The Lasting Days Of Samantha Piper

9- Romeo and Juliet (And Other Nonsense)

TROY's POV

I looked around and saw Samantha walking in knee-high boots. She tossed her wavy blonde hair across her shoulder as she saw me. I can still see the overly curled tips of her hair even if it barely shows behind her (it's still on some traumatic hair situation after her many curlers earlier at the classroom's play). She played a character named Nancy Drew today, which basically was because she's the only blonde girl around Art class who can cast that classic girl-detective look all over her body.

Watching her during the play, I can't help but grin because I remembered everything about last week- the laughter, the joy, the lightness I felt, and this adrenaline that always came whenever I get near her, though last Friday it was even stronger than it ever was. More Fridays to come, Trojan, she whispered in my ears. And finally, it was a day before Saturday.

Sam (I insisted on calling her that) wore a black shirt-dress matched up with an elegant choker that goes beautifully around her long, flawless neck.

God, will I ever get tired of staring at this masterpiece? My mind completely leaping out of my lobes because I can't believe that she actually came here. At this secret place.

"The wheel is come full circle: I am here." Sam announced, shuffling my short messy hair as she get near me. I realized that it was a statement from Edmund on King Lear, some Shakespearean tragedy.

"I almost got on the point where I'll realize how I'm such a fool for believing you would come." I said.

Samantha blew a strand of hair away from her eyes. "Of course I will come. I'll always come. Whenever. Whatever." I can feel her watching my reaction like she plans on seeing something different come across my face.

Last week, the girl Samantha Adelaide Piper, whom everyone loves to spend a night with (or even a lifetime) stalked right at the hallway and had asked me if I can go with her to the Laboratory. And now, as she stood side by side with me, fulfilling her promise that there will be more Fridays to come and that it was just a start of something incredible, I can't seem to shut my face from smiling. Do guys do the gooey-eyes thing? Probably I'm doing it now.

I've had courted girls before in elementary, which I found alienating and impossible nowadays. Maybe it was because I'm still rolling off the honor class when I was in third grade up until sixth grade; in primary school that kind of turns on a girl if a guy is smart, but now in high school, not much. The standards become too high and it requires some James Dean- bad boy physique and some full-on witty, belly cracking humour which both I don't have. Lately, I'm becoming close to thinking that I don't have anything worth considering as boyfriend-material. In fact, I never had a girlfriend. The only one I knew who never got a girlfriend since birth was Carlo (but I'm sure he'll get one, he's just too taunted to try) and I don't even know if this is some symptom that I will grow old single, though I'm pretty sure I'm not gay.

Samantha made me agree that we should meet at Calle De'Cal, a place somewhere hidden at the back of a kinder school where no one ever crosses but some stray cats and dumpster trucks hurrying to pick up trash bins. "So, what a cool place isn't it?" She said excitedly, wiping some sweat out of her face with a Caruso napkin.