going home. My mom, aka myself, just called into the school saying that I have a doctor's appointment that she forgot to mention."
I stood in incredulous confusion. "Do you really think that's going to work out for you?" I asked.
"Well, it might and it might not. The important part is that I'm not gonna be at school long enough to help them find out." She must have seen the shocked look on my face because she added, "And either way, my mom works so much that she wouldn't let the school ask her about it if they tried."
I started laughing, "Sounds genius."
She let out a laugh and kept talking with a half-smile. "Have you ever skipped school?"
I mean, I hadn't really thought of it before. I might as well skip school every day, the way I pay attention while I'm in it. I listen to music during class, I draw or write on any piece of paper I can find, and I've ruined more than a couple of notebooks because I decided it was better used as my personal sketch pad. That being said, I wasn't going to let the most beautiful girl in a 1000-mile radius know I had never skipped.
"Yeah I do it all the time. Faking sick is one of my favorite pastimes," I said.
"Well then let's do it. Go fake sick!" She seemed excited. My heart stopped, but I couldn't let her call my bluff
Before I could stop her, she took my hand and led me down the hall. I wanted to pump the brakes, but it would be like stopping my dreams from coming true just because it was happening too quickly. Like someone was offering me ten million dollars and a great sex life and I needed more time to contemplate whether I really wanted to stop being a broke virgin.
We rounded up on the nurse's office and she patted me on the back before I went in. "Now remember, you just threw up, and if you ever feel like you're not being convincing enough, just think of something disgusting. Here, rub some cold water on your face," she said as she unscrewed my water bottle.
Little did she know, I was already clamming up just at the thought of this plan. But, I did it anyway.
I stepped into the office, my knees a bit wobbly, and went up to the nurse, Mrs. Reynolds. "I'm sorry, ma'am... it's just... well, I got sick in the bathroom earlier."
She raised her pencil to her chin and looked me in the face for a couple of seconds. "Well honey you look pale. Here, come into the back where you can sit yourself down." She led me to the back of her office as I clenched my stomach and worsened my posture.
We went into a stark white room with a small couch next to the far wall. She gestured towards the couch while she looked through her cabinets for some gloves.
She turned around, stretching the glove over her palm. "What are your symptoms?"
I looked up from my legs and answered, "I have a stomachache, headache, and I'm a little bit light-headed." I was so nervous that most of that was true.
She checked my temperature, looked in the back of my mouth, and gave me one final glance over. As she was taking off her gloves, she looked back at me. "You are going to have to call a parent while I get you entered into the absence sheet.
I knew it would come to this. I didn't care much, my mom always worked and my dad was too busy on the phone to even care. I dialed my mom's number and waited for her to pick up.
"Hello?" She said into the phone.
"Hey mom, I'm... um... sick. I threw up in the bathroom."
"Oh dear," she sounded scared.
"Yeah... so I, um, I think I'm gonna go home instead of staying at school."
"Okay, let me just call dad so he can work from home the rest of the day."
I panicked. "Oh, no no, that won't be necessary, you know how busy he already is."
"Well Izzy, we can't have you home with no one to take care of you."
"Mom, come on." I couldn't think of a reason why she shouldn't call him, but I thought I'd stick with a classic. "I'm an senior. I know how to take care of myself."
"But honey, we need -"
"It's just throw up, not smallpox. I'll call him if I need anything."
"Oh okay fine, but you need to update me throughout the day so I know how you are."
"Yeah sure. I'll see you when you get home."
"Okay, bye."
"Bye."
As I hung up the phone I looked down at my hands. I realized how much I was sweating during this whole ordeal. I wiped them on my pants and wiped the beads of sweat off of my forehead. I couldn't see my armpits, but I hoped that they weren't affected like everything else.
On my way out of the office, I looked around for Emma, but couldn't see anyone.
"BOO!" She shouted as she jumped out from behind a pillar.
My heart leaped out of my chest and I almost screamed. "Dear lord, Emma. How did you even-"
"Alright loser, you ready to get out of this fluorescent prison?"
"Let's go. What exactly are we doing though?"
"Oh, you'll see," She said with an only slightly crazy look in her eyes.
She took my hand and ran down the hallways with me. Everything became slow motion. Emma, me, the school, and everyone in it stopped. I felt noticed by the world, and it was nice. Israel Taylor, the odd, lost, imaginative cynic. He is here, he is moving, and he is in full, high definition, vibrant color. I felt invincible in that moment, like no one could even touch me.
