Chapter 6
August 2004
~TRAVIS~
That night, Elijah and I were all alone in the cafeteria wiping down tables and mopping up the greasy floors, all while everyone else was out having fun at the lake. It kinda sucked that this was how I had to spend my evening but I guess I kinda deserved it for attempting to provoke Elijah to fight me. The two of us didn't say a word to each other the first half of the hour, but over time I couldn't bear the utter silence any longer and attempted to make nice with him (for real this time), just for the sake of breaking the silence.
"Look, man, I'm sorry for... trying to screw your chances with Heather..." I awkwardly began my apology, stopping once I realized that I had no idea of where I was going with this.
He didn't say anything right away and I assumed that meant that he didn't want to talk so I just gave up on him. If he didn't want to forgive me, he didn't have to, so...
Though, eventually, he ultimately spoke up and shocked me with his sudden change of heart. "It's fine, man..." he said with a hint of sincerity.
"It is?" I questioned in disbelief.
"Yeah, I guess... you know what, I should be the one who's sorry... for being a douche to you... for all these years... for no real reason," he said to my surprise and at the time I never thought I'd live to see the day that Elijah Radford apologized to me.
"You are?"
"Yeah... it was wrong of me to tell you to stay away from Heather. I was just afraid that she liked you more than me and I was just... really desperate for a girlfriend."
"You got that right! But I swear I thought she liked you more and only wanted me as a friend. She literally said that she thought you were cute and she sounded pretty excited when she talked about you."
"Did she? So much for that, huh?"
"Forget about her, man. Like, on my way here, I saw her chatting up some sophomore dude."
"What a hoe," he muttered, rolling his eyes in contempt.
"You can say that again," I chuckled awkwardly.
"You're such a loser," he attempted to laugh but stopped himself midway as if his pride prevented it.
"Well, I guess this makes us both losers," I laughed in an attempt to make him reciprocate which he inevitably did. And for the first time ever, it finally felt like he didn't hate my guts anymore. "So, why did you hate me so much?"
For some reason, Elijah didn't feel too comfortable answering that question. "I don't know, man..."
I guess I thought that he would have more to say than just "I don't know."
"Now that I think about it, I really don't know. I guess I'm just like that with people I feel threatened by." Yeah, how about you tell me the real reason now. "But I'm over it now, I promise. I won't bully you again. Truce?" He held his hand out for me to shake and for once I actually felt like the guy was being sincere.
I shook his hand and agreed as a smile formed on his face. "Dude, how are so cool with me after I practically just beat your ass?"
Good question. I honestly had no idea why I was suddenly willing to warm up to Elijah when he was a total ass to me. I should've just accepted his apology and left it at that. But nope, I just had to give him a shot, didn't I? "Forgive and forget," I replied.
"You're not bad, Tucker, not bad at all," he said with a smirk.
"Oh but you are," I joked as I began to walk away, accidentally knocking over his bucket of water that he had been using to wipe down the table and it just so happened to splash all over his pants. Fucking hell, just when we had agreed to call a truce!
"What the hell?!"
"Shit! Elijah, I'm so sorry!" I said, realizing that the water had splashed right in his crotch area and I knew that, obviously, that would not look good from anyone else's point of view.
His face was red but he surprisingly didn't overreact, calmly saying, "It's fine, it was just an accident... but this isn't!" He then grabbed my bucket from my hand and proceeded to splash me with it, right in the same area so that it looked like I had just pissed myself, as well. Guess we were even.
"What the hell'd you do that for?!" I exclaimed.
"Just cuz," he said with an annoying little lopsided smile.
I then wrapped my arm around the back of his neck and pulled his head down, ultimately bringing the both of us to the floor as we suddenly began to wrestle in the midst of the massive puddle we just created from the water. It was actually quite clever because now the both of us were wet from top to bottom and didn't have to worry about looking like a couple of idiots who had just pissed their pants. Instead, we looked like a pair of idiots who decided to splash each other with dirty cleaning water. It was obviously very immature but who exactly would expect a couple of 14-year-old boys to be mature? Only an idiot.
I saw Elijah again the next day, which just so happened to be our last day at camp. I never actually anticipated befriending the guy so it shocked me when he started talking to me a lot more. This early on, I had only assumed that maybe he wanted something from me, but I didn't know what. I thought it was kind of weird but kind of nice too. For once, the guy who had always treated me like dirt was suddenly treating me with respect. I couldn't say we were friends yet at the time, but we were possibly on the road to at least a potential camaraderie and I surprised myself to say that that kinda pleased me.
