Fools

7- Sam

Sam

It had been about two weeks of my new school and it wasn't too bad. I had a solid group of friends, people were nice in my class, my teachers all liked me (Noah kept calling me a 'teacher's pet', but I didn't see it that way. I knew he was joking though.) Speaking of, Noah had been... an interesting friend of mine. A bipolar friend. I wasn't sure if he actually was bipolar, but he sure as heck acted like he was. For example, us in the hallway yesterday;

We had officially started walking to class together (sometimes, me having to catch up to Noah, but walking together nonetheless). I had met him at his locker. "Hey, Noah," I tapped him twice on his shoulder.

He glanced at me, gave me a small- almost unnoticeable- smile, saying "Hey," then went back to grabbing the Government book from his locker. He shut his locker and turned to me.

"Um, do you work tonight?" I had asked. It was Friday night.

"Why? You wanna have a slumber party and braid each other's hair?" He jested and gave me an award winning smirk.

"Oh, I certainly do," I told him in a serious tone which got him to chuckle, which made me chuckle. It wasn't often that he laughed, but when he did- and it was me that got him to laugh- it was like what I assumed being high felt like.

We were walking to class, and he had looked down at his phone with a weird expression (that I didn't even register until the next day) and he still hadn't answered my question. So, I asked again, "So, tonight...? Did you want to hang out?"

He made a frustrated noise the shoved his phone into his pocket, "no, Sam, piss off," and he walked into class leaving me speechless.

So yeah, bipolar friend; joking one minute, mad at me the next. And it was hard for me to keep up.

So, Friday night I spent alone, but luckily, Saturday night was a little busier for me.

Emily had gotten me a job at the small, local movie theater. It was old, and looked rundown and the seats weren't the nicest, and sometimes the film glitched. But, everyone in this town- that I gathered from Emily- goes to this movie theater because the tickets were cheap. Plus, the popcorn was to die for and I couldn't stop eating it.

It was my fourth day working at the movies and we were just waiting for the last movie to end for the customers to leave. The clock read 11:26, so about ten more minutes until the last movie ended. So, until then, the lobby was empty, save for two customers and a few workers other than Emily and I. Jason and my sister were the two 'customers'.

I was sweeping behind the counter, picking up all the fallen popcorn. Jason was leaning near the popcorn popper with a bucket of popcorn that he was eating from (and I was sometimes stealing from). My sister- who was waiting to drive me home- was leaning on the counter next to Emily. Emily was counting money in the drawer, but still chiming in on our conversation.

And somehow, Noah was brought up in conversation.

Okay, I know how. It was me. I brought him up. "So, uh, what's Noah's deal?" I asked, trying my best to sound neutral as I swept the tiled floor.

"Noah Wright?" Emily questioned. As if there was another Noah I was talking about.

I nodded, not looking at any of them as I spoke. "Yeah, um is he, uh... I was just wondering because... well I-"

"What my mentally-unstable, baby brother is trying to say is, he has a crush on Noah and wants to know if Noah also sucks dick," Haven said with an amused smirk.

"Woah!" Jason laughed, "you tryin'a get with Noah? You dirty dog."

"Haven!" I exclaimed, appalled and blushing fiercely. "That's— I wasn't wondering that, I was just—" they were laughing, listening to me making a fool of myself. I rolled my eyes at their continuous laughter and huffed.