So there's this Girl... (Chapter 2)

*Beep… Beep… Beep. Beep. Beepbeepbeep*

What is that noise?! Gah! So… tired….Oh… It’s my alarm clock…

Well, looks like I’m going to have to put up with 6 days of talking to no one at school… Fun.

I crawled out of bed, it was five in the morning, I think I had gotten roughly four or five hours of sleep. I would have gotten more had my parents just decided to wait a day to probe me, yet again.

Ah well, I should be good for about… six hours… geh, time to take a shower.

As I grabbed my clothes to wear to school today, I caught myself falling into some sort of depression… and I liked it…

I don’t talk to anyone there anyways… Takeshi is the only one that ever talks to me, the only one that ever takes the time to talk…. No one else there is even worth the time to mess with, ‘cept Lurch, but he’s just fun to jab at.

Next thing I knew, I was in the shower… I get a lot of thinking done in the shower, it’s strange… I don’t know why, but having piping hot water wash down my body seems calming, relaxing, and it wakes me up….

I dunno, maybe today will be better, yeah… maybe today will be different from all the rest. Haha, as if. I don’t really want it different, too… exposing.

I started putting on my clothes, then I realized that I had forgotten a shirt!

Fantastic, great work genius, how the heck do you forget your shirt? No big deal, I’ll just grab one from my dresser….

I proceeded to my room, my room is relatively small, and it’s probably about seven feet by ten feet. It isn’t small, but it sure isn’t like some of the newer ones you’d see in those huge new mansions they have down the street. One of the walls is a nice sage color, and the other three are painted just the right off-white that they look just slightly lighter green than the sage wall. My bed is covered in light green blankets, light green pillowcases… and I have posters of various sports cars and jet fighters that I like. It’s my room, and I’ve successfully managed to make it somewhat appealing….

As I walked into my room, I caught my image in the mirror; I turned to examine my appearance…. I don’t really like it, and I have various ways of concealing the way I look. For example, I have a massive farmer’s tan, if there’s one thing I really dislike about me is all that paleness, so I cover up with my jacket just about everywhere. When I’m feeling brave, I wear just a tee, but the sleeves are just long enough that it covers my pale, and I wear some wristbands that cover up my scrawny wrists. My arms are just about the color that I wish my whole body was, roughly a golden tan, since I rarely wear anything with sleeves unless it’s a jacket. My hair is a dark brown, and it falls to my earlobes if I don’t spike it up in random spikes. I have absolutely no six pack whatsoever, I do crunches, sit-ups, planks, the works to try and get something to show up, but it’s like they just refuse to pop up, it’s annoying. If there’s one thing on my body that I do like, it would probably be my eyes, they are this weird entanglement of brown, red, and greenish-silver. They look brown unless you look at them for a while, then the red and the green-silver begins to pop out. I’ve had countless people say how weird and freaky my eyes are, that’s why I like them… they throw people off.

Enough gaping Ryuu, you have to get ready for school… I swear this is like forced enjoyment… with more force and less enjoyment.

I ate my breakfast, Cheerios… and left for school. It was cold outside, for the first time in a long time.

Ah finally, Mother Nature has decided to turn down the thermostat… took her long enough.

As I walked to school, I noticed someone new cross my path, it was a girl. She had amazingly straight blond hair, it was just short enough to miss her shoulders, and it kind of curled inward to touch her neck and cheeks. It was different… I like different. She was just about tan all over as far as I could tell, she was wearing a spaghetti strap shirt, and shorts that ended just above her knees…

Wow, a girl that doesn’t wear shorts that play peek-a-boo with you when she sits down… cool.

The most intriguing part about her was her eyes… they were pitch black, I mean, if I didn’t know any better, she had no iris, I couldn’t tell the difference….

Whoa! Ryuu! What the heck are you doing!? There is a reason that you have one friend, you don’t even know this girl and you’re already checking her out! Come on, snap out of it… just another person that probably goes to the school you hate, remember?