I was perhaps a little too pleased about it that I attempted to see if maybe he wanted to sit together on the bus ride home, but I was, of course, foolish to think that that would ever happen. I saw him already seated with a bunch of his goons who assisted in bullying me and as I walked past them down the aisle, they laughed and called me names like, "faggot" and "pussy," however, Elijah didn't and as I went for an empty seat I heard him say, "Hey, he's not that bad." I guess that was somewhat of an effort to defend me. At least he was done with the bullying himself.
The ride home was kinda shitty as I, unfortunately, picked the seat in front of Heather and her new sophomore boyfriend, whom I'm assuming she had just met and was already sucking the lips off of him. What a slut! Now that I think about it, she was probably just toying with me and Elijah just so she could have had the satisfaction of saying that she had two boys fight over her. Especially considering what happens three years later, it all makes perfect sense now.
When school started just a couple of weeks after summer camp, I found two familiar faces in three of my classes on the first day of freshman year. The first of which was Heather who was in both my English and Algebra classes but she didn't say a word to me and was willing to pretend that she didn't even know me. Which I was fine with considering she was a total bitch. And the second of which was none other than Elijah who was in my Biology class. Being the popular douche that he always was, he already had a friend in the class to be his lab partner so I just gave up on the idea that we could somehow, someday be friends. It was so funny how initially I hated him and could never imagine being his friend but just after a simple apology I was kinda hoping that we could someday be friends. He was awful to me, but I was willing to put that all behind us for... some reason. I actually don't really know why I was so quick to want to befriend him... perhaps it was because he was one of the cool, popular guys and for once he was treating me with respect and I just remember longing so bad to be one of the cool and popular guys again after being a total loner my eighth-grade year. Yeah... that definitely changed.
On the third day of school, however, Elijah's friend apparently transferred out of the class and he had no one else to talk to other than me. I sat next to him on the fourth day, asking if he wanted to be lab partners.
"Hey, just because I apologized for beating you up doesn't make us friends, bro," he said, quite unconvincingly, but since I didn't know him too well at the time I didn't realize that he was joking.
"Okay..." I said depressingly, already preparing to return to my original seat.
"Nah man, I'm kidding! Have at it!" He said in a joyful manner as he invited me to sit with him.
"Cool," I said, awkwardly taking my seat with my backpack still on and my textbook still in hand.
"Maybe you should put your stuff down? You look kinda awkward," Elijah whispered to me, inciting my cheeks to turn red. Real smooth, Trav. Real smooth.
"Right," I said, taking his advice and placing my backpack on the floor and my textbook on the desk. "So, have you seen Heather lately?" I asked him, bringing up the one topic that we both kinda dread but know that she's the only thing we even have in common.
"No, I don't have any classes with her. For the better, I guess... You?"
"Yeah, I've got her in two of my classes and she's a total bitch, dude. She acts like she doesn't even know me... like, nothing even happened."
"What a bitch," he said so emotionally disconnected that I found it comical. "Best you can do is forget about her and move on, I already have," he continued as I saw him eyeing some blonde chick as she walked into the classroom.
"Yeah," I replied, for some reason feeling kinda uneasy at the thought of moving on. For me, the idea of moving on so quickly felt kinda strange and the part that made me the most uneasy was that if I felt this way about a girl I had only known a couple of months, I couldn't imagine how I'd feel if it were someone I really had a connection with for a longer period of time. I knew it would cripple me... and it certainly did my senior year of high school. Fuck, that year was awful, as the struggle of having to move on hit me the hardest... and not to mention how lonely I was that whole goddamn school year... it was like eighth grade all over again... only worse. I'm getting ahead of myself though. That's of course, a story for another day.
Later that day at lunch I saw Elijah again with his same pack of goons from camp. I didn't bother to sit with them because I knew what they were like, but as I was walking by their lunch table I caught Elijah's eye and I had expected him to just ignore me but to my surprise, he didn't and gave me a 'Sup nod as if we were friends. Maybe we were. I was never sure at the time because he of course had other, cooler friends that he had known much longer than me. Little did I know that it was the beginning of a rather, beautiful friendship.