The cafeteria's loud and crowded as I finally enter, making my way to our usual table in the corner. While I start unpacking my lunch- a turkey sandwich with a juice box- I watch the people around me, laughing and talking with their friends. I get a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach as I look at Nathan's table, where he sits by himself, an apple in hand.
Should I go sit with him? Talk to him maybe?
As I'm contemplating the pros and cons, someone sits down on my left, bringing me out of my own little world.
"Hey Cameron," I smile warmly at him and he smiles back, his lip ring glittering.
Cam is tall- not as tall as Nathan - with inky black hair, tan skin and brown eyes. I guess you could say he was a sort of 'bad-boy' but it's really just a tough front. He's actually really sweet, but you wouldn't know unless you bothered to find out.
"Hey Emma. So, guess what happened to me this morning?" His eyes are glinting with amusement, a crooked grin on his face.
"What?" I inquire, opening my juice box and taking a sip.
He launches into a story about how his dog stole his pants this morning and how he chased him all around the backyard trying to get them back. I'm dying laughing by the time our other friends show up, and when he retells the story for them I laugh even harder.
"Dude, didn't you have another pair of pants?" Parker asks, his face red with laughter.
"Well yeah but I still wanted my pants back." He groans, shoving his hair back off his forehead.
"Oh! That's not even the worst of it, I tripped and fell over a stick, my dog sat beside me and at that moment my hot neighbor comes outside. Imagine how stupid I looked trying to explain why I was laying on the ground, wearing Star Wars boxers, with my dog eating my pants at seven am."
By the end of the lunch period I'm crying I'm laughing so hard. As I stand up to head to my next class, I feel eyes on me. I try to shake it off as we file out of the cafeteria, but the feeling won't go away. I look behind me, scanning the crowd for possible students.
My breath is caught in my throat as I meet a pair of midnight blue eyes, eyes that are fixated exactly on me. He doesn't look away as we make eye contact, just continues to stare openly, his face a mask of emotions. I turn the corner quickly, eager to get away from his questioning gaze, and practically run to my next class.
For the next hour I'm unable to focus on my work as I keep thinking back to Nathan Walker, and his piercing dark blue eyes as they watched me leave the cafeteria.
. . . . .
"Do you admit defeat?!" Beau shouts, pinning my hands above my head with a menacing grin.
"Never!!" I chant and with a battle cry, reach up and bite his wrist. He squeals like a girl, jumping off me in surprise.
While he examines the teeth marks I left in his skin, I lunge for the T.V. remote left on the coffee table, my fingertips just brushing against its plastic surface before a hand latches around me ankle, pulling me back.
Beau and I fight over the T.V. remote at least three times a week- minimum. This is nothing compared to the fights we've had before. One time- I knocked his baby tooth out. We were fighting over the last juice box in the kitchen and in my struggle to win I head-butted his face. It was an accident actually, I slipped on the tiles and smacked my head off his face.
Looping two arms around me, Beau throws me backwards, onto the bean-bag chair, and makes a dive for the remote. As a last resort, I jump on his back, grab two fistfuls of his hair and pull. I pull so hard he screams, kicking his legs out in a futile attempt to get me off.
His hand wraps around my foot and I already know what's happening before he speaks.
"I will crack your toe-knuckles you imbecile! Now let go." He shouts, using both hands to keep my squirming foot in his grasp.
"Never!!!!" I holler, pulling his head back by his hair and he cracks my big toe, erupting a squeal out of me.
And that's where my big brother AJ finds us; me screaming and pulling Beau's hair, while Beau cracks my toes and begs me to let go.
"My siblings are five-year old's." He groans, kicking off his shoes and making his way over to us on the living room floor.
He pulls me up off of beau, who instantly gets up, his hands flattening down his uprooted hair.
"I leave you alone for half an hour, half an hour, I come home and you're ready to kill each other on the living room floor." He scoffs, shaking his head from side to side in amusement.
I grin sheepishly at him, shuffling my feet against the carpet. It wasn't an odd occurrence for AJ to come home from running errands and find us fighting to the death somewhere in the house. We try to keep the fighting to a minimal around mom- she works so hard all the time, and she's exhausted by the time she gets home, she doesn't need to split up our petty fights, even if they are friendly.
After dinner, homework and a shower, I find myself curled up on my bed, a book in hand, the only light source being the lava lamp on my bedside table. Closing the book, I glance tiredly around my room- the walls are a simple pale blue, with whit furniture to match. From the white four-poster bed, the white desk, the white dresser, the white side table, and the white chest at the foot of my bed- it was all a chipped, white. AJ installed bookshelves for me, above my bed, where I had a collection of my favorite novels. Band posters hung on the walls alongside polaroid photos I'd taped everywhere. My favorite decoration in my room was one of the paintings my mom did, back before she had to get a job to support us.
It hung above my pillows, a rectangular canvas. On it, my mom had done a detailed acrylic painting of a sunset in the rain.
It didn't make logical sense, you wouldn't see a sunset if it was cloudy, and it would be cloudy if it was raining, and I think that's why I liked it so much. The painting is so surreal- swoops of bright, oranges and pinks high light the sky, only to be doused in greys and blues from the rain. It was such an absurd, unrealistic, uncomprehend-able sight that it made it beautiful.
That's how I fell asleep, thinking and wondering about a fictional sunset, where the rain fell and created a symphony of emotions and thoughts, where only good things would happen and good people would be.
It was a perfect world and much unlike ours.
YOU ARE READING
Love, Emma
Teen Fiction"E-Emma? It's okay y-you know. I-I'm used to i-i-it." "You shouldn't have to be, some people disgust me, the nerve of them." "I can't blame t-t-th-them, I m-mean l-l-l-look at m-me." He sounds so defeated, even though I can tell he's trying to hide...
