Before you read: CHECK OUT THE PICTURE OF LENA FROM HER FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL!! This was drawn by TwiceTheCharm, and it’s my first fan-art and it’s GORGEOUS! Thank you AGAIN!!! :D
http://egoamores.deviantart.com/art/First-Day-Of-School-315936911
IT IS EXACTLY WHAT I IMAGINED SHE LOOKED LIKE, TOO! AHHHH!
Okay, I’m done. ;D
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“Ow!” I cried when my mother tugged the brush roughly through my hair, reaching one hand up to my scalp as I glared at her through the mirror. “Are you trying to make me bald?”
“When was the last time you brushed your hair?” my mother demanded, distraught, panicked. “Lena, sweetie, it’s hopeless. There’s almost nothing I can do with it. Your knots have knots.”
“I actually think that’s kind of impressive,” I said, nodding. She hit the back of my head, scowling.
“Why aren’t you panicking?” she asked me. “I’m freaking out, and I’m not the one that got asked out on a date!”
I didn’t have the heart to point out that my mom was just completely crazy. It didn’t take much to freak out pure crazy.
I shrugged, not quite knowing what to say. “I’ve had a week to think about it, I guess. Anyway, I’m about ninety-three percent sure that it’s going to end up being either a joke or a dare, so it makes it easier not to panic.”
She gaped at me.
“What?” I demanded.
“Lena Mallory,” she said, “you are a total moron.”
I looked at her, surprised. “What?”
“You think that boy would only ask you out because of a joke or a stupid dare?” she asked me incredulously before throwing her arms up, rolling her eyes. “I can’t even begin to understand you, Lena. It’s not just the wear-clothes-that-don’t-match thing; it’s just . . . you.”
“What about me?” I demanded, indignant. I turned to look at her, my eyes narrowed. “If I do say so myself, I think I’m a pretty legit person, thank you very much.”
She hit me on the back of the head. Again. “You are your dares! You think the world revolves around dares!”
“I do not,” I replied, scoffing. “I happen to know that the majority of my life is not based on it.”
“But enough of it is?”
I gestured in an exaggerated fashion around my room, littered with a collection of my strangest wardrobe additions, and rolled my eyes.
She laughed once before screwing up her face all serious again. “Okay, fine, but that’s all your fault. You’re the one that accepts the dares.”
“I can’t say no to people,” I told her, grimacing. “It’s always been that way.”
“Would you have said yes if he asked you without daring you?” she demanded, her eyebrows shooting up to the point they nearly ripped off of her face and hovered above her in the air. I wriggled uneasily in my desk chair, where she was primping me and making me look all nice and pretty—her words, not mine—and I rolled one of the extra hair curlers in my fingers. Yeah, that’s what I said. Hair curlers.
“Well, yeah,” I muttered, and then threw my hands up like I was stopping traffic before she could speak. “But have you seen that boy’s arms? Or his smile? Or his eyes?”
“You’re totally smitten with him!” my mom squealed, jumping up and down and making the floor shake with the intensity of her bouncing. Give my mom caffeine and she’ll bring the house down or something. “Aw, just look at you! You’re blushing! And the way you talk about him! It’s so cute!”
I wished there was sand around so I could stick my head in it. And never, ever come back out. “Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess,” she snorted before shaking her head and reaching for her brush again. She slowly eased one of the curlers out of my hair and both of our eyes flickered to the mirror as she tugged it, both of us watching it bounce like a little spring. She nodded once, giving it her seal of approval, before going for the other vertical curler, her fingers careful even though she was shaking like a small canine.
I chewed on my lip, watching her. “So what am I going to wear?”
“Something that doesn’t make you look like an escapee from Arkham,” she told me flatly, not looking away from my hair. “Maybe that red and black dress we got from Target and a pair of black ballet flats?”
Since the only outfit idea I had was to just wear my curtains, her idea wasn’t all that bad. I shrugged and nodded only when she wasn’t tugging and pulling at my hair, intent on making it perfect. She moved a few steps away from me and I hopped up onto my feet, relieved at being about from her clutches even for a moment, just so I could disappear into my closet. I found the dress and tugged it free of the jungle my closet has become lately, and I trotted back into my bedroom. My mother was sitting in the desk chair I had just vacated, spinning around in circles.
