“Alright, pencils down,” Tyler called, inspecting his fingernails. He glanced away from his hands to shoot us an invigorated grin, looking oddly proud of himself. “Dudes, I’ve been waiting to say something awesome like that for, like . . . ever.”
I barely managed to contain my laughter.
“Pass your papers to the front,” Tyler instructed us, pacing the rows and picking up the twenty-five question test on the best rock bands and artists of the sixties and seventies, which is probably the only test in my entire life that I could walk away from and say that I totally . . . rocked.
Bun um bum.
The metallic bell shrieked through the school and I breathed out a long sigh of relief, tossing my pencil into Marvel before standing up from my feet, straightening my trench coat self-consciously. I ducked my head and maneuvered out of the door, relaxing only when I was up the hallway and the History of Rock classroom was too far behind me to spot.
I took a deep breath.
It wasn’t that I was avoiding him.
But I was kind of avoiding him.
I didn’t really want to, and I didn’t mean to, I swear. It’s just . . . For whatever reason, I had this funny nervous feeling in my stomach. It was all tingly and every time I even caught sight of a certain boy next door it would turn red hot and I would blush and stutter and overall act like a complete moron. So after spotting him this morning where he was hanging out with his friends and having the humiliation of him smile at me, only to have me too busy gaping at him to notice the poll that was about to become acquainted with my face . . .
Okay, I was kind of avoiding him. In my defense, I was sure I was going to die of embarrassment if I stuck around a little longer anyway.
When I had walked into lunch and saw him sitting with my friends at my usual lunch table, I had tucked and rolled down the hallway until I was safely hidden away among the paperbacks in the library, hunkered down in the corner hoping no one would notice me. The librarian called the SRO—aka the school cop—in when she spotted me. Needless to say, today’s outfit didn’t inspire confidence.
History of Rock had been just completely terrible. When I wasn’t tapping my pencil nervously and spastically against my desk, I was forcing myself not to look at him. And when I was forcing myself not to look at him, I tended to do stupid things that instead made the entire class look at me.
I don’t know what happened on the Ferris wheel the other day, partially because my mind was consumed with utter terror, and I was almost afraid of where we stood now. It just felt like something happened, even if nothing did.
Call me a pansy, but at the first mention of something going down and I’m running out of there.
Hopeless romantics are usually romantics that are hopeless at finding the right guy. I was a hopeless romantic because I was absolutely hopeless at anything relatively romantic.
Including confrontations. Kill me with a spoon; I hate confrontations.
I heard Quinton call my voice loudly from behind me, echoing down the hall. I winced and resisted the urge to hit my head against the wall, trying not to look in too much pain and I turned around to face where he was cutting through the crowd, smiling widely as he made his way over to me.
Upon seeing him, my stomach immediately erupted into butterflies and I blushed. I nearly facepalmed.
Well, this was a good start.
When he caught up to me, he was grinning, looking so much like Quinton that I immediately felt myself start to smile back, my whole body relaxing in response. Maybe I had been completely imagining it all because there was none of that mysterious emotion on his face like there had been on the Ferris wheel. I kind of wouldn’t be surprised if it had all been inside of my crazy little mind.
“So what’s up?” I demanded, my smirk growing wider when I realized that some kids passing were staring at me weirdly, questioning me with their eyes. I turned away from them and looked into Quinton’s eyes, smiling a little happier. “You nearly ran down the hallway.”
“I wouldn’t have had to run if you weren’t so sketchily slurking away,” he remarked, rolling his eyes. “And nice outfit, by the way. There’s nothing suspicious about a fedora, a long trench coat, and a fake mustache.”
“How do you know if the mustache is fake?” I demanded, raising one eyebrow.
He laughed and the sound sent the butterflies into flailing Captain Jack Sparrow jogs in my stomach. “If you managed to grow that impressive mustache over the two days I’ve seen you, I will never be able to show my non-hairy face in public again.”
I burst out laughing.
He shot me a smile before glancing away, and when he looked back at me, he suddenly had this glint in his eyes. Something that said he was up to no good.
“Who were you running from, anyway?” he asked me, looking curious and devious all at once. I stopped laughing, turning my face into a grimace instead of a smile. “You looked like you were being chased by a face-eating zombie.”
“No one,” I told him simply, waving my hand. “It just goes with the image.”
“Oh,” he said. “Is that why you weren’t there at lunch?”
Not at all. “Yeah.”
He nodded like it made all the sense in the world. My heart felt a million pounds heavier because he was at least trying to understand the crooked world I lived in. Since most people wouldn’t even bother stopping and seeing what it looked like let alone trying to understand it like this boy was always trying to, I don’t think he’d ever realize that something as small as that meant the world to me.
I tried to ignore the strange itching sensation of the fake mustache under my nose and said, “So what’s up?”
“I was wondering something,” he told me. His eyes rose to mine, and he still looked like he was up to no good. It was all I could not to actually gulp. And people hardly ever do that in real life.
I gulped, anyway, but I smiled, pretending like I really wasn’t that much of a weirdo. “Fire away.”
