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When I got to the coffee shop that morning, after quickly rushing out of the house to ensure I didn't have a run in with my mother, Mr Hunter was already there, sitting in the little lounge booth we shared most mornings. I was debating with myself deciding if I wanted to risk sitting next to him or not. But in the end, after I got my coffee and went to sit down he had disappeared.
The coffee always took long to make and I sat at the bar waiting, unlike most times where I would sit on the couch and wait. I was constantly looking over to the lounge area, it was now occupied by someone different. Undetected by their presence I went and sat down on the couch with my freshly brewed coffee and pulled out my iPod, stuck the buds in and put the music on high.
I held the coffee cup between my hands, warming them to the point they were almost burnt. My head was leant back and my eyes closed, absorbing the words of John Mayer and his amazing guitar playing ability.
That is until I felt a tap on my shoulder. It startled me, but luckily my coffee didn't spill one drop. I opened my eyes, and took the music away from my ears, bringing me back to the real world and finding Mr Hunter standing over me. His large figure with his broad shoulders were looming over me, creating a large shadow. I'll admit if it were anyone else I would've been a bit more intimidated but there was something about Mr Hunter that made me more comfortable.
He then took a seat next to me on the couch and said,
"I just wanted to let you know I was going to sit down before I actually did, to not frighten you.." he seemed to understand my weary and cautious personality but he as a counsellor after all.
"Ah thanks Mr Hunter.." I replied, grateful to his manners.
"Please," he said, "Call me Joe. Just between you and me, because we wouldn't want the other kids to get jealous would we?" he said with a small smirk. I politely smiled back, a little hurt that he had put me into the 'kid' category. If anything, I had more experience of the real world than any other adult.
The conversation dried out a bit with the hustle and bustle of the Al's in the background as we sat there side by side. Me picking at a loose thread on the couch and him staring at the painting. I wouldn't exactly call it awkward but it was nearing that stage. He cleared his throat to catch my attention. Pointing over to a blue plate with a few chips out of it on the table in front of me he said, "Nice to see you had some breakfast, Jane. Most important meal of the day!"
I was confused, seeing as that wasn't my plate, it had obviously been left by the person before me but after he was sitting here. Realisation struck me as I realised he must think it was my plate and therefore I was the one who ate what was on it, leaving behind a collection of toast crumbs. I was too scared to tell him it wasn't my plate as because he was the counsellor I felt like he was constantly fishing for new dirt, new problems. My eating habits to be one of them.
"Oh yeah, I love bagels.." I said, covering my look of confusion. He smiled and it seemed genuine this time, like he was truly happy to hear what I said.
"Same.." he trailed off, understanding that bagels weren't a good subject to talk about. But there was something I wanted to clear up before I finally went to school.
"Where did you go?" I asked.
"What do you mean? I am right here..?" Joe's brow was raised in question, not understanding what I was saying.
"Well you were here before, then you left. But now you're back again.. So where did you go?" I explained.
He seemed to understand now where I was coming from, but his face was saying 'do I tell her where I was? Do I trust her?' in the end it seemed he did as Joe explained,
"My grandmother owns the bookstore just around the corner, she couldn't lift a box and needed my help so I just ran out to help her. She's getting old now and can't handle stuff as well as she used to. So I made her hire someone to help her out."
"Would this bookstore be 'Walton's'? The one where I start my new job today?" I asked, already knowing the answer. Yes. Yes I was just about to start at my teacher's grandmother's bookstore.
"Yeah, it sure is!" he confirmed. "So you must be the new 'young lass' that came into the store in her running gear asking about the job?" I chuckled at the word 'lass' a strange word coming out of my young geography teacher's mouth.
"Aah I'm not quite sure.." I was playing with him, and we both knew it, especially by the smirk on my face, which after her said, "Cheeky!" turned into a full smile. Showing teeth and everything..
"You're pretty when you smile, you should do it more often." he spoke quietly as if he were unsure of his boundaries, not those of him being a teacher but my boundaries of being comfortable with him. But I did hear it, loud and clear and I must have been okay with it as my cheeks seemed to light up fire engine red, the blush spreading down to my neck. I muttered a 'thanks' in his general direction, too scared to look at him now and took a last huge swig of my coffee.
For the first time in which we had been sitting on the couch this past week, he was the first to make a move to leave.
"Jane, it's 20 minutes till first period, I suggest you make a move. Plus, I have a staff meeting in 10." he stood, holding out a hand to me. Unexpectedly, as if my body had a separate mind my arm stretched upwards and grasped his perfectly warm hands, not sweaty like a teenage boy, but not manly like a farmer. The perfect medium. His hand helped to pull me up from our couch. Our couch? I questioned my thoughts. We don't own it...
We both put our jackets on at the same time, and I was packing away my iPod when A waitress came to the table, a young girl whom I had seen at school. She must work here in the mornings, I concluded. I knew she went to my school, when she took a nervous glance in Mr Hunter (around all the other 'kids') before turning to me.
