UNEDITED: Our Forbidden Love

7: Alexander

I already decided that I wasn't going to the beach Tuesday morning. I was too intrigued by what Starley had said to me to even think about riding any waves. She'd said she would meet me at school, but I was still confused on how that would work. I lay awake for many hours last night trying to figure out how she would meet me in a human school when she's part-fish.
Once the sun was shining through the tiny crack in between my curtains and from underneath my bedroom door, I knew it was time to open my eyes and pull my brain out of my incessant thoughts of Starley. I rubbed my eyes and let my room come into focus. My double bed covered in a blue ombré doona is in the centre of the room. My ensuite and walk-in robe is towards the right side of my room. The door is to my left, along with my chest of drawers cramped with various board shorts and rash shirts. Over beside the door I have my tall wicker laundry basket filled with all my dirty clothes. I'm lucky enough that sometimes my mum stays home during the day so she does the washing for all of us. I'm glad that today is washing day. My basket desperately needs emptying. Two pairs of my boxers have fallen off the overflowing heap.

I get up out of bed and pull out my school uniform. The sport uniform is just a polo shirt with some shorts and the formal one is a collared shirt and some nice dress shorts. To be honest I'm glad it's that simple. It means I don't have to decide on what to wear and it gives me an extra five to ten minutes sleeping time.
After I'm dressed I chuck on some socks and tie my shoes. I grab my school bag off the top of my drawers and take it out to the kitchen with me. I boil the kettle and choose which tea I'll have this morning. I love herbal tea and it's one of my favourite parts of the morning. I decide on my favourite - peppermint. It tastes exactly like toothpaste and it's perfect for people like me who eats their breakfast in the car. I get out my thermos cup, place the teabag into the mug and pour the boiling water in. While my tea is infusing, I go to the fruit bowl and take a banana and an apple. I stuff the apple in my backpack and I keep the banana with me.
Then, a sleepy-eyed Paisley wanders out into the kitchen a book in her hand, her eye-mask is tangled in her hair. She looks at me, smiles and then turns around and walks to the seat embedded into the windowsill where she curls up and begins reading the book. As she reads she becomes more alive and awake. My fuel is tea. Paisley's is books.
I collect my banana, school bag and my thermos cup, go and kiss Paisley on the top of her head and head out to my car, grabbing my keys off their hook on the way out.
As I'm driving, I notice a house that definitely wasn't there yesterday. It's quite small and painted in a light blue colour. There are stairs leading up to the front door which is painted white, decorated with orange starfish. It's very pretty but I know that it wasn't there before it's just kind of appeared. The light turns green and I accelerate forwards.
***
I've gone through three of my four classes with no sight of Starley at all. I'm beginning to think that maybe she was kidding when she said she'd see me here. As usual I'm sitting at the table in the lunchroom that my group 'owns'. Sitting next to me is Madison, squished up against me. Our legs are touching and her hand occasionally rests casually on my thigh which I instantly pick up and shove back towards her. I'm not really engaging in conversation and to be completely honest I don't even know what everyone else is talking about. The only thing that pulls my eyes away from the doors is when Madison says, "isn't that right, babe?" or "hey, baby, you listening?" to which I to shake my head violently at her. I've got a girlfriend but I'm killing myself by restraining from telling Madison until Starley is here and I can prove it to her not just tell her. I know it's quite mean, but I want to rub it in a bit that Madison isn't the only girl who's into me.
Suddenly, after watching for what feels like ages, the doors open and reveal a girl. She's nervously standing in the middle of the doorway, holding a pile of textbooks and notebooks in one hand, pulled close to her chest and a small brown handbag with a gold button is swung over her shoulder, hanging down by her side. She's wearing a plain brown t-shirt that hugs her body in all the right places; her skirt has elastic at her waist and it flares out a little bit at the bottom, which is halfway down her thigh and is patterned with multicoloured flowers; she has a pair of white converse on her feet that come up her ankle; she's wearing a single gold chain around her neck that sits perfectly on her chest. By now the eyes of everyone in the lunchroom are on this mysterious girl. Her very curly, blonde and purple hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She's wearing light makeup, it's not too much but it's there: her eyelashes are well defined with a layer of mascara, on and above her eyelids is a pale blue eyeshadow complementing well with her blue eyes, her eyebrows are filled in with an eyebrow pencil and her lips sparkle with some kind of gloss.
