THREE YEARS LATER
Chapter 3 – Mark
When I said our conversation time was over, I must have jinxed myself because we haven’t talked since the first day of grade 8 and now its 3 years later and we’ve finished grade 10. I was standing there minding my own business when she comes over and whispers to me, ‘thank you’ and walks off without saying anything else. I don’t know what was going through her head but the more I think about it the more I think she has forgiven me for something.
I start walking home when she pops up beside me.
“Hey,” she says smiling, smiling that’s a good thing.
“Hi how are you?” I reply a little sceptic.
“I’m good, wow it’s been forever since we talked,” she said pointing out the obvious.
Well it had been forever and it had been the worst forever in the history of forever’s. The forever’s that take the longest to come are Christmas day when you’re a kid and your birthday. But this forever was one I had been waiting for the longest amount of time.
“Yeah since the first day of great eight,” I snapped back, I didn’t mean to. It’s what happens when you’re in love with someone for so long and they don’t even notice or talk to you.
An awkward silence plays out, and I am not going to be the one to break it.
“So…..has Liam had his kid yet?” she asks.
“Nope any day now though, and I heard about your brother and Samantha. I’m sorry to hear they didn’t work out, they were really cute together.”
“Mmmm, yeah it was a shame. But have you met Ashlee, she is so nice.”
Okay so this type of small talk went on for a while and she flashed her smile which I loved a few times but the thing that made this day so special wasn’t that she talked to me, or that she was smiling at me but it was when she asked me to come over because she was hot and wanted to go swimming, and she didn’t want to swim alone. And she would be alone because all of her brothers were gone, either still at ‘The Academy’ or at university or starting a life with their partners.
So I went over after getting my swimming tops, I was expecting to see her as her old self but nope she wasn’t she was in a itty bitty bikini which really left nothing to imagine. I was in my board shorts and was getting a little bit nervous about what she might see.
“Last one in is a rotten egg…” and she runs off and jumps in the pool. I run in after her, and jump in, she laughs and I’m so confused about why she is talking to me and why she laughs around me now.
“What did I do?” I say nervously.
She looks at me puzzled. Oh God, quick make something up, “you said thank-you. So what did I do to make you want to talk again?” or my big mouth can blurt out what I really want to know.
“You didn’t do anything but Mel made me realise something. I do this weird thing where I block people out and I guess something as small as you teased my brother was enough for my barrier to go up and say talking to you is bad,” she explains but I don’t think she realises is that what she said relates to Grade 5.
“Okay so what did I do in grade 8 then?” I ask.
“Nothing but we weren’t really friends. You were just talking to me to be nice”
“Okay then why now?”
“Because I guess I was hoping for you to say something different to what I said…”
I splash her with the water and go under the water so she can’t see me blush. I think she was trying to say she doesn’t actually want to be friends anymore, maybe something more. I swim to the other side of the pool and pop my head up. Kiara was about to get out.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“You got my hair wet,” she says with a fake smile plastered on my face.
“Kiara that’s not it, what did I do?” I’ve done it again; I think this girl had a crush on me. Emphasis on had, and now its grade 5 all over again.
“Nothing you did nothing,” she finally says.
“So your angry with me cause I said nothing?”
“Maybe I don’t know, you’re really confusing me!” she jumps back in, when she comes back up as soon as she takes a breath I kiss her. A long tender kiss that makes me want to melt but realising she isn’t kissing back I obviously got the wrong message, so I stop and pull away. When I open my eyes I see her standing there looking at me.
“I’d better go,” and I turn to walk away. That was the best damn kiss I’ve ever experienced in my entire life, there hasn’t been that many but whoa! Not one of them could take my breath away like she did. I don’t ever want to kiss anyone again unless it is her.
“What was that?” she asks.
“Well you got up me for not doing anything so…” I was going to finish but then she would realise my biggest secret that I’ve kept my entire life, well since Grade 5.
“So you kissed me to prove a point?”
“Well maybe, but it might not be the point you’re thinking of, but I’d rather not talk about that right now,” I look into her beautiful blue eyes as I said.
“Okay well I want to talk about something, considering that was my first kiss. Is it always that good?”
I can’t believe it, I stole her first kiss….I was her first kiss. OMG!
“Um if I was going to be a dick head towards you then I’d say yes every time. But that was the best kiss I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
“Okay then,” a smile tugging at her lips, “question though, why would you be a dick head?”
I didn’t answer; I just walked away, maybe because I liked her too much to get her caught up in my mess. Maybe because I knew the truth and I don’t want to hurt her and telling her about her mother and we attended the academy will hurt her. I walked home and saw my mother in the doorway, she was starting to look old, and fair enough she had raise 12 kids and was now 51.
“So how was Kiara’s house?” she asks
“It was good…” I reply. I don’t really want to go through a play by play run through of what happened at Kiara’s house this afternoon.
“That’s good then why don’t you go to your room and start on that ‘thing’ you need to start.”
That’s the reason; the ‘thing’ is what everyone who goes to ‘The Academy’ will one day gets. It’s an assignment on something that they are good at. Me I am top of the class at analysis therefore my assignment is to figure out where or what Kiara’s mother is. I only got it a day or two ago and started straight away on trying to figure out what happened for real. I don’t understand though…..why Kiara? It could be anyone in the world but for me to investigate another student who went to ‘The Academy’ is bizarre.
“I’ve started mum and I do not like this one bit!”
“What do you mean?”
“Well I don’t want to investigate one of my best friend’s dead mother!”
I run up to my room and lay on my bed. All I can think about is the kiss and how amazing it felt, but on the other hand, how I can’t get too close without hurting her so much that she never wants to talk to me again.