"I'm so sorry about that plate, I must have missed it when I was clearing away the persons dishes. Geez they had a big breakfast! The full English and a bagel!" she chuckled nervously, aware of Mr Hunter's presence.
I was too. I silently cursed the waitress at what she said, letting it be known that the plate wasn't mine. I wonder if he heard that... I slowly spun around to look him in the eye. Yep. He heard, I concluded as I looked into his green eyes, which were tinged with hurt. Hurt that I had lied to him about eating the bagel, or hurt that I hadn't actually eaten it. Either way I didn't get to decipher his feelings for too long as he spun on his heel and took off through the door.
"Oh, I'm sorry! Did I say something?" the waitress asked. I looked to her, reading her name tag 'Jasmine'.
"Don't worry Jasmine, no you didn't. He just had to get to school." I said, letting her know that it wasn't actually her fault. It was mine. I shouldn't have lied. Lying never gets you anywhere Jane, remember last time?
Jasmine quietly said, "Well sorry anyway.." before scuttling off with the plate.
I left the coffee shop and started walking through town to school. Now that Joe knew I didn't eat the bagel was he going to get revenge for me lying to him? Everyone I had ever lied to had found out and taken revenge on me.
Like the time I had lied to the girl Jackie in my class about stealing her pencil when I was 10. It was sparkly and little diamonds on it. It was so pretty that I had to have it, so I snuck into the classroom at lunch time, opened her desk and snatched it up. I spent the whole lunch time writing with it in the library. Writing my name in curly writing over and over, as if trying to pretend my name could be pretty, like I was pretty. I was stopped halfway through the n of Jane when a large shadow crossed my view, and I instantly knew it was Jackie.
"Is that my special pencil?" she had asked accusingly. Jackie may have been your typically girly girl, but she was tall and could scare anyone just by being in the same room as them, especially me.
"No!" I had quickly replied. "I found it!" I lied. That was my mistake, I had lied. 10 minutes later I had found myself in the girls bathroom with tall Jackie and her two sidekicks shoving me into a stall and dropping my head into the toilet. They had taunted me with words that had hurt my 10 year old self.
"Jane is fat AND gross now! She a liar liar with pants on fire!" they had sung repetitively, until the bell rung where they released me. But the consequences of my lying had never released me.
It may seem like a mild experience of the consequences of lying, but I have plenty more. Now I have learnt my lesson of not lying to my mother, you can imagine how I learnt that lesson. You guessed it, bruises and blood.
Lying never helped.
-
It was second period where I met up with Fletch again in gym, where we were out in the cold in skimpy shorts running laps. Well some of us were. Those of us who had fainted the previous day were set the task of sitting on the sidelines and watching, all thanks to the relief work of the one and only Mr Hunter.
"Hey! Oh my god! I was so worried! Are you okay? We're you sick? Dehydrated? Don't tell me you're...anorexic?" he spat out a multitude of questions, but whispering the last word.
I rolled my eyes a little dramatically, a bit uncomfortable with all of the fuss. "Don't be stupid. I just didn't get to eat anything for lunch is all.. Anyway, do I look anorexic?" I asked in a tone that heavily opposed the idea of me being anorexic. Except, Fletch didn't get time to answer the question as Joe blew the whistle he had somehow acquired, sending the mass of students on a run five times around the track.
He kept glancing at me, before he came to sit down next to me on a bench covered in frost from the cool early morning air. We sat in silence, except for when the students passed where they were talking and 'running'. Joe noticed their pathetic attempt at running and blew his whistle loudly, causing me to jump before shouting at them to get a move on. I was tracking Fletch's running, now on his fourth lap speeding past the precious girls in the class. When he was on his last lap, Mr Hunter turned to me, looking me straight in the eye and said,
"Lying is bad, you shouldn't do it. Especially when it has bad consequences."
Consequences? What kind of consequences did he mean? He was probably going to go and tell someone about my problem. I guess that's what you get for lying Jane, you shouldn't do it.
Just when he finished his sentence Fletch pulled up in front of me as Joe got up and left. I knew lying was bad. I knew it.
Fletch was stretching his muscles and catching his breath before he started talking to me. "We're having lunch together today. Okay? At the courtyard, the safe place!" he demanded a little louder than needed.
Fletch was still breathing heavily when he finally sat down next to me on the frosty bench. His body was radiating heat from his run, but he hadn't even broken a sweat. Meanwhile I was so cold my feet were numb and my hands were tucked under my armpits to help keep myself warm, but the thin layer of my coat wasn't doing a good enough job. I was shivering now, shaking slightly but this was magnified by ten times through the bench and Fletch had noticed.
He looked to me, and I saw the mischievous glint in his eye telling me he was up to no good. Just as I had predicted, he came slowly closer and closer until he pounced on me, wrapping his two large arms around my body and putting me in his vice grip. I struggled, uncomfortable by his touch but gave up after I realised he wasn't letting go.
