Free Yourself
You never know. Maybe when we’re dreaming…we’re more lucid than when we are awake. ~ Katherine Angela Yeboah
Why didn't I ask him his name?
I kept asking myself the same question over and over again as I walked to my next class. Why would I start asking him questions about where he was from if I hadn’t even asked for his name? And why would he answer the questions I asked him.
I couldn’t stop thinking of him as I stalked through the corridors to get to my history class. I didn’t even notice Lucie’s presence beside me as we walked together. Even as she said my name a few times trying to get my attention, I still didn’t pay any attention to her yet I then knew she was there.
She is probably thinking that I am daydreaming again as I walk but it isn’t that this time. I am just deep in thought about that one person who I have known for an hour and I so far can’t get him out of my mind. Maybe it was because of the mystery that was behind him. How I didn’t know all that much about him and the fact that I didn’t know his name. That makes me more interested in him.
But then there is always the side where it is because of the fact that there are rarely ever any new people in this area that I live in. There is no army, no marines, just shops and little businesses. Nothing that people would want to come here for to live. There were a lot of holiday makers in the summer because of the surf but they never move here to live.
After a while of me not responding, Lucie did the only thing that she thought was possible to get my attention. This was to bash into my side making my whole body tilt to the side. I had always watched movies and read books where they said that when they fell they went in slow motion. I had never quite believed it until now.
Everything slowed down and I felt my body near the floor. I knew now that there was nothing that I could do to stop the fall but somehow, I thought that if I did something, anything, the impact wouldn’t be as bad. With this thinking, I grabbed the closest things to my reach, my arms wrapping around someone's body. I stopped falling so fast but I could feel myself still dropping down to the floor.
I closed my eyes tightly, scared of falling down. I hoped that if I closed my eyes, it wouldn’t happen somehow and for a second, I thought it might have worked. That was until I felt the body I was clinging onto fall down with me. Within a matter of minutes, we both fell to the ground with a ‘thud’ creating an echo in the almost empty corridor.
I lay on the floor, not wanting to open my eyes to see who this person that I had fallen on was. I knew that with my luck, it would be someone who would make my life a living hell after this incident. So instead of looking at them, I pushed my head into their body and rested myself.
The sweet scent of coffee was clear on the person’s clothes as I nuzzled my face into their body. With that, I jerked my head backwards and opened my eyes to see none other but the boy from my English class, the one I didn’t know the name of.
“I am so sorry!” I apologized hoping that I wouldn’t get on the wrong side of him. In the corner of my eye, I could see Lucie in shock with Kasia standing next to her, giggling like a five year old. I knew right then and there, I was in some big trouble, if not with this guy then with my friends.
I noticed a grin forming on his lips with a quiet chuckle escaping them. He was finding my embarrassment funny, it was entertaining to him. I felt a smile appear on my lips too as I realized that all the worry of this person being annoyed with me vanished. I shook my head from side to side knowing that it couldn’t get better than this.
He quickly pushed himself up from the floor, a smirk still plastered on his face as he offered his hand to me. I looked at it for a while from the ground before taking it because I know that if I didn’t take his hand I would just embarrass myself even more by getting up. I am definitely not the most graceful person in the world. I felt myself being lifted up and within a second, I had fallen into this boy again by pushing myself up to much.
“You just can’t get enough of me, can you?” he laughed as I fell into his chest. I could feel his heart beating; I was that close to his body. I was still for a few seconds with my eyes wide open. That was until I realized what was going on and pushed myself away.
I could feel my face heating up as I noticed Lucie and Kasia staring at me with wide eyes. Lucie had her mouth wide open on shock where as Kasia had a smirk playing on her lips, obviously enjoying the entertainment we were putting on. I looked back at the boy standing in front of me trying to blur my two friends out.
“Yeah, I guess that is it. Lucie was just playing matchmaker with both of us,” I laughed trying to calm myself down. I noticed Lucie from the corner of my eye looking around a little bit, her face becoming a bit flustered as I mentioned her name.
“But I guess I like the mysterious type. I don’t even know your name yet and I just spent an hour with you in English!” I added sarcastically.
However, before I could properly ask for his name, the second bell went telling us that we were late for our next lessons. I looked at Lucie and Kasia to see Lucie looking slightly worried while the Kasia didn’t really seem fazed at all by the fact that we were late. Again.