Madison beside me is watching her and I can feel her body tense up at the sight of this beautiful mystery girl. Then it hits me and I want to kick myself or have someone else kick my ass for not picking up on it as soon as she arrived. The mystery girl is my girl: Starley.
I get up from the lunch table ignoring Madison who tugs on my arm to try and get me to sit down, and walk over to her. Her smile widens as I get closer, and I can tell how genuinely happy she is to see me. I approach her and wrap my arm around her waist pulling her closer to me. She shivers a bit and I pull her in closer. Then everyone looks back to what they were doing before Starley arrived but no one could've predicted what happened next.
As Starley and I are walking towards the table, Madison jumps onto the bench before standing on the table and screaming. At first no one could make sense of what the screams were saying, it was just a lot of loud noise. Then she looks at me, fiery sparks shooting out of her eyes and down at me.
"Who's this b*tch?" Everyone in the whole room was now looking at Madison and I. Her question was followed by pure silence. Had anyone dropped a feather, we would've all heard it. I just stare at her for a few seconds, unsure if I just heard her say that. I look down at Starley and her blue eyes, usually so happy and bubbly were looking up at me, frozen with fear. She looks back down and leans closer into me. I realise that she would've never had a situation like this and if she had, her dad probably would've protected her. In this moment I was expected to play the role of her dad.
"That b*tch, as you called her, is my girlfriend," I reply, asserting a lot of authority over Madison, warning her that she shouldn't mess with me. "I think you'll find that the only b*tch in this situation is you, Madison. You were never my girlfriend, no matter how much you wanted to be. Starley is the perfect girl that I've been waiting for, and she's a hell of a lot better than you." As if on cue, the bell rings as soon as I finished speaking, signalling that we should all call me the winner of that argument and move to our next class. That's when I walk with Starley, my arm still securely around her waist, to the last class of the day.
We sit next to each other in class. All the guys who I'm friends with and were sitting with us at lunch were impressed and kind of surprised that I'd finally met the 'guidelines' of our group and found a girlfriend. I keep looking at her, watching the way she diligently takes notes in one of her notebooks. For someone who'd lived in the ocean their whole life, she seemed to understand all the content from the lesson and secretly I'm very impressed.  I'll be honest, the lesson is about the reefs along the coast of Queensland, which I'm sure she knew a lot about, but it was taught from a human perspective. I slid my arm along the back of her chair and it stays there most of the lesson. Occasionally I see her look at my arm, smile and then continue writing notes. When the bell rings she looks at me, her eyes questioning what was expected to happen now. I smile at her comfortingly and assist her in packing her things away, from that she seemed to understand. Our teacher dismissed us, then started organising her desk into some sort of neatness. Then she says, "Starley, may I speak to you for a minute? Alex, you're welcome to stay if you want to." Starley nods to me as if expecting that I would stay with her. She picks up her handbag and reaches for the pile of books, but I'd beaten her to it. I held the pile of books and she smiles at me before walking up to the desk at the front of the room.
"Starley, I got an email from the principal that said it would be best if I asked you about your enrolment situation?"
"Oh," she replies, calm as always. "My dad moves around a lot with work, so I'll only be here a few months but I'll probably be back some time next year, when he comes back to the area." I resist the urge to drop my jaw. Her story sounds so real and she delivers it with such confidence that there was no way she'd thought of that on the spot.
"Okay then, thank you for telling me. That really is quite sad, from what I saw today, you're a beautiful student." She's beautiful in general, I add in my head as we said goodbye to the teacher and walked out to the main corridor. I interlock my fingers with hers, and just like the first time we touched, her hand felt so fragile, and a shot of sparks run through my arm. Then I felt her squeeze my hand a little bit and I relax.