Perfume

Chapter Three - Wonderstruck

The walk to school  the next day was like any other...at first.

     I bought a copy of the newspaper from the street vendor (and checked it for news on Belladonna, which yielded no results), crossed the sidewalks with a thousand and one people aorund me, and met Mandy just a block away from the school, as always. 

     And that's when it stopped being just another walk to school.

     Mandy took my hand as soon as she saw me, and we walked to school like that, hand in hand. And then when we were by our lockers, just as we were about to part to our respective classes, she kissed me. I was taken by surprise, but then realized, yeah, this is what boyfriends and girlfriends do all the time. I was being an idiot if I thought otherwise.

     I saw Hanna on twice on Monday. The first time accompanied by Nathan Venenoso, the son of the man who pretty much owned most of the city. They were walking down the hall, talking, formally it seemed. I was leaning against my locker when they'd passed by me. Hanna had given me a brief look, but it'd been too fleeting for me to possibly decipher what it meant.

     The second time was during period five, newspaper. We were starting to work on our pieces for the week, and, as always, I still had no idea what I wanted to write about. I thought about penning an article on Belladonna, but there was no new information and I was sure the city knew about everything and anything there was to know about her...everything not being much.

     While everybody was working, I decided to take a bathroom break. Maybe a little stroll would help with the whole writer's block thing. And that's when I saw her, walking down the hall, looking distressed. We were the only ones in the hall. It was time to talk.

     "Hanna," I said.

     She stopped n place and looked up at me. Her green eyes met mine.

     "Hanna," I said again, walking closer to her. I wanted to ask her if she was okay, if those guys had hurt her. I cared about how she was, but also...also...deep inside I wanted to know how the hell had she done that? What she been doing there when it was dark outside?

     "Clay," she said and shook her head. "I know what you want to know." 

     I nodded. "Are you okay?"

     She sighed and closed her eyes. "Yes, Clay. I guess. I'm okay."

     "You guess?"

     "Look, Clay, I can't talk right now. I'll see you later."

     And then she walked past me without looking back.

My writer's block refused to go away the days following that bizarre encounter with Hanna. I tried to think, tried to come up with something, but my mind had gone blank. These days my mind was filled up with thoughts  concerning Mandy and Hanna's strange behavior. And the Belladonna.

     I wasn't able to talk to Hanna on Tuesday or Wednesday. She was always with Nathan Venenoso and I didn't want to butt into their conversation.

     Mandy continued to act like the perfect little girlfriend she thought she was. Kissing me pretty much every other minute. It was getting irritating, unbearingly uncomfortable. But I didn't have the nerve to tell her to back off. Didn't have the nerve to hurt her.

     On Thursday, during fifth period, I was sitting around the large table where we had discussed our pieces and the layout yesterday. I had none and had to come up with one today. Angus wasn't very happy with me. And neither was Mandy.

     "Are you planning to procrastinate until the night before like last time!" she had said to me the day before. "I've told you, Linden, it's not healthy!"