I looked back to where my fellow, mysterious friend was standing to see just an empty spot. He was no longer standing in front of me but instead he was making his way down the corridor in the opposite direction to where we were heading.
“Wait, can I at least know your name?” I shouted to him without moving.
He stopped as soon as I shouted out to him, turning his head around ever so slightly so that I could see his face. He grinned to me, shaking his head slightly. I could hear laughter coming from where he was standing. It was faint but it still made me smile a little bit. I tried to wipe the smile of my face but it wasn’t budging, it was there to stay.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he teased me.
“Well, yes, I would like to know!” I shouted back at him.
He gave another cheeky smile before he turned around and started walking away, still laughing to himself. My mouth fell open in shock; was he seriously not going to tell me what his name is. He has already told me about why he moved here, he wasn’t weary about telling me that but he didn’t want to tell me his name. That was just mad.
I turned my body around to face my two best friends who had similar expressions on their faces as I have.
“What was all of that about?” Lucie asked me, shock filling her voice.
I just shrugged my shoulders and headed off to history, knowing that if we were any later than we already are, we wouldn’t be eating at in the cafeteria but in the history room having detention. I had no idea what had just happened. Most people around here don’t act like that. They don’t joke around as much and they usually tell fellow classmates their names. This boy on the other hand was definitely different and not just because he is from England.
Both of the girls followed my lead, running at first to catch up with me. They both knew about the consequences that we could have if we were late to history class again.
“I know right. You two were flirting so much. How long have you had him as your secret boyfriend?” Kasia jokingly asked me. I immediately stopped and turned to look at her, my eyes wide open in shock. Is that what they really thought?
“What?” I shouted, maybe a little too loud. I quickly covered my mouth trying to stop anymore loudness coming out seeming I was too late to stop myself from shouting previously.
“What are you on about?” I hissed at Kasia as we continued walking to our class, making sure that I was quieter this time, a lot quieter. As I looked at them, they signaled that they would tell me in history, clearly trying not to get a tardy.
We started walking quicker to the class room as we neared the door, hearing people talking quite loudly from inside the door. I looked at my two friends with a confused expression on my face. I had no clue what they were on about and also, why were people being so loud in the classroom?
I pushed against the door, slowly opening it to see people from our class sitting on desks, talking to their friends and writing on the white boards. I looked around the classroom quickly to see no sign of our teacher or any other teacher for that matter in the classroom.
I quickly hopped in and headed towards my desk to see my friend, Faith, sitting on my desk with her head buried in her hands.
“Hi Faith,” I exclaimed as I neared her. She turned her head round to face me, her chocolate brown hair shining from the sun’s rays sneaking in through the window behind Faith and in front of me. I smiled at her as she gave me her well known, dazzling smile that got her many admirers.
“Hey Aimee, Lucie, Kasia!” she giggled in a loud voice making everyone’s attention turn to us. Something we were definitely used to whenever we were around Faith, our loudest friend that you could possibly have. Ever.
I have never really understood how she is so loud yet so shy around new people. That thought has definitely crossed my mind a few times. Even though she is particularly loud and it does make us noticed in school, not always for the best, I could never get annoyed by her.
“So where have ya’ll been?” she asked us in her slight Texas accent that made me smile every time I heard it.
She was probably intrigued by the fact that we had, yet again, shown up in class late. I gave a small chuckle as I thought back to how everything had just gone down. It had all started with a push from my best friend.
I saw from the corner of my eye Kasia smirking at Lucie, then turn her head round to face Faith with a menacing look on her face. She was up to something, something mean and I wasn’t completely sure if I wanted to know what it is.
Then she started talking. “Well, Aimee and this gu-” I had quickly leapt into action, putting my hand over Kasia's lips to stop her from saying anything else.
I know what she was trying to do. She wanted embarrass me in front of not only Faith but everyone else who would be listening, and that would be a lot of people for the fact that seeming Faith would have already got their attention from being loud, they would want to know all the latest gossip.
I looked at Kasia, giving her a look to tell her to shut up and I think she understood what I was trying to say to her through the power of my mind and eyes. I felt her body tense down a little bit as she started to relax making me let out a sigh of relief.
