“Did you see the look on that guy’s face?” Quinton asked me through hysterical laughter. “He was looking at you like, No. Just, no.”
I giggled and buried my head in my hands. “I can’t believe you dared me to say that.”
“I never thought that you would,” he told me, and burst out laughing again. “That was priceless!”
“That poor guy,” I said, laughing despite myself. I screwed up my face into something pretty close to serious and reenacted the scene from the subway station, turning to Quinton. “Hey, you kinda look like my Biology teacher,” I mimicked. “Wanna make out?”
Quinton doubled over laughing, which was pretty dangerous considering that he was driving. He shook his head, and he had been laughing so hard that I could see his eyes slightly shining with the tears of hysterical laughter. I could have high-fived myself for being the one to make him laugh, but I was trying to make an effort not to embarrass myself. He grinned, watching the road, but it was meant for me.
“I wish I could have gotten that on camera,” he lamented wistfully, sighing. “We probably would have won that show with the funniest videos.”
“America’s Funniest Videos?” I supplied.
“Yeah,” he said. “That one.”
I shook my head, smiling to myself like an idiot as I have been all day, my cheeks hurting from the amount of stretching they have been doing to make my smile big enough. This had hardly ever happened before, but for some reason being with Quinton made it feel like a natural reaction.
He pulled onto our street, not surprising me when he parked on the street directly in between our houses, favoring neither of them. I jumped out of the car and joined him on the other side, on the sidewalk, and for the first time the entire day we didn’t really know what to say. We stood about a foot and a half apart, leaning in the direction of our respective houses, but it wasn’t awkward as much as it was just . . . not completely comfortable.
It wasn’t as natural as the other moments had been. I guess that was what I was trying to say.
I fidgeted. He took a deep breath.
“So that was fun,” he commented and I smiled and nodded in agreement. “We-we should do this again sometime.”
“Guh?” I replied.
He blinked. “Sorry?”
“I said that sounds good,” I told him, biting my lip nervously. I took a hesitant step back, not wanting to go but knowing that I couldn’t stay. “I guess I’ll see you at school, huh?”
“Not unless you look out your window,” he said to me with a charming smile, and for some reason I kind of melted. I smiled back, trying so hard to bite back the series of random facts my mind was just dying to blurt out and ruin the moment with, hoping to make the moment a little bit more awkward.
Too late.
“Kangaroos can’t hop backwards,” I blurted out, immediately turning tomato red, trying not to look too horrified, but I doubted that it worked. He chuckled a bit, looking amused, and I just seriously couldn’t stop talking. “And koalas sleep for approximately sixteen to eighteen hours a day. About three of their five active hours are spent eating. Did you know that a koala might have given One Direction chlamydia? Or that—”
He silenced me in one of the best possible ways—he closed the space between us and kissed me.
Would it be weird to say that his lips were warm? Or is that kind of like saying that I felt some major sparks? It was like fireworks. I felt my face heat up even though it wasn’t much, just his lips against mine for too short a time, just enough that when he pulled away I had to control myself from either pulling him back in or just passing out cold right here on the sidewalk. I blinked, my lips tingling like crazy as he pulled his face a little bit away from mine, looking at me to gauge my reaction.
It must have been what he expected, because he smiled a little bit, his fingertips brushing against mine so softly that it could have been mistaken for the wind if it wasn’t for the zing of electricity that ran through me when our skin touched. I looked down at his hands hovering just out of touch from mine and then back up to his face, catching his eyes, losing myself in a shade of sky.
I didn’t have the guts to tell him that was the first time I had ever been kissed by a boy, and that it made me happy just to know that it had been him.
He looked down at the ground for a second before he backed a small step away, his hands still lingering just out of reach. He smiled slightly, looking like he didn’t want to smile too much, and I wanted to smile because he was trying hard not to look like a tool, which must mean that he cared how I thought he looked.
“Goodnight, Lena,” he whispered, his breath blowing across my face, making my heart beat quicker. I swallowed, and that in and of itself was quite the feat.
