"So what's with you and Klaus Swedlund?" Drei, my very best friend since elementary school, asked me at lunch one day when we were sitting outside the school on the front lawn. Usually her boyfriend, Tom, and mine, Santi, ate lunch with us, but that day they had a meeting with the football team.
"What do you mean?" I asked nonchalantly as I dipped a carrot stick in some ranch dressing before taking a bite. I looked over at my blonde haired, blue eyed bestie and offered her a baby carrot. She took one before answering.
"Well...Karen told me she saw you with him the other night and there are some weird rumors going around about you and him..." She shrugged her shoulders apologetically.
"Like what, Drei?" I asked with a frown on my face.
"Like that you're hooking up! You're hanging out with a weirdo, Rodialyn," Drei told me bluntly, "He's like a stalker. He has no friends; except for you. Don't you think that's strange? He's like in love with you." I loved Drei, but she was so overdramatic about every little thing. I should never have told her about Klaus knowing where I lived without me telling him. From that point on, she'd insisted on calling him a stalker.
"He is not in love with me. You've got it all wrong. We're just lab partners!" Why did I have to defend our relationship so much lately? It seemed everyone wanted to tell me what I was doing was wrong. I was sick of being told what to do. "And so what if we're friends anyways? He's not a weirdo. He's cool."
"Right..." Drei didn't sound like she believed me. "Well then what about Santi? How do you think it's making him feel to hear about you and Klaus?"
Santi Wesley, Drei's Italian foreign exchange student, had been living with Drei since the beginning of September, so almost nine months now. She had grown very close and protective of Santi, and I knew she'd be unhappy if Santi and I broke up after she worked so hard playing match-maker to get us together. I liked Santi though; maybe even loved him at one point. I never planned to mess up anything with the suave, sophisticated, and handsome Italian gentleman. Sometimes, life doesn't end up the way you planned.
"Santi is my boyfriend," I pointed out, "And he knows that there is nothing between Klaus and I. If Santi were even a little bit jealous or concerned, he'd say something. He hasn't."
"Just be careful, Rodialyn," Drei warned. I didn't know what she was warning me about at the time, but I ignored it either way. I wasn't taking anyone's advice anymore. I was only listening to me.
Later that same afternoon, Klaus asked me to hang out. I had plans with Santi that night; we were going to see a movie at nine o'clock. Klaus convinced me we had time to go bowling or something beforehand. He promised to have me back home before nine, and said he'd even drop me off at the theater if we ran late. I reluctantly agreed, as I always seemed to do when Klaus requested something of me. I lied to Santi too, about where I was going, which I shouldn't have done. I told him I had a meeting with Yearbook Committee. I knew I was going to Hell for that.
"Change of plans," Klaus announced after picking me up in the Camaro at five o'clock, "We're not going bowling."
"What are we doing?" I'd asked after climbing into my usual seat beside him. I wasn't great at bowling, so I didn't really mind the change. Unless, of course, it turned into something worse than bowling, then I would've been disappointed. "And don't say the movies, because that's where Santi and I are going later."
"No way would I ever want to do something as conventional as go to the movies," Klaus stated distastefully. "Besides, you can save that crap for your boyfriend. You, Partner, are not my girlfriend. So we're going to do something that's actually fun."
"You say that like you're implying that Santi and I don't ever do anything fun," I pointed out.
"You don't." Klaus ignored my complaint at his rudeness and pulled off the road to make a stop at the local Wal-Mart. To further prove his point that he wasn't my boyfriend, he asked, "Got any cash?" I handed him twenty bucks and waited impatiently in the car as he ran inside for whatever stupid thing he absolutely needed for our outing, or whatever the Hell he'd call it. He came back, hiding his purchase, which annoyed me since I gave him the money for it, and continued towards the unknown destination. The only thing he asked me was, "Pizza or Chinese?"
"Pizza." Our next stop was the Rheymey Grill, where we ordered a pizza to-go, along with breadsticks and a two-liter of soda. At least I knew our outing included dinner, which he paid for. We waited twenty minutes for the food to cook, and then we were back in the car. "So..." I asked, breaking the awkward silence between us, "Where are we going?"
"Well..." Klaus shared slowly, drawing out the suspense of his surprise, "I thought we'd have a picnic. And we're going to play a little game to decide where we'll eat." I was puzzled, which I often am when Klaus gets an idea, so he explained further. "All right, so the game is like twenty questions. Only instead of asking a question, you'll give me a direction, and wherever we end up at twenty is where we'll eat."
"I get to pick?" I was really excited now. "Okay, let's go!" I smiled eagerly and Klaus rolled his eyes and waited for my first direction. "At the next light take a left." I directed him until we were close to the Rheymey Falls, the waterfall our town was named after, and that's where we ended up having our picnic.
After we ate the pizza and breadsticks, Klaus pulled out a box of cookies he bought at Wal-Mart and thanked me for dessert. He also bought the blanket we were sitting on, and a giant case of bubbles for us to blow with the money I gave him. I laughed easily with him as we talked about the stupid parties that take place here at The Falls on the weekend. Since it was Friday, kids were probably getting ready to go out to The Falls that very night. I used to think those kind of parties were fun, but I thought they were stupid that night. With Klaus, I saw the world through different eyes. He made all those high school things unimportant. When the sun went down and it got cold, he loaned me his jacket.
"I can't believe you took us here," Klaus commented after draping the jacket over my shoulders. He sat back down next to me and stared at me curiously. He shook his head as he asked, "How did you know?"
"Know what?" I laughed. "What are you talking about, Partner? We were playing your game, remember? I just followed the rules..."
"I've been coming here since my family moved," Klaus told me. "When I needed a place to just get away, I came here."
"Ohh," I teased him with a cheeky grin on my face, "I found your special spot?" It felt good to figure something out about him completely by accident. I scanned the serene calm of the Falls at this hour. He picked a good spot to come to as an escape. When teenagers aren't partying and trashing up the place, it's actually kind of nice and peaceful.
"I don't know how you did it," Klaus insisted, "It was like a one in a billion chance of you finding it and you found it."
"Stranger things have happened," I'd told him as I looked him in the eyes, "Haven't they?"
Something in the air changed around us then. The way Klaus looked at me...he'd never looked at me like that before, not even a little bit. It was like he saw me for the first time that night. Saw the real me. He leaned in and kissed me, so quick I almost didn't believe it happened. Then, he cleared his throat and said we should go; that we were lab partners and our relationship started and ended with that. He also said Ric would be mad and disappointed, which I thought was weird. He was our Chemistry teacher; why would he be mad at us for kissing? If anyone was going to be mad, it was Santi. What had I done? I'd let Klaus kiss me. And I kind of liked it. I did like it.
