Heart Burns

Chapter 3

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Rain is pouring down, and Dave will not open. I grit my teeth as I jiggle my keys in the outside key hole. The one day I actually need my car open and he refuses. "Come on Dave. I know you don't want me sitting on your beautiful leather seats with a wet ass." "Are you talking to your car? I thought only douchebags named their cars." I jump and drop my keys under the front tire. I grunt and reach to get them. "Look, my day is already rough. I don't need some stranger raining on my parade." "Hm, some parade..." My finger wraps around the key ring and I stand up to face my attacker. Jonah, from English, is standing in a black hoodie with his hair dripping raindrops into his eyes. "Brea, right?" I nod, still heated that he chose today to bother me. "I was just wondering what poem you had to mimic. I've read some of your work. They were actually really good." "Actually? What, I'm not sad enough to write a poem?" My voice spits fire on his pale skin. He holds his hands up in surrender. "You just don't seem like you care." I roll my eyes, but a blush starts to creep up to my cheeks. "I do care. I just..." I turn back to my car and try the keys again. I hear his combat boots slosh with the puddles when he takes the keys out of my hand. "Your car is already unlocked. You just keep locking it." He opens the door, and nails me in the hipbone. "Your Highness." He bows and I grab the door, yank it away, and shimmy into my cold car. I shut the door, and he knocks on the window. "Can I have a ride? Not a good day to miss the bus, huh?" He shouts through the glass, and smiles at me. "Why should i? We aren't even friends." "I've already considered that. We shall become the best of friends, riding out into the sunset on you noble steed." He pats the hood of my car, and I groan. He shoots his fists into the air as I unlock the car. "Thank you, sweetheart." He pats my cheek with his wet fingers and as I swat them away, he turns and buckles his seat belt. "Okay where to? I have places to be today, so we gotta hurry.." He mumbles out an address I don't know, and after a third and fourth attempt, he grabs my ancient GPS and types it in. I drive out of the school parking lot, and Jonah starts to fumble with the radio. "You have really shitty music tastes," as he thumbs through my endless supply of CDs. "Then stop looking at them," and he starts to fling the ones he disapproves of into the back seat. "If any of those get one scratch, you are buying me new ones," I groan. "All you have is eighties pop and country," Jonah complains, and I rip most of the cases out of his hands while trying not to drive off of the road. "Hey, watch it! You could kill us both, and I don't want my last few seconds on earth to be next to a girl who has such bad taste in music that she thinks Twisted Sister is hardcore." "It's my dad's music alright? I listen to it when I miss-." I choke on my words when I realize I'm opening up to a stranger. I glance at him and see his big brown eyes staring back at me, his thumb caressing Madonna. "What?" He coughs and states, "You miss him. That's okay. I miss my family too." "What happened to them?" He chuckles. "Hey, this isn't therapy group. We were going on about how you're going to kill us. I shall proceed." "Why do you talk like that?" He is silent for a few seconds, and then he shouts, "BECAUSE I AM THE GREAT GRAND SON OF THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND!" He starts to double over with laughter, and I shake my head. His humor was boring. He wipes fake tears from his eyes and turns back to the radio when he finds nothing he is interested in my pile of music. He turns to a popular station, and sings along to the song, most likely Justin Bieber. He opens his window and sticks his hand out. "Don't do that. You could get your hand chopped off..." I mumble, and I see his body shake with giggles. That's what he did. His laugh was cute, like a little kid laughing. "Thank you, Mom, but I'll be fine. This is always my favorite part of the car ride." He brings his hand back in, his hand dripping with the aftermath of a light sprinkle of condensation. "Don't you like doing it too?" I raise an eyebrow. "Do what?" "Stick your hand out the window while someone else was driving." "I've never done it." I can feel his stare on me as I turn the wheel onto a bumpy road. "What?" He stammers, no real words coming out of his mouth. "You... you've... This is the best thing you can ever do! You're holding the sky in your hands and then it's going by so fast you just want to hold on to it.. make it a perfect moment." He hugs his knees to his chest, resting his cheek toward the window so I can't see his facial emotions. I pull up to a rusted up farm house with blue shudders against white rotted wood. "Home sweet home, huh?" He plops his boots on the floor and beams at me. "We should do this again. Make it a regular thing." I smirk at his hope. "Yeah maybe." He pats my cheek and opens the car door. He stomps through mud and he punches numbers on the keypad to open the garage. He waves to me as he ducks his head in. I wave back to him, even though he has already went inside. My heart is pumping hard. Why do I feel like this? I haven't felt this weird since I had become friends with Lyra. Speaking of... I pull out of the short driveway and start out toward the diner we both work at. As I turn the corner towards the end of the street, I see a slip of paper on the passenger's seat. I stop at the stop sign and lean over, swipe it from the butt. I unwrap it from its square shape and see a series of numbers, ten bucks, and his full name with a tiny thanks and a smiley in the corner. I smile back. No one's given me this kind of gesture. 

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