“Goodnight,” I breathed back before I took a handful of steps away, holding his gaze until I turned my back on him, holding back my moronic grin with little success, parts of it pushing at the corners of my still-tingling lips. I jumped the steps up to my porch and pulled out my key, unlocking the door. I glanced behind me before I opened it, wondering if he was still there, and he was still in the same spot, smiling, watching me go.
I smiled back and laughed once to myself before slipping into my house, and closing the door behind me. I leaned against it, letting my knees fail me and sliding down to the floor with my head against the wood and a big goofy smile on my face, all of my thoughts centered on the boy next door and that he had kissed me.
~*~
“Oh. My. Greek gods,” Kline said.
“That just about covers it,” I told her, fidgeting with the bathrobe sash wound through the belt loops of my skinny jeans. I glanced anxiously at Norma, wanting to see a sane person’s reaction to the news, but she looked almost identical to Kline—her mouth was hanging open, her eyes wide. I looked between them, waiting for a stronger reaction, but this was going to be very, very delayed. I had a feeling. “So this is good, right? Like, I don’t want to make assumptions and read into things, but—”
“You guys are going to have the best-looking babies,” Kline whispered, awestruck, looking at me like I was a goddess or something. I choked on my own spit.
“You sound like his brother,” I muttered, still coughing against my epic spit failure, so I don’t think they heard my casual reference to Quinton’s family. Norma looked over at me, looking thoughtful, and I flinched. I definitely did not want to know what was going through that mind right now.
“I think it’s sweet,” the reasonable one decided, and I breathed out, relieved.
“I think he’s sexy and Lena needs to make a move on him,” Kline announced loudly, catching the attention of a majority of the hallway. I looked over at her, horrified, but a voice shocked me out of my stupor.
“Who are we talking about?” a familiar voice asked from behind me. “It’s me, isn’t it? It’s common knowledge that I’m too sexy for my shirt.”
“Please don’t start stripping,” Kline told Peter, looking disgusted. “You did once at the Christmas party, and I threw up my favorite sugar cookies. I can’t look at them without seeing the fake henna you had on your lack of abs.”
“Don’t be hatin’ on my bod,” he remarked, insulted. “I work hard to keep slim. My abs are just naturally flabby.”
Norma bit on her lip and Kline just shot him the stank eye. I shoved my fist in my mouth so stop myself from laughing, knowing that egging Peter on was the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. He crossed his arms over his band tee defensively, tapping one Van-covered foot on the ground as he glared around at us.
“Aren’t you guys supposed to be outside right now?” he demanded.
“Why?” I replied, blinking. I glanced at Norma and Kline, but they looked just as confused as I was. Peter stared at us incredulously, a smirk covered his face.
“No way,” he said. “I know something you don’t know? This can’t be happening. This moment has to be prolonged so I can memorize what this feels like.”
“You can memorize the feel of my fist down your throat,” Kline growled threateningly. Peter grimaced. “Von Gordon, I swear to Athena, I am not a lady, and I’m not afraid to prove it.”
“Fine!” he shouted the moment that Kline advanced on him with her fist up, flinching back. “Colonel is pulling the best prank this school has ever seen on the football field right now. Half the school is gathered around to watch.”
“I thought the halls were rather empty this morning,” Kline commented, completely unbothered.
Meanwhile, Norma looked like the world was on fire. “What did you just say?”
“Yeah,” Peter said slowly, “he said that you would probably freak out and that I shouldn’t tell you, but . . . I know Kline, and she really would hit me.”
“Damn skippy,” she chimed, narrowing her eyes at him. “So what is this groundbreaking prank that you speak of? Is it one that I happened to mention he should do at a certain sleepover where I may or may not have had wait too much sugar?”
“Um,” he said, “yeah, it’s that one.”
Kline grabbed mine and Norma’s wrists before tugging us to the door, probably giving me bruises as she tried to rip my arm from my socket. I winced but she continued to pull, a big amused grin on her face, excitement in her eyes. As Norma started hyperventilating, we flew out of the front door and down the steps, turning right and heading straight for the crowd gathered around the chain-link fence, pushing past bodies to get to the front and ignoring them when they groaned and mumbled about us being rude or whatever. Kline skittered to a stop at the front, peering over heads at something I couldn’t see.
