Redemption Chapters

chapter 3 : a Bench, a Blade and a Boy Friend

Are there step-by-step guides on how to make friends? If so, I'm sure none of them instruct you to call a foreign body a bastard.

Bastard boy sits-- pardon my rudeness, the foreign bo-- fuck, I mean Aaron! His name is Aaron. Aaron sits alongside me on the very bench we spoke earlier. I wonder for a few moments if it's really that easy to make friends. I'm going to tell Beth about this when she comes to get me.

"You're quiet." He says finally breaking my thoughtful silence.

"I was." I look at him.

"I get the feeling that you're not usually quiet." He's only half wrong. I look down at my half eaten sandwich.

"It's situation dependent really." I stare at a blade of grass taller than the grass surrounding it. How in the fuck is that even possible? Who cut this grass? I place the sandwich back into my lunchbox.

Aaron scoots closer and nudges my shoulder as prompt to continue. This bastard boy really knows nothing of personal space.

"I can talk a shit ton. In fact, I do. I talk Beth and Marcel's ears off all the time." I chuckle at the thought.

"Beth and Marcel are your friends?" Oh yeah, he obviously doesn't know who I'm talking about. Mental note: new person means new explanations.

I should write my own manual.

"Well, yes. But also my mother and her friend."

"You refer to your mother as 'Beth'?"

"My Beth, actually." I correct with a ghost of a smile on my face. I quite miss Beth.

"That's sweet." He smiles at the sky momentarily then turns back to me.

"I'm assuming you call your mother 'mom' or 'mommy'?" I'm interested in his answer.

"Oh for sure. Didn't really call her anything after she left though."

Yorh.

"Well fucken hell, my dude." I stare at him blankly. He seems to find that funny because bastard boy starts cackling at the top of his lungs.

"This laughter is motherless behaviour." I say while failing to maintain a straight face. His fits of laughter are only aggravated by my comment. I laugh along with him. I see a trend here.

Our laughter finally simmers down, the pain still piercing my cheeks and a comfortable silence befalls us. I look at the grass again. Whoever cut that grass did a heinous job.

"I have my dad's wife though ; Aubrey. She's cool. What's your mom like?" he starts up the conversation once more.

What is my mother like? I feel my eyebrows furrow. Marcel says I frown unnecessarily. Just like my Beth. I remember how he constantly reminds her to relax her eyebrows. So I relax mine.

"Well, she's cool as fuck for starters. She's funny and she's kind and she's mean and athletic and she has the loudest laugh and she's my bestfriend." I explain fondly.

"You think she'd like me?"

"I don't know. I don't even know you." I spare him a glance before returning my gaze to the blade of grass. I'm gonna cut it.

"Fair enough. But I think she'd like me. Parents love me actually. I mean, you like me."

"Fuck no, I do not." I follow up with a chuckle.

He nudges me again, unaffected by my comment and with no sense of personal space.

"We are friends, Taylor Swift." The finality of his tone makes me feel unsure for some reason.

"Why do you insist on being my friend, Aaron?" I turn to face him, eyebrows re-furrowed. I promise I tried, Marcel.

He seems to have been waiting for this question because as soon as I ask, he gets up and assumes a TedTalk-like stance and starts his impromptu presentation.

"There's this unwritten agreement between all grades of this school that grade 12's get first preference with certain 'spots'." He throws up inverted commas with his fingers and continues his explanation seating himself beside me.

"Like the benches between blocks I showed you earlier on our tour and the tables most people have their lunch at in the cafeteria ; spots. This bench we're sitting on–" he says patting the very little space between us– "has been my spot for the last year and counting. And this will continue to be 'my' bench for the rest of the school year. When I got here this morning and you were already seated, I figured you must be new so I took it as a sign to say 'hello'."

"You never said 'hello'." I open my backpack in search of a pencil bag.

"Well, no. But I did say 'good morning'." I look at him. No, you didn't.

"You didn't say that either."

"Oh, but I did. Considering your response, you obviously didn't hear me. Which is fine." He shrugs it off and snatches a water bottle from somewhere.

Come to think of it, it's quite likely that I didn't. I'm not very good at focusing on multiple things at once and finding a song to fit the scene was my top priority at the time. Which I didn't actually manage to listen to but that's besides the point.

After finally mustering my blue coloured pencil bag from the deep, dark crevasses of my backpack, I've successfully retrieved the pair of scissors.

"My apologies then." I look at his face.

"No sweat." He smiles. A millisecond later his expression changes. He looks a bit confused. And then?

"What's wrong?"

I thought I was doing really well with this conversation so far. Maybe I need to put the manual idea on hold for now.

"Nothing's wrong, I'm just curious as to why you've got the dangerous end of a pair of scissors pointed at my person."

I look down at my hand. I suppose this picture doesn't look as innocent as it is.

A beat passes.

Oh shit, I forgot I have to answer.

I point to the blade of grass.

"That single blade of grass over there is uneven to the rest so I'm gonna cut it."

I wait for a response. Another beat passes. And then?

"Your scissors are still pointed at my person." Oh that.

"I'm not gonna stab you, you poephol." I move the scissors to my blazer pocket.

"Good. Can't be sporting a stab wound when I first meet your Beth."

Check this guy.

"Who the fuck said you're meeting my Beth?" I raise an eyebrow. The thought of creating that stab wound is starting to sound tempting.

"Me. And if I'm assuming correctly, that woman with the leather jacket waving in our direction."

Absolutely not.

I turn to where he points. That woman in the leather jacket is, in fact, my Beth.

Well, shit.

I stand corrected.