"That's right Jane, just enjoy it. If not for the human touch you seem to need, but for the warmth I'm giving you. You feel like an ice block!" he said.
"Of course Fletcher. It's almost negative 20 degrees out here, why don't they just cancel school all together in freezing weather?" I complained, but I must admit, after a minute or two in Fletch's arms I could feel the warmth radiating through my body, slowly warming me up. I didn't wrap my own arms around him though, that was just weird. I still wasn't quite sure if we were really friends or not. Yet.
The rest of the class finished almost 20 minutes later, and after Mr Hunter complained that the run was supposed to be a warm up and that the class took too long, he released us out of class as there were only 5 minutes until we had to get changed. Fletch told me to wait outside the gym so we could walk to biology together before he went to shower and change. I was waiting on the staircase up to the weight room when a figure came into my vision. A very girly figure.
Shannon had her badly dyed, dirty blonde hair straightened to an inch of its life running down her back. Her makeup so thick I still wasn't quite sure if it was really her, and her skirt so short it was a miracle her legs hadn't frozen in this weather. She stood right in front of me, looking down at me as I sat on the step with her eyes squinted and glaring. She didn't waste any time.
"Look, I don't know who you are nor do I care. But you need to get something straight. Mr Lewis is mine, so back off. We have been together for ages and he loves me. Don't think that you can come in here with your quiet and ragged personality and woo him. Because you can't. You're too ugly for that, he would never go for a girl like you." Shannon spoke in that classic girly and bitchy tone, that she thinks can invoke fear in anyone. But to be honest I wasn't too phased by her little lecture, she had no idea what she was talking about. So I thought I'd get back at her with a statement that might confuse her.
"Oh he must love you SO much." I said. Shannon didn't understand what I was getting at with the sarcasm dripping from the tone in my voice, instead she took it as me being genuine and bowing down to her. It felt like the more I needed to be pitied, the more I pitied others for their stupidity. Alex first, and now Shannon.
"Yes he does. So I suggest you run along By yourself without any friends and watch your back, because I'll be watching." she couldn't have picked a more cliche line than 'I'll be watching' but I guess that's all I could expect from someone who would barely be able to get a D in her classes.
I stood up, taking her advice to 'run along' but not because I was scared of her threat, but because Fletch now stood waiting for me. I left her behind me, I'm hoping she looked a little stunned too. As soon as Fletch spotted me walking over to him, he saw that Shannon was behind me.
"Jane! I leave you alone for what? 10 minutes and you already have what seems to be an enemy chasing you around? Do I have to babysit you?" he asked me, as if he were disciplining a child. And I felt like a child too, as I lowered my head to look at the ground and muttered a sorry.
Fletch chuckled and said, "Oh Jane, what am I going to do with you?" and slung his arm over my shoulder. All of this new personal contact was scaring me a bit, but I guess going out of your comfort zone was good, right? That's why I allowed his arm to remain where it was.
We were walking to biology, barely a quarter there as we had to walk right across school, when Fletch handed me a sky blue ski jacket. "Here" he said.
"What's this for? It's not mine." I told him, giving it back and wondering how he could think it would be mine if he had never seen me wearing it.
"Jane, for someone who seems pretty wise and smart you just had a pretty blonde moment. It's my jacket, but for you to wear. I've got another ski jacket in my locker just in case of emergencies. And I think my newest friend freezing is an emergency. So take it." he handed it to me again.
"Okay.." I said cautiously. "Thanks Fletch."
We finally rounded the corner to biology and through the door into the bio lab. I wove my way through the already seated students and sat down in the empty chair next to Fletch. I was not looking forward to this class. I had already had too many encounters with this teacher, and I didn't want any more. But changing from his class would give people reason to suspect something was wrong. Which I was not willing for anyone to find out.
However it seemed that Mr Lewis had other plans as he walked out of his office with that cold smirk on his face, and the fiery spark in his eye and looked right at me, looking like he was just about to have some fun. Which meant not fun for me, but rather some suffering...
"A test today class!" he bellowed over the small chatter of the students, which earned him a collective groan from the class.
"Come on! It'll be easy! This is worth part of your grade, so work hard on it!" Mr Lewis started to pass out tests, and when he got to my desk, he gently placed a piece of paper on my desk. Although the movement was gentle, there was something about it that was threatening.
I looked to the paper to find questions and topics I hadn't even learnt yet, and surely neither have the rest of the class. But there was no way to prove it. So I read through each question slowly, deciphering the words I knew and making sense of the questions. I answered each one carefully to what I thought the right answer would be, and as I finished the last question on the page, Mr Lewis called end of class and collected papers. He appeared next to me as I was packing my bag up, and once again gave me the smirk. The smirk that said 'I know you know what I just did, and you know what I'm trying to do.' and with that he paced to the front of the class as the students spilled into the corridors at the sound of the bell.
Fletch yelled out to me through the throng of people and said, "Lunch!" reminding me we were having lunch together before disappearing into the crowd. I couldn't wait. Not.