She burst out laughing.
“Oh my god,” she giggled, and then bent over and clutched at her sides, her face turning bright red. “Oh my god, it’s even better than I imagined!”
“What did you tell him to do?” Norma demanded, trying to peek around people to no luck. She stomped on one foot and pouted at the crowd, but it didn’t make them move their enormous asses. “Kline, I swear, if he gets expelled, I am going to dye your hair pink when you’re sleeping. Victoria’s Secret pink.”
Kline cringed, but any answer she might have supplied our freaking out friend was cut off by the loud neighing of a horse. Norma froze before her eyes widened.
“Oh good lord,” she whispered. “I remember now.”
“It’s so beautiful,” Kline murmured, wiping away a tear, a proud smile on her face. I tried to stand on my tiptoes but I still couldn’t see over the head in front of me, the guy easily the size of a skyscraper. I looked over at Kline to see that she was having no problem—yet again, I didn’t exactly wear disco pumps to school today like my peculiar friend and her reflecting pants. I tugged on her arm, frowning.
“What did you tell him to do?” I demanded, confused. “I’m out of the loop here. Why is there a horse here?”
“Come here,” Kline urged me, tugging me in front of her and opening up my ability to see a little bit. Norma leaned on me, her head on my shoulder as she tried to see through the bodies. The boy in front of us shifted slightly, but it was enough that we could suddenly see the entire football field.
Our jaws dropped.
“Oh,” Norma whispered.
“My,” I continued.
“ZEUS,” Norma, Kline, and I exclaimed.
Colonel reared up on his horse, shouting joyfully as it neighed and pawed at the air. The horse broke into a steady run at about the twenty yard line heading in the direction of the end zone, Colonel sitting on it without holding on with a big grin on his face and a cowboy hat over his head, wearing a ratty old pair of jeans and a holey white t-shirt stained with mud. He waved something above his head—I realized that it was a lasso.
Throughout the field, livestock darted around, terrified.
“Oh my Zeus,” the three of us whispered simultaneously once more—Norma in horror, Kline in awe, and me in complete shock.
“You better get runnin’, you woolly beasts!” Colonel called from atop his steed to the sheep that were running around frantically, searching for help. Bed sheets were tied around their necks, giving them numbers, but they were running so fast that I couldn’t even read them. As I watched, a goat suddenly just keeled over, going completely still and flopping down onto the ground, its feet straight in the air. I gasped in horror, but Kline just laughed harder.
“Fainting goats!” she gasped through her hysterics, tears pouring down her face. “Classic!”
Colonel shouted off a battle cry that probably went back to the Alamo and the horse charged toward the nearest sheep, my strange friend releasing the rope and missing the running animal by mere inches. He laughed as it escaped, all of the kids on the sidelines cheering him on. He pumped one fist in the air, so proud of himself.
I glanced over, still in too much shock to even react, only to see the principal storming through the crowd, pushing past the kids but getting some major resistance. I shook my head slowly, a big grin spreading over my face as Colonel continued to ride around without a worry in the world, looking totally in his element. Norma slapped her hand against her face, groaning.
“He’s in so much trouble,” she moaned, but I couldn’t help but to notice that she was grinning, if only a little bit.
Kline suddenly said, “Uh oh.”
“Uh oh what?” I demanded, looking over at her. She was grimacing in the direction of the field. She met our gazes and merely pointed, and I followed her gaze, dreading whatever I was about to find.
My gaze fell on the cluster of sheep gathered in one corner, fearfully watching Colonel taking down a fainting goat. They were finally standing still, still enough that I could read the numbers on their bed sheets—one, two, four, and five.
I glanced around the makeshift pasture only to see where Kline was looking now—at a hole in the fence, plenty big enough to allow Number Three to fit through.
“Oh, great,” Norma sighed.
~~~~~~~~~~
I love this chapter lol
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x Riley