“Hey you! The school isn’t over there!” I called out, I mean really, she was headed in the entirely wrong direction. She couldn’t hear me because she had these massive soundproof headphones that probably made her head about fifty percent wider than it should be. She looked like a cartoon. “HEY! GIRL! WRONG WAY!”

Wonderful, maybe if she took those massive headphones her ears, she might be able to hear me… Maybe I should—No, she’ll pass someone on the way down, she’ll live.

So, I continued to walk to school, and when I got there. Nothing was new.

“Ryuu… RYUU!” My history teacher, Mrs. Cremlin called aloud, “Would you please read page 115 paragraph 3 for us?”

Oh wow, I love it how she never seems to understand that I just don’t want to read, despite all the negativity she points out about me.

The paragraph rolled right out of my mouth, I didn’t even need to think about it. In her class, it had become routine for me. When I finished, she even had a comment for how well I read, or lack thereof.

“Ryuu, how about next time you try a little thing called inflection? You sounded much too monotonous for my tastes; you almost put me to sleep!”

Your tastes my as* woman, I’ll read how I want to read thanks, if you want it read a certain way, how about you do it yourself?

“Yes ma’am.”

My ears must have been turning red, I heard a group of girls giggling behind me, I could feel the estrogen emanating off of them as they laughed….

Damn girls… why won’t you just make no noise for ten precious seconds? It is possible for you to not talk and live you know….

The bell finally rang for lunch time, and I made a beeline to my favorite fallout shelter, a little patch of shade right behind a big, green metal box sitting right behind the schools extra portables. It was almost like heaven on earth there, there was no noise, no one to deal with… Takeshi didn’t even know I hung here, I just told him that I had to make up a test or something when I didn’t want to even deal with him. No one can even see me where I sit, I wear black most of the time, with the occasional blue jean, and because of where the sun is and how deep the shade is, you can’t even see in. The best part was that it was consistently ten degrees cooler there than anywhere else.

As I sat there reading some sci-fi book I got from the library, I dozed off to sleep.

I don’t know what I dreamt, but I do know that when I woke up, the campus was even quieter than usual, I checked my watch, it was one o clock! Twenty minutes after lunch ended! I sprung up from my hiding spot, grabbed my backpack, and sprinted for my math class.

Wonderful, Mr. Ball is gonna go nuts….

Good old Mr. Ball, this guy is an ex-Marine, and he loves to nag at people when they make mistakes, no one even likes to answer his questions because he’ll shaft you sideways if you get them wrong. He’s probably the only teacher at this school that I learn from; it’s crazy, I love to hate the guy.

“Mr. Yamamoto,” oh crap, he’s used my family name, I hate it when he does that…”You’re late, quite late in-fact. Would you care to explain yourself?”

Hah, would I care to explain myself? Do you really think I care about anyone in this classroom even? You need a reality check you old crotch.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, the school band was turned into a pack of ravenous monkeys, and they detained me behind the dumpster full of the dog food the school cafeteria feeds us, don’t worry, I’m fine though.” I shot him a blank glare, he realized instantly that I did not want to be messed with today, and he probably noticed the bags under my eyes. It wasn’t too bad, he just settled with talking to me after class.

“Mind you, Mr. Yamamoto, if you ever talk to me like that again, I can and will give you enough detention to last you to graduation, we clear?”

“Crystal.”

The bell rang for our next class, it was like a merciful release from a prison cell, to just the prison in general, it was glorious….

As I settled into my seat for the last class of the day, economics, I noticed my teacher was talking to someone… it was that girl! From the walk! Interesting….

“Class,” Ms. Hernandez cleared her throat, “We have a new student today. Her name is Nakamura Kiyoko. Kiyoko, would you like to tell us about yourself?”

“Sure!” The girl responded.

Whoa… Where did that come from; that sounded almost like she sung it… trippy.

“So, my name is Kiyoko. I’m seventeen, and I love reading, drawing, and hanging out with my friends!”

A little cheery aren’t we? Ew.

“Okay Kiyoko, there’s an open seat right next to Ryuu over there, sit there please.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Damn, she even said that all cheery like, is she high?