I felt a wet substance hit the palm of my hand, my eyes widening as I felt the cold water on my hand. It was then that I remembered that my hand was still over Kasia's mouth. She had just licked me.
“No, that’s gross!” I screamed, jumping away from my friend, attracting all the attention back towards us.
Some of the people in the class snickered whilst others just rolled their eyes at our immaturity. I just shrugged it off my shoulders and sat down in my seat next to the seat which Faith’s feet were resting on as she sat on the desk.
“Faith, are you actually going to sit in your seat or just stand on it?” a voice bellowed from the front of the classroom. We all spun our heads around to see our history teacher standing at the front of the class, his voice stern and angry.
“Sorry Mr. Lowe,” she mumbled, her face turning as red as a tomato. She quickly jumped down from the table to sit down on her seat, petrified of our teacher and the angry mood he is obviously in. Even though Faith can be loud once you get to know her, she is defiantly not one to get into trouble very often, always avoiding it if trouble comes nearby.
Our teacher sighed at the front of the class, showing how much he resented teaching us. I may love studying history but when you have a teacher as mean and strict as Mr. Lowe, everyone starts to resent picking it as a subject to learn.
Mr. Lowe waited for a while until everyone in the class was now paying attention to himself at the front of the class before he started lecturing us about World War II and America’s impact in the war. It wasn’t the most exciting topic that we were covering due to the fact that we have already looked into World War II with detail, now we were just doing a new topic with American andWorld War II.
“As you can see, the attack on Pearl Harbor was one of the main reasons why America stopped being isolated to the rest of the world and decided that they should join World War II. After this choice that Roosevelt made, we decided to drop bombs on Japan.
“We will be covering more into detail of the bombing next lesson, but for all of you for the rest of this lesson, we have a film to watch. What we are going to be watching is Pearl Harbor,” Mr. Lowe started telling us as a few people in the class started to whisper to each other. I could hear a few people talking about how they have already watched it and I though the same, I have already watched it before with my Dad so I know what happens in it.
“So everyone, you better pay all your attention to the film which is about to be played as we will have an exam sheet on this at the start of next lesson before we move on. Any questions before I start it?” he asked quickly, looking around the room insensitively, probably hoping that someone would ask a question. However, no one did so the film started playing out in front of us.
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I knew I had started daydreaming again in the duration of the film when the bell went off. The last thing I remember seeing on the image in front of me was the talk that Roosevelt was having to people sitting around the table, talking about how devastating Pearl Harbor was.
Even though I had watched it before, I only vaguely knew what was going on; I had forgotten what most of it was about. Something that I know I will have to watch again with my father later on before my next history lesson.
I slowly got up out of my seat, picking up my bag and history folder and walked out of the class next to Kasia, Lucie and Faith.
We walked slowly to our next lesson which conveniently, we all had together, art, ready to dump our bags in and maybe start on some of the work that we are doing in lessons. It was lunch now but most of our lunch times ended up in the art room along with a few of our other friends and Lacey, ready for both gossip and artwork to share with us.
I couldn’t wait to start getting to work on my piece that I was doing. Our brief that we had to relate our work to a chosen artist and our work had to reflect theirs. I had chosen a portrait artist, Ileana Hunter, for my starting point and I am working on from her work.
I know that I am ready to start my next piece of work, a picture on a black canvas. I was planning on doing a self portrait, inspired by the way that Ileana does her portraits, in white pencil. I have worked on ideas and realized that what I should do is add some color to the picture. I plan to do this by gluing on crayons to the top of the canvas and melting them so that the color drips down the canvas.
The four of us walked together to the room where we quickly set up our work that we are planning on doing at lunch. I made sure that my already painted black canvas was securely on the easel before I started drawing out a sketch of me down on the canvas.
I was only doing it rough so that I could put all of the details in later on but have the basis outlines first. I was enjoying myself, I didn’t even notice all of my other friends enter the class room but I defiantly heard them.
I didn’t really mind that they were all noisy, until Kasia shouted out something which embarrassed me to high heavens and back. She shouted something that she knew would annoy me, a lot.
“Well, isn’t it Aimee’s secret boyfriend.”
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A/N - The artist, Ileana Hunter, is a real artist. Her work is amazing so I think you should all search her up.