The Quirky Tale of April Hale (Quirky Series #1)

18: Reality VS Expectation

18: Reality VS Expectation

You would think that having your first kiss would dramatically change you. Make you into a woman you were meant to be. Make you all more confident and better looking and people will automatically ‘know’ that you’ve kissed and that you’re all cool and all that jazz.

It doesn’t. None of that happened to me.

Maybe I missed my note on being a normal teenager with normal hormonal problems when the doctor diagnosed me with The Syndrome. Maybe I missed my note on being a teenager with normal hormonal problems when I decided that watching TVs and obssessing over my food schedule was a far more  superior hobby compared to gossiping about boys.

Either way, I was still same old same old. I woke up at the morning to find that Ryder, like always, had woken up earlier and went out through the window. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, lamented over the new scars that the pimple had been giving me, and then went to school with my brother, who would be all pumped and excited to meet his friends.

When I was younger, I used to wonder what it would be like to be Quentin; to have friends waiting for you when you come to school. To have friends waiting for you after school. To have friends waiting for you just to talk to you and hang out with and chill and -insert bonding ideas for friendships here since I’m too uncreative to think any-

Now, at 17 year old, I could finally feel maybe a third of what Quentin felt when he found out that he was popular.

I had Ryder waiting for me at school.

Maybe having only a single person with the social ability of a wolf would not be enough for others. But I had come to think of Ryder as my Precious Person, no matter how uncomfortable he often made me feel.

And Ryder, as my Precious Person, often deliver. 

He was never one to sit on the cafeteria table during lunch break. It was beneath the mysterious bad boy with mystic aura that nobody could point their fingers into. But then one time, two weeks after our first kiss, he actually dragged his feet to sit next to me, giving both Marcy and Corrine a run for their cardiovascular health.

“Whazzup?” he said to my friends, who only managed to respond with total silence.

This effect -I might have to call it the Ryder Effect- didn’t only contaminate my friends, but pretty much everyone who saw him sitting with us the Golden Nerds. Within three meters radius, 75% of people had their eyes much bigger than their usual states and their mouth open wide for the flies.

It was not a pretty sight, and not to mention made me nervous as sith.

But Ryder didn’t care, or that’s what he tried to make it look. I saw his fingers shook a little bit as he raised his sandwhich to his mouth, and that his feet vibrated under the table, making a mini earthquake that only I and he could feel. He was as uncomfortable as me sitting here, and yet he put on a countenance of overt blaseness.

Marcy and Corrine somehow recovered from their comatose period, and after a very obvious reclusive discussion, started to talk.

Corrine: “I didn’t know you two are friends!”

Me: “…”

Ryder: “We’re neighbors.”

Marcy: “B-But y-y-you t-two n-never talked b-b-b-before.”

By the time Marcy finished her stuttering, Ryder was sighing in impatience. Again, he repeated his previous sentence. “We’re neighbors.”

“We’re neighbors,” I repeated.