“I was thinking,” he said, and then smiled. “I was thinking that we should go on a date.”
My mind
went
blank.
Completely blank.
My mouth audibly popped open and just hung there as I gaped at him, at a complete loss for words. I must have looked like a total idiot but he was just standing in front of me, smirking like he had all the confidence in the world, but anyone could see that he was nervous beyond all hell. His hands fidgeted with the bottom of his shirt, but his eyes never left mine.
I don’t think I’ve ever been speechless like that before.
There have been times where I didn’t know what to say. But now . . . I didn’t even know that words existed.
Quinton had just asked me on a date.
I, Lena Mallory, the school freak, was just asked out on a date by Quinton Lancaster, the cutest boy in this fine state of Massachusetts.
Quinton.
The boy next door.
The boy that so many girls thought was adorable.
The boy that my mother loved.
The boy that had been on my mind since the day I moved in.
No, there was nothing to say to that.
I had to have been silent for a long time, but Quinton was still standing there, smiling widely. He didn’t even seem concerned that some of the students were lingering even if we were all going to be late to class no matter what, their eyes curiously watching our exchange. He didn’t even seem to care that there was a world outside of our little circle we had made for ourselves, our own little space.
And I loved that.
I loved that he was looking at me when he murmured, “Come on—I dare you.”
I didn’t need the dare, though.
I said yes anyway.
~*~
Kline blinked.
“Pardon?” she gasped for air. “Did you just . . .”
“Did you just say . . .” Norma managed to get out, looking just like Kline with giant, wide eyes and a gaping, incredulous expression. I rocked back on my feet, unable to keep the incredibly moronic and goofy grin off of my face as I watched all of their reactions, my heart racing and the butterflies in my tummy doing a happy dance that kind of felt like the Dougie.
Colonel rubbed his face manically. “You can’t be sayin’ . . .”
“She is!” Peter gasped, jumping onto his feet and waving his pointer finger at me, his eyes the size of serving dishes at Thanksgiving. “She’s saying . . .”
“She’s saying . . .” Norma gasped.
“Quinton Lancaster asked you out!” Kline exclaimed.
“And you said yes,” Colonel finished.
I beamed and nodded, clapping my hands. “Can you believe that?”
“Yes!” Kline and Norma screamed happily while Peter and Colonel muttered, not amused, “No.”
“No?” I demanded, frowning at them. “Why no?”
“’Cause it’s Lancaster,” Colonel muttered, frowning. “I didn’t think that boy woulda ever gotten the guts to ask a pretty girl on a date.”
“Aw, shucks, Colonel.”
“I just think he’s a total asshole,” Peter enlightened me bluntly, ruining the moment.
I rolled my eyes.
Kline screamed and threw herself at me, knocking into me so hard that I stumbled and hit the wall, thoroughly giving me a concussion. I winced as she continued to scream, terrorizing my eardrums. “I knew it!” she sang happily, laughing. “I knew that it was destined to be.”
“Not the soul mate thing,” I groaned through her choking grip, attempting to tug free. “We haven’t even gone on one date. It’s weird.”
“But true,” she argued, grinning. “I can’t believe it; our little Lena is all grown up!”
“I’m so happy for you!” Norma chimed cheerfully.
“I’m not,” Peter muttered, glaring at the floor. “He looks like Justin Beiber on crack.”
“Do ya really wanna know what I’m thinkin’ ’bout all of this?” Colonel demanded before he dropped to the floor and rolled around, flailing his arms. “LUHUHHHHHHH!”
I laughed so hard that I cried. And I almost peed my pants.
Almost.
“Dude,” Kline said, smiling widely. “You’re going on a date with Quinton Lancaster.”
“I know,” I replied, feeling like jumping up and down.
Our eyes met.
We screamed and jumped up and down together, our hands flailing. Norma joined us almost immediately. We only stopped when we fell into a group tackle, our arms around each other as we hit the ground, laughing so hysterically that we had to have looked like we were possessed.
Colonel sat down beside us laughing, too. Peter stayed standing, but the pout on his lips had turned up at the corners.
And then, I realized something.
When I left Florida, I had been terrified that I would end up alone in school, that I would be too weird for people to approach and be friends with. Never before did I actually think that, maybe, being who I was had been the key this entire time. I was this new type of Lena when I walked into Waltham High, but did that new personality of me last when I passed through the gates?
I had been me all along.
And I had gotten a group of best friends who would never let me down.
I had gotten a boy who looked at me and couldn’t stop smiling.
I had gotten accepted by a school of students who looked past my eccentric side and saw me.
For the first time since I moved, I realized that I had needed this all along.
I realized that this was where I belonged.
I fell back into the group hug of the best friends in life I could ever ask for, smiling widely, and I felt like flying.
~~~~~~~~~~~
AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! IT HAPPENED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOW MUCH DO YOU GUYS LOVE ME RIGHT NOW?
Also: The 100,000th word was written for Relying On in this chapter. That word was “Kline”.
IS THAT A SIGN?
The world may never know.
x Riley