“This one?” I asked her, waving it around. “Cute. What else?”
She blinked. Really, really slowly.
“What do you mean, what else?” she demanded, confused.
I looked at the dress and then back at her, confused as to why she was confused. I looked back down at the dress and shook it at her as if she didn’t understand. She continued to stare at me, her eyebrows pushing together, and I managed to say, “That’s it?”
“What else were you thinking about wearing?” she asked me, still confused. “That hideous bowling jacket?”
Yes. “It’s not that hideous,” I mumbled, fingering the material of the dress in my fingers. I shrugged at her and checked to make sure the window was securely covered by my curtain before quickly stripping, pulling on the dress. I ran a hand self-consciously over my hair and spun around to look in the mirror, already grimacing.
My mom squealed and clapped like an infant, her eyes big. “You look gorgeous!”
Seeing as she always said that, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if she was completely serious or just didn’t want me to feel overly insecure about myself.
I admit—my mother might be from Jersey and this sounds stereotypical, but that woman knows how to do hair. My hair was lightly curled all around my head, not so much that it was uncontrollable but enough to show that they were there. The only makeup I had on was a thin line of eyeliner around my eyes that my mom said brought out their color and pink lip gloss she nearly had to sumo-wrestle me into. The dress was about to my knees and pretty casual; it was Converse brand (which I wasn’t even aware existed before going to Target) and it was a dark burgundy red with splashes of black. It wasn’t completely form-fitting—it bunched at my waist and then hung loosely to where it ends at the top of my hideous elephant knees. I twirled a little bit, and the skirt did that thing where it kind of poofs out.
We have a winner.
My mom started applauding again, and when I turned to her, she was crying.
“My little girl!” she cheered.
“Oh dear lord,” I muttered, staring at her with wide eyes. I took a long, exaggerated step toward my bathroom, as to not frighten her like she was a deer or something. “I’m, uh, going to go to the bathroom and, um . . . do my history homework.”
“Okay,” she hiccupped, and I ran the hell out of there.
Call me a wimp for hiding, but my mom is scarier when she’s emotional than she is all the other time. She’s already completely creeped out Colonel, and if she freaks out a guy who lives with twenty guns within an arm’s reach of every spot in the house, then I think my actions are understandable.
I didn’t come out until the doorbell rang, and by then I was too busy hyperventilating to really care about what my mom was going to do.
Until I realized that she would probably get the door.
I threw open the bathroom door and sprinted down the stairs maniacally, my hands flying through the hair and hitting the walls. I dove into the front room and stumbled into my shoes, checking to make sure that my cell phone was still in my pocket from that mad dash—dresses with pockets are the best innovation in the world—and took a deep breath, staring down the front door.
Okay, Mallory. You can do this.
I pulled open the door, forcing a smile.
This boy was so dang good-looking.
Quinton was already grinning before I even opened the door, standing there and looking sharp as heck in a pair of jeans and a button-up white shirt. I tried not to stare at his arms although they looked rather lovely today and focused instead on just not throwing up on him, which would probably be good. He looked me up and down and frowned a little bit.
“Nothing weird?” he asked, sounding surprised. I shrugged, uneasy, and grimaced.
“My mother,” I said in explanation and he smiled, amused. “And I figured that . . . you know . . . I kind of . . .”
I could have punched myself in the face.
I shouldn’t have even started to mention it. Now he looked like he wanted to know.
“What?” he asked, and I winced.
“I didn’t want to look weird,” I confessed, sighing heavily. I should have just blamed it completely on my mother. It wouldn’t have been wrong, I guess, and it definitely would have avoided this awkward conversation. He looked at me, studying my face, obviously still confused.
“Why?”
“I didn’t . . .” I started, and then blurted out, “Ididn’twanttoembarrassyouIguess.”
“Embarrass me?” he demanded, staring at me like he was horrified. He took a step forward, reaching out toward me, and his fingertips barely skimmed my cheek, like a butterfly wing. My face nearly exploded. “Lena, what are you talking about?”
I didn’t say anything, just pushed past him outside of the house and started walking away. He grabbed my hand, pulling me back, and I stumbled until I hit his body. I turned bright red at the closeness but he didn’t make a move to get away from me, still looking down at me with a frown.
