Life Is Curious

Lost in your charm

Lunch period. Two straight hours. I'm outside with my 3 best friends Unis, Collin and Anna. there are my confinements. My partners in crime. They were the sisters I never got to have. I literally don't have siblings, so they replaced that role in my life. 

We sat at the bench by the bell tower in the middle of two mango trees. It was a bright sunny day, cloudless sky, gentle breeze. I'm here with my mates. What could go wrong? I thought to myself... Here we are ranting about who's the prettiest actress, what's the best current pop song, which boy band had the most handsome members all the while having our lunches. Life just couldn't be better. 

Although going on in the back of my mind was my thoughts lingering back to Mr. Back's lesson on adolescence. Its changes. the effects. Specifically on having crushes. So while my friend's voices started drowning out of my hearing range, I began listening to my conscientious self as it started asking me the 'crush' questions. 

What is a crush? How do you know if you have one? How do you even get one? What do you do if you start getting the feeling? All these answerless questions trashed my head. 

I tapped on the shoulder by a hand I wasn't familiar with. It wasn't Collin's lanky fingers. It wasn't Unis' warm ones. It wasn't even Anna's freezing ones. I took like 3 seconds trying to figure out who could be tapping me on the shoulder before even referring to the source. My goodness, when I turned around, I did not even expect one single bit for it to be the captain of the school rugby team; Leonard Ross.

The school's golden boy. The ultimate heart snatcher. He was every boy's rugby favorite and every girl's daydream. He wasn't even in the same grade room as my friends and I since he is a senior of our middle school. Our classrooms however were next to each other. My girl classmates would just gush over every single thing he does. Whether it was his angelic smile, him laughing at a joke his friends said, even to his constant smirks to the girls in his class. Lucky weasels. Wait did my mind just say that? 

Never mind... All I'm trying to say is that he's admired by all. Even the teachers have nothing against him. His school work was on track and rugby was his forte. But wait... What in the world was he doing trying to talk to me?

I didn't realize that my own friends were giving me glares signaling that Leonard had just said hi. All I did was open my mouth with no words being said. I'm pretty sure a fly came flying in and back out just to emphasize how long my mouth was hung open. Thanks mother nature...

So me here having lunch at the best spot in the school with my best friends get interrupted by the one and only Leonard freaking Ross. I gathered up enough courage to ask, "What brings you here?," with no such emotion portrayed on my face. He on the other hand, gives a killer smile; enough to light up a whole city replies, "I know I am charming enough to leave your mind pondering, but I didn't know I would leave your mouth hanging." 

As perverted as that sounds, his insulting remark added fuel to his already boosted ego. I resisted in holding back a huge eye roll. My own friends laughed at his reply. Thanks a lot best friends for leaving me in the dust. All I said was, "Yeah sure, keep telling yourself that". He definitely was not expecting a comeback. I swear I heard him mumble under his breath 'got a sassy little attitude this one'. Yeah well, I am a whole lot more than sassy. So then, I go on to ask him what and why he came tapping my shoulder, leaving me tongue-tied while admiring his nicely-sculptured face. Dang you train of thoughts! Good thing I was not thinking out loud.

 Anyways, all he said was, "Well you know, I sort of have a bad record of detention classes cause of my behavior. It's cost me my spot in the rugby team. So, it's a little unprofessional to just ask the Head Prefects to write their statement to let me go on the matter. I was wondering... I uh, just wanted... I", he then leans by my right ear, his 'Iron Man' ice-cold flavored body spray clouding my sense of judgement; yeah, I know his body spray just by the scent of it... God give me strength. He whispers, "Could you maybe put in a good word with your teacher Mr. Back since he is the school coach and save my reputation that's on the line?", and just like that, he abruptly stands up to his full body length, throws a wink my way,  walks away with his other rugby team mates leaving me dumbfounded as to what just happened. To say my friends were just as shocked as I was would be an understatement. 

the first to react to this was Unis. Her usual 'Nancy Drew' instinct kicked in. She came up with this dumb theory that Leonard just wanted to talk to me because he likes me. Oh my days... What kind of friends do I have? Collis, the logical one; stated that he was coming from a professional perspective and said that asking me was the best alternative to asking the Head Prefects. I began to think that that was the real reason for him wanting to talk to me. With that, Anna says that he wants to find a way into sneaking love letters to me once I agree to help him and supposedly 'save his reputation'. Wow... Nice theories. Even though Collin's was the most realistic, I don't know why my own conscience wanted the other two theories to not be false. 

Oh my damn, it then hit me. Mr. Back's lesson on adolescence's behavioral changes. Boys flirting, girls acting gutsy and gushy. the starting of a crush... A crush! Sweet cheese and whiskers... His words and I quote, "Once it happens, you'll know. So you'll know when you know," kept echoing through my brain's intercom. 

Oh my, if I wasn't for Mr. Back being my teacher and me being his most trusted student, I wouldn't have collided into a conversating with Leonard, he wouldn't have disrupted my lunch break and I wouldn't have been asked to 'save his reputation', then life would have been a little bit more bearable. 

But no... God, or fate, or destiny or even damn Cupid decided to let this tangled situation happen to make me realize that I was lost in his charm. 

Here's to my twelve-year-old self having a crush only after being briefed about it one period ago. Life just couldn't get more curious...