She moved over to the desk, and I mean moved. She didn’t even really seem to walk; it was almost a gliding motion…

I’d swear this girl is the essence of happiness. *cringe*

“Hi! My name’s Ki—.“

“I know what your name is, you just said it up in front of everyone.” I shot her a cold glare, and resumed reading through some material our teacher gave us.

“Hmm, a little crabby are we? What pole do you have up your as*?”

Whoa, she bites…

“Leave… Me… Alone.” I shot her my infamous blank stare.

“Whoa! Your eyes are totally trippy! They’re—.“

“Freaky? Strange?” I interrupted, “I know.”

“Uhh no, they’re awesome! I’ve never seen someone’s eyes so colorful! You sure are blessed! I’m stuck with these flat black eyes…”

Wait… did she just say cool? I need to remember to wear sunglasses in this class tomorrow then… She’s got to be high, that’s the only reason she’d ever call them cool…

“I like black. Black is—,” I stopped cold in my verbal tracks.

What am I doing? This needs to end.

“Black is what, Ryuu?” She prodded.

“Nothing, never mind,” I blurted, “I need to finish this.”

“Okay, nothing like a good read”

She pulled her book out of her bag and began reading. It was strange, how is it that she had managed to get that far past my social barrier? I mean, I have that up for a reason, I don’t want any more friends, I’m content with Takeshi, and he even gets annoying sometimes….

The bell rang for the end of school, and I was out the door in one second flat. I headed straight for the street that would take me home.

“Hey! Ryuu! Wait up!”

Uh oh, Takeshi isn’t here today, and the only other person I know that would talk to me is—

Kiyoko ran right up next to me and started to walk next to me.

“Uhh, what are you doing?” I asked.

“Walking with you, what does it look like?”

Wow, Captain Obvious… you’re brilliant.

“Obviously.”

“You know Ryuu, you seem like you are kind of… I don’t know how to describe it… You’re like an old curmudgeon.”

Wow, did she just say curmudgeon? Ridiculous… That was even redundant; a curmudgeon is a grumpy old dude… so she just called me an old grumpy old dude…

“That was redundant,” I told her.

“What?”

“’Old curmudgeon’ is redundant.”

“Oh—“ oh is right you little—“Thanks for telling me! I didn’t really think about that until now”

Of course… She thanked me… This girl is weird.

“Think about this now, leave me alone.” I gritted through my teeth.

“Whoa, you’re mean, you know that? Cold, mean and rude.”

“Not the first time I’ve been told that, now are you done talking? I want you to leave me be.”

“But I—“

“But you what?” I interrupted, “What is it that compels you to talk to someone like me? Why is it that you, miss happy-go-lucky fancy-pants insists on annoying me today? I don’t want to talk to you. Leave, me, ALONE!” By the end of my rant, my voice was higher than it had gone in a long time. What was it about her that was suddenly getting me so emotional?

Next thing I knew. A tear rolled down her cheek, it was almost out of place there, I met her and she had this bright, shining, happy face, and now it almost seemed like a tear marred its appearance, like all the light and happiness had left her face, she looked older. And for some reason, that really bugged me!

“Please, don’t cry… I didn’t mean to—“

“Didn’t mean to? You flat out just attacked me! How is that not meaning to?!” She was almost screaming at me at this point, “What would compel you to bite a friendly hand?! All I wanted to do was get to know yo—“

Wait, is she about to say what I think she’s gonna say?

“Wait what? You want to know me? You want to befriend me? I’m sorry, but I’m not in the market for new friends. I’m happy the way I am.”

She must have read something my voice I don’t know what gave her the intuition to respond so accurately, because she managed to utter words that struck deep, a little too deep.

“You don’t know happy, I’ve known you for two hours and I know you don’t know happy. You’re just a ball of defense; do you even have any friends?”

That had REALLY struck a chord with me, and I wasn’t about to take it.

“I really don’t like what you just said, this is why I wanted you to leave me alone, I don’t want to make you cry, I hate making people cry,” I turned and started walking an alternate route home, ”oh, and I do have a friend, his name is Takeshi.”

“You don’t have to like it Ryuu, it’s the truth.”

And I kept walking.