“Lena,” he said, “I don’t care about what you wear—I care about you. And the Lena I know? She doesn’t get embarrassed about her outfits. Especially not around me.”
I looked up at him slowly. He was staring down at me with determination in his eyes.
“You need a coat, anyway,” he told me, pushing me back over the doorway of my house. “You’ll be freezing.”
I hesitated, looking at him uncertainly.
“But,” I started to say.
“Lena,” Quinton warned me, and then he laughed.
It might have been the laugh or the way he was saying his words. It might have been what he had to say or the way he was looking at me. I didn’t know. But all of the dread I felt in my stomach kind of disappeared and turned into fluttery butterflies instead. I’d had this secret fear that he would be embarrassed about what I wear for this dare and I had been willing to break the dare to save him from the strange looks that we would get, so I didn’t push him away because of it. But he was looking at me now with a smile, like he believed in me, but all I did was wear strange clothes and do stupid things because people dare me to. I didn’t know what made him smile at me like that, but it made me feel as though I weighed lighter than air.
I bit on my lip before I turned around and disappeared into my house, leaving him in the doorway as I ran upstairs.
When I came back down a minute later, he was still standing in the same spot patiently, but now I was wearing a pair of bright yellow rain boots, my vintage bowling jacket that my mom hated, and one of those headbands with the two little plastic hearts on the springs, so every time I moved they wiggled. When he saw me, his face immediately turned up into a grin, and all of the tightness in my stomach went away.
“You look gorgeous, Lena,” he told me, and he reached out for my hand. I put my left hand in his, urging myself not to start screaming, gripping Marvel’s strap with my other hand. He pulled me forward, and I let the door to the house close with a resounding click.
“Thanks, I guess,” I said, and then smirked over at him. “You just look okay.”
He laughed, shaking his head.
Truth was, he looked like a runway model, but I didn’t have enough confidence to blurt that out on a first date—if this was even a real date. He had on just a pair of jeans and the button-up but he was wearing the glasses that he said he hates, even though I told him that I loved them. I wondered if that was why, and the nerves I felt in my stomach suddenly multiplied so badly that I didn’t even pay attention to where I was going because I was staring at him, waiting to see if he regretted it yet.
I was so busy staring at him that I walked directly into a pole.
“Are you okay?” he demanded, sounding torn between being truly concerned and laughing. I blushed and waved him off, laughing at myself and shaking my head, tugging him on to his car, which was unfortunately parked on the other side of the No Parking sign that I had walked straight into. He shook his head at me, grinning in amusement, and he let go of my hand only to walk around to the other side of the car.
I was a hundred percent relieved that he hadn’t opened the door for me. I couldn’t handle doing anything else embarrassing less than five minutes into the date.
He pulled open the door to his car as I climbed in, and I immediately heard a thunk. I turned to face him to find him grimacing and rubbing his forehead, his cheeks burning bright pink in embarrassment. I grinned and shook my head, but I was thankful that he was as nervous as I was.
“What is with us today?” I demanded, laughing. “We’re total klutzes.”
“This car is out to get me,” Quinton enlightened me as he climbed in, smirking as he buckled his seatbelt. “The seatbelt wouldn’t come off earlier today, so I had to cut it.” He pointed. In the middle of the belt across his body was a gigantic wad of duct tape. I burst out laughing.
“Innovative,” I said.
“My brother’s idea. For a Harvard kid, he fails at doing simple things.”
I smiled and shook my head, looking out the window as he pulled away from the curb. I glanced back at him, hoping the blush on my face wasn’t as bright as I was totally sure it was. I had a feeling that it was pretty obvious. “So where are we going?” I asked him shyly, smiling a little bit to ease my nerves. It didn’t help—I still kind of wanted to throw up.
He shot a smirk over at me and turned the turn signal on, going right. “You’ll see,” he sang, and we sat back into a comfortable silence.
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I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS WONDERFUL FILLER lol I have extreme writer’s block for this story right now, so I’m sorry if it doesn’t sound very . . . Lena-ish.
This is part ONE of FOUR of their date night. So just sit back and relax, my friends. LOL
x Riley