A thud sounded towards the front of the room, the crash of shattering glass and loud, startled yelps soon following. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes as I fiddled with the bunsen burner at my lab table.
“Gabe…” Mrs. Delong walked up to the boy who was busy trying to gather the shards of beaker into a pile. Her scrawny arms crossed in front of her. “What happened?”
The boy glanced up at her sheepishly. “I, uh… kind of knocked over something…”
“I can see that.”
“Well, then why did you ask?”
Mrs. Delong’s straight, small nose flared. “Clean this up properly before I decide whether or not to send you to the principal’s office.”
Gabe gave her a mock salute. “Will do.”
Stirring the contents of my whole, non-broken beaker, I cringed in his direction. “He’s such a klutz,” I complained, adding another ingredient. “I don’t know why she even lets him touch things.”
Hope smiled. “I think it’s kind of cute,” she admitted, peeking over her shoulder at Gabe. Broom in hand, he brushed the glass into a dustpan and threw the shimmering pieces away in the nearby trash. Hesitantly, Mrs. Delong gave him a second beaker.
“Cute?” I repeated the word as if it was foreign. “Gabe Saporta, cute?”
“What?” Hope looked back at me, confused. “He is. Don’t try and deny it, Allyson.”
“How could you even think that?” I shook my head. “He’s not attractive. Period.”
“You are such a liar…” Hope tucked a stray piece of hair blonde behind her ear, watching as I continued to stir. “You know, you complain about him more than any other guy here. Why is that, exactly?”
“Because he gets on my nerves. It’s as simple as that.”
Hope looked at me skeptically, but said nothing more as we finished our lab. The bell signaling the end of the period shrilled through the halls and I collected my things, holding the books and binders to my chest. As Hope and I walked past Gabe’s lab station, he took a moment to watch us. His round, expressive brown eyes caught mine for the briefest of seconds, and he smiled crookedly. I glared in return.
Walking into the halls, Hope and I were instantly swallowed by the mass of moving bodies.
“Gabe Saporta smiled at you!” Hope clapped me on the back. “Now, you can’t say your heart didn’t skip a beat when he did that.”
I didn’t even bother with a response.
________________________________________________________________________
The next day, I walked into the chemistry room with a blank look on my face. Hope had been hit in the head with a tennis ball during PE, so she was cooped up in the nurse’s office. It seems that they wanted to make sure she didn’t have a concussion, or something. I tried to tell him that her equilibrium was always off, but they just shooed me out of the room without a thought. Ah, well. At least she had an excuse to skip.
Mrs. Delong prattled on endlessly about today’s experiment, my peers and I spacing out to her crackly voice. Blegh. She was obviously a chain-smoker. Didn’t she know there were cooler ways to die?
Not soon enough, she instructed us to go to our lab stations and begin.
“Allyson?”
I was halfway out of my seat when she called my name. “Err – yes?”
Mrs. Delong licked her dry, chapped lips. “Since Ms. Amann is not here, I’m pairing you with Gabe Saporta. His lab partner is homesick with the flu.”
In an instant, my calm mood was replaced with irritation. “I can just do the lab by myself,” I said lamely, knowing full well she’d never grant me such a blissful thing.
Mrs. Delong raised a graying eyebrow, and nodded in the direction of the closest lab station. With the hood of his jacket pulled over his head, Gabe was staring out the nearby window in boredom. “Get started,” she told me, and turned away to her desk.
Great. First Hope goes and injures herself with a freaking tennis ball, and now this?
As I sat down in the empty seat across from him, Gabe perked up a bit. “Hey,” he greeted.
Instead of responding, I glanced to the whiteboard for instructions. In big block letters, the words “Dancing Gummy Bear” stared back at me. What the hell? Was Mrs. Delong on something?
“Um. Hello? It’d be nice if you said ‘hi’ back.”
My eyes turned away from the bizarre experiment and fell on Gabe. I looked at him blankly. “Hi.”
For some reason, he smiled at my detached greeting. This kid was a weird one. “So, you’re Allyson.”
No. Really? I never knew that. “Well, aren’t you clever,” I said sarcastically, opening my notebook to a fresh page. I then grabbed a large test tube, setting it up so it hovered over one of the Bunsen burners. Coaxing the small knob to the left, a little flame appeared beneath the tube. Just as I looked up, a pair of goggles was abruptly stuck in my face.
“Safety first,” Gabe cautioned, still wearing that smile.
I took the goggles grudgingly, pulling my hair away from my face to put them on. After pouring a small scoop of potassium chlorate
“You don’t like me, do you?” Gabe was looking at me thoughtfully.
“No. I don’t,” I replied honestly. “Have a problem with that?”