We reached her car after flying out the exit door. She threw me her keys before we got in. "I'm too tired to drive, you need to take the wheel.
I looked up and saw autumn leaves get broken apart by the sunlight shining between them. She had this huge red SUV, completely disproportionate to her size and composure. Wait. She had a red SUV. I stopped to look around. The world seemed to look more... full.
"Come on now! What, did you get cold feet or something?" She was in my face, looking into my eyes.
"I'm sorry, I'm coming." I paused for a bit. "Does the world by any chance seem more alive right now?"
"Um, it's autumn," she said, confused, "so I think it's actually about to die for a bit." She took my hand again. "But we have to go. it's only an amount of time before Mrs. Reynolds sees that we're faking, and then you'll really want to throw up."
We stepped into her car and I looked around the controls. She stuck a piece of gum into her mouth as she threw her backpack over the seat. I reached behind the seats to find my seat belt while I started the ignition.
"Now I only have an hour or two before I need to go home. The real reason for this ditching is because I've faked being sick for a couple of tests and I have to take them all tomorrow after school. I have about twenty six hours to get a hundred hours of studying done."
I nodded my head and put the car in drive. "Where do you think you want to go?"
My mind was going wild. She smelled like an angel and looked the part too. I should've been watching the road instead of her but I felt helpless.
She said, "How about you find the closest highway to here, and we can drive until we don't know where we are?"
"Sounds like a plan," I said as I pulled onto the highway. The engine struggled as it slowly passed the 70-mph mark.
"Be careful with Susan now, she's special," Emma said. "I've gone through break ups, first dates, and everything in between with this one car."
"Wait, you're the one who drove on your first date?"
"It's the subtle tragedy of dating someone younger than you when you turn 16. Part of me thought he just wanted to date me because of my car. Jokes on him, though, people should know I'm too crazy to be made up for with a crappy car. And anyway, I am a self-sufficient woman who doesn't need a man to drive her."
I laughed my approval. "Fair enough."
We drove on the highway for the next 20 minutes. She told me all of the basic information about her as I did the same with myself. She likes dogs and so do I. She likes to read and I like to write. She moved here last month and I moved here years ago, and we both want to move out equally as bad.
We drove through corn for a couple of miles when we passed an abandoned gas station.
"Ooh, let's stop here." she perked up as she said it and leaned out the window like a dog. Her wavy brown hair ended a little below her shoulders, right as the flawless curves on her back started, and something much more interesting was below that.
Sorry for the image, but if I didn't mention it before, I am a teenage guy who often has no luck with girls, and can readily acknowledge when one of the most beautiful ones ever created is sitting two feet away from me. She turned around as the wind whipped strands of hair across her eyes.
I broke out of my trance. "Yeah, okay so I'll just... uh, pull into here then." I made a silent prayer that she didn't see me checking her out, but the disapproving look on her face told me that God wasn't going to help me out with this one.
I pulled the car into a parking lot surrounded by corn, abandoned bikes, bottles, and what I hope were innocently discarded clothes.
"What are we doing?" I tried to say it excitedly, but really I was more confused.
"This is what we call an adventure. I love places like these."
I looked around, making sure we were both seeing the same place.
"I actually used to come to places like this a lot as a kid," she explained.
I let out a small laugh, "Okay, well what did you do here?"
"Normally we would play a game where we looked around to see who could find the weirdest and/or best item, and then they would win."
I was afraid of getting stabbed with a heroin needle, but the game sounded fun.
"And so, as you might guess," she continued, "we are going to play it. You have 20 minutes and everything in walkable distance is fair game."
I shrugged. "So if I win, what does that get me?" Immediately I feared that I came off as sexual or flirty. In fact, why did I say it at all? I mentally tried to grab my words out of the air before they reached her ears.
She raised her hand to her chin and thought for a while. "Hm... How about my best friendship?"
I shrugged. "Sounds good to me. Let's go."
It was off to the races. For some reason, she didn't bother with the parking lot at all. Instead, she made a beeline for the freaking corn. She ran into the nearest row and started looking. I stumbled across the parking lot, trying not to trip over a crack or someone's boxers.
I looked down at the ground, trying to see what would be the right mix: weird enough to win, but clean enough to pick up.
"Uh, hey Emma," I called out. There was a rustling in the field and she came out of the corn looking like someone just got done giving her a bath with mud. "How exactly are we supposed to find something?" I asked.
"I don't know, just keep looking!" She called back.