He grabbed a gummy bear from the package at our station, popping it into his mouth. “Kind of,” he replied. “Any particular reason why you dislike me? We’ve never even talked before now.”
I snatched the bag of candy away from him before he could steal another. “You annoy me to no end,” I said, grabbing a pair of long-handles tongs. How surprising. I was the only one doing the lab experiment.
Gabe seemed intrigued by this. “How so?” he asked.
Using the tongs, I carefully picked an orange gummy bear out of the package and switched off the burner. “You’re loud. You’re obnoxious. You constantly break things, and you act like a jerk to the teacher,” I said, counting off the reasons as if reading from a list.
He watched as I dropped the gummy bear into the test tube. Both of us jumped as a flurry of a smoke erupted from the top. Inside the tube, bright purple flames burst to life, the gummy bear inside being thrown around in what looked like a chaotic dance. Around the room, the other teams were having a similar reaction.
Once the flames had died away and the gummy bear had stopped hopping around, Gabe tilted his head to the side, eyes on me. “That’s why you hate me?” he asked slowly.
Wow. He was slower than I thought. “Yes,” I replied shortly, scribbling notes in my notebook.
With a thoughtful ‘hmmm’, Gabe pushed his goggles up so they were resting atop his hood. “You’re interesting,” he said, looking at me as if I were a piece of art on display.
I blinked at him. “What?”
He smiled again, this time wider. “I bet you’ll love me,” he said.
________________________________________________________________________
Stupid Hope. Stupid concussion. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
“Hellooooo, Allyson,” Gabe said, spinning around on his stool. “How’s life been since we parted ways yesterday?”
I couldn’t help but glare as I sat down at the lab table. “Great, but now it’s sucking again since I’m with you.”
Gabe’s lips fell into a pout. “Well, that’s not very nice,” he said, his eyes growing large and sad as he looked at me.
B-bump.
What the hell? Did my heart just have like… a malfunction, or something?
“Stop it,” I said to him. “Your cutesy face doesn’t work on me.”
His pout slowly turned into a smile. “So, you think my face is cute?” he asked, his smile practically glowing.
B-bump.
That didn’t just happen. Nope. It didn’t. Nope, nope, nope…
“I never said that,” I objected, my tone loud. A few people turned to stare at us, and I felt heat rise in my face. Damn it. I hated unwanted attention.
Gabe chuckled. “Hey, you’re pretty cute when you blush like that,” he teased.
I felt my blush deepen. Ugh. Great. This was just great. “Shut up,” I snapped quietly. “You’re even more annoying today than usual.”
His eyebrows rose in surprise. “Really? I thought I was being friendly.”
I just shook my head, opening my chemistry book to the current chapter. It was rather warm in the classroom, so I unzipped my jacket. When I glanced up from the pages of the book, I noticed Gabe was looking at my chest. Shit. My face felt like it was on fire now.
“You like AC/DC?” he asked.
At his words, I glanced down at myself. Relief swam through me when I realized I was wearing an AC/DC shirt. That explained why Gabe had been looking at my chest. “Obviously,” I replied with a roll of my eyes.
He nodded to himself. “I like them, too. Back In Black, or Highway To Hell?”
His question threw me. Meeting his gaze, I noticed his deep brown eyes seemed lighter today. Huh. Strange. “Um…” I ran a hand through my hair absentmindedly. “Album or song?”
________________________________________________________________________
Hope’s concussion is gone.
Hope’s mom was is way too over-protective.
Hope’s absent again today. I’m so lucky sometimes, it makes me laugh.
Entering the chemistry room, I wasn’t surprised to see that Gabe’s lab partner was still gone as well. This meant another day with Gabe. The strange thing was I didn’t completely abhor the idea. During class yesterday, we had rambled to each other about music for the entire period, and I found we had similar tastes. Not just that, but he actually played the bass, sang, and wrote songs in his spare time. Three days ago, I never would have thought him capable of something like that. Gabe Saporta was just full of surprises, apparently.
I sat down. “Hey,” I said.
A smile lit his face. “Hey,” he replied. “So, you’re willingly talking to me now?”
A part of me hesitated to answer. “Looks that way,” I finally said, eyes dropping to the tabletop.
He laughed. “I told you you’d love me,” he said, tucking a pencil behind his ear.
“I don’t love you.” Someone was full of himself. “I just don’t dislike you. Much.”
“Well, that’s progress.” Gabe leaned forward, and I unthinkingly did the same. “But, believe me. It’ll happen eventually.”
I inwardly laughed. Fat chance, Gabe Saporta. Fat chance.
________________________________________________________________________
“So, your friend’s still not here?” Gabe asked the next day, sifting through a small pile of pennies. Apparently, today’s experiment was to turn a penny silver, and then to gold. Where did Mrs. Delong come up with these things?
I sighed. “Nope. Turns out she liked the idea of staying home so much that she faked being sick.”
Gabe laughed, and my heart did this weird thing where it sped up and almost felt like it stopped. “I guess you’re stuck with me again,” he said, turning one of the coins over in his hand. “Too bad. I know how much you hate me.”
He said it playfully, and I had the insane urge to tease him back. I bit my tongue to keep from saying anything.
“So, what are you up to tonight?” he asked randomly as we waited for our mixture to come to a boil.
I looked at him weirdly. “Err… nothing, really. Homework and stuff. Why?”
He shrugged, his chocolate eyes focused on the beaker intently. “No reason. I just heard there’s going to be a block of great music on 101.3 tonight starting at 8:25.”
I was interested now. “What kind of music?”
“Rock, some Top 40’s stuff, a bit of pop…” He trailed off, turning the burner off as soon as the water began to bubble. “Maybe you could listen to it while you’re doing homework.”
“I will. Thanks, Gabe,” I said, picking up a penny with the tongs.
He smiled a bit as I dropped the penny in the beaker. “No problem.”
After another thirty minutes, the bell rang. Gathering my things together, I was a bit stunned to see Gabe waiting patiently at the door for me. This was new. “So, what are you doing tonight?” I asked, narrowly dodging a couple jocks who were shoving each other around jokingly.
One of Gabe’s arms went around my shoulders, directing me gently to the left. Just in time, too. The tallest of the guys fell over right where I would have been standing. With his arm still around me, he and I continued down the hall. My tongue was tied in a tight not, and I found myself unable to object.
“I’ll be at home, writing some music or something,” he replied, casually.
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Well… have fun, I guess.” Looking around, I found myself standing in front of my next class. How did he know I had Mr. Jenkins now? I looked up at him then, only to find that he was smiling softly down at me. I started blushing again.
“You really are beautiful when you blush like that,” he said sincerely. “Have fun with your homework tonight.” Ruffling my hair a bit, Gabe left me for his next class. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him until he was out of sight.
________________________________________________________________________
Lying on my bed, I stared down at my copy of I Know Why The Cage Bird Sings uninterestedly. I had already finished answering all of the review questions for chapters 5 – 7, but had yet to do the critical thinking questions. Ugh. It was too much work after such a full day of school. Why did teachers have to give us so much homework? It was pointless, really.
Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was 8:23PM. With a sigh, I got to my feet and went over to my stereo, turning it to the FM side of the radio. It took a moment to find the right station, but I soon settled on 101.3.
Since I had two minutes to kill before the block of music started, I pushed all my schoolwork off my bed, splaying myself out on the soft covers. I stared up at my ceiling, my mind straying to a certain brown-eyed boy. My mind seemed to be doing that a lot lately.
“Hellooo folks!” I literally jumped at the sudden voice. “This is Smooth-Talkin’ Sam here on 101.3 FM radio, and our first request of the night goes out to a young lady named Allyson Armstrong, from Gabe. Allyson, if you’re listening, the caller has requested us to give you a message after the song is finished. Now, here’s “Love Song” by AC/DC.”
I gaped as Smooth-Talkin’ Sam’s voice faded into the song.
I can tell by the look in your eye
I can tell by the way you sigh
That you know I've been thinking of you
Disbelievingly, I stared at my stereo with wide eyes. There was no way Gabe had requested this song for me, right? Right?
When you smile I see stars in the sky
When you smile I see sunrise
And I know you've been thinking of me
And I know how you want it to be
Oh Jean, Oh Jean
Oh Jean, Oh Jean
I can tell by the things you say
I can tell that you know the way
And I know what you want me to do
Oh, I've got hearts and flowers for you
If you leave me you'll make me cry
When I think of you saying goodbye
Oh the sky turns to a deeper blue
That's, that's how I'd feel if I lost you
Jean, Oh Jean
Don't go and leave me
'Cause I love, I love you, I love you, don't leave me
It would make me cry, if you said goodbye
Don't go away Jean, don't you leave baby baby
As the last notes of the song faded away, I continued to stare at the radio, willing it to tell me the message that I now desperately wanted to hear.
“Now, we hope you enjoyed that listen there, Miss Allyson. And now, here’s that special message.” Static filled the radio briefly, but cleared just as another voice spilled from the speakers.
“I think I’ve fallen for you, Allyson.” Gabe’s smooth, familiar voice made my heart skip a beat. “Have you fallen in love with me yet?”