I laughed and dug around different piles of trash with a stick. I had no idea where to look, but I know enough to follow a beautiful girl's instructions when she tells you to search. By the end of it, she had uprooted several stalks of corn as she conducted some sort of professional archeological dig. There were a solid ten square feet where she dug down a couple of inches, but she still didn't have anything.
I looked at my watch and reminded her that we might want to head back. She looked up from her dig site with a smile from ear to ear.
"Did you find anything?" I asked.
She held her smile. "Oh, I don't know. Did you?"
I reached down and picked up what looked like a disturbingly large package of flavored condoms.
She put on a pleasantly surprised face. "Ah, I remember those from back home. Great for a night in." I put on a look of horror and she broke out into laughter. "I'm kidding," she said, and then added. "I'm more of a glow-in-the-dark type of girl."
Everything she said was amazingly weird. I wanted to feel uncomfortable about it, but there was something about her. Something that made awkwardness melt away.
She reached down into the dirt and started pulling. "Now, the condoms were impressive, but this is the best thing I've ever seen," she said. She pulled more and began unearthing some big green piece of cloth. She kept pulling as I began to see the shape of it. Once she finished, I realized what I was looking at: an adult-sized dragon costume.
"What in the actual hell is going on at this gas station?" I asked.
"Now this is just a guess," she said, "but I think the story behind this involves a corn maze, a man, and a woman who really loves dragons.
"Okay, well that has to win," I confirmed, laughing.
"The flavored condoms were a valiant effort, but I agree."
I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to be in the same car as the sex dragon. "You're not going to keep it, are you?" I asked.
"Oh hell no. I might be crazy, Israel Taylor, but I'm not disrespectful. This dragon deserves to have its final resting place in this field."
"Well, aside from thinking you were going to murder me in an abandoned gas station parking lot, I had a lot of fun."
She put on a sinister face and balled up her fists. "We haven't left the abandoned gas station parking lot yet, Israel."
I laughed as she walked towards me. My feet froze in the cement, waiting for her to get closer. Even if she wanted to kill me, it was worth it for the eye contact she kept on her way over. At the last second, though, she dropped her sinister look and patted me on the shoulder. "But I agree. That was fun," she said with a smile, and then kept walking towards her car.
I cleaned myself off before getting in, but she had no such idea. She jumped into the car, a cloud of pollen and dirt traveling with her. She was smiling like she won the lottery.
I drove with Frank Sinatra singing in my head, and she talked to me about everything that was on her mind. We talked about her favorite movies, books, poets, and subjects in school.
Eventually, we pulled up next to my car. She got out of the passenger seat and I got out of the driver's seat. I heard her engine turn over as she buckled herself in, but I got the urge to stop her.
I grabbed onto her door. "Wait," I insisted.
"What?" She turned to me, half surprised, half freaked out.
"I'm... sorry for that," I said, "but I just want to talk to you for a little bit more."
"I see what you mean, I'm a wonder to talk to. But, I do have a lot of work to do, so I should probably do that."
"Well I know that you're not going to work for the entire night, so you're bound to have some wasted time anyways. And, I don't know, maybe you could waste some of that time right now. With me."
She looked at me for a little bit. The entire world was reflecting in her bright blue eyes. She cracked a smile. "I guess I could stand to waste a minute or two."
"I had a lot of fun today," I said, "and honestly I don't think I've ever had that good of a time during a school day."
"What? You've never had more fun skipping school than exploring an abandoned gas station?"
"Well, I mean, to be completely honest it wasn't the gas station that was fun."
She put on a puzzled face.
"No that's not what I meant, it was a lot of fun. It's just... I mean, it just wasn't the best part of today."
"Why?"
"Well, I don't know..." because you were the best part. "It's just always great to, uh, get to know new people."
She smiled under her blowing hair, but suddenly it left. What replaced it looked nervous. "Okay, well, this has been fun. I'll, uh, see ya tomorrow, Israel."
"Oh, okay. Um, yeah." I said, confused.
She was already pulling out of the parking spot.
I watched her leave. My mind was running circles around itself, somehow thinking faster every time her name came up in my brain. It almost made me dizzy. I got into my car and turned down the stereo. I needed to think. Maybe she was reminded of her tests, I thought, she got nervous about studying and had to leave. I knew it was a lie, but it helped to tell myself that.
I put my elbows on the steering wheel and rubbed my face. Obviously, something I said bothered her. Elation turned to confusion as my world turned back to the color it was before. Grey streets took me home as reality checked back in.