Mercury

11°C

I decide to go and look for Kayla today. Nowadays, the school has been much quieter than before, without Kayla’s voice ringing in the hallway.

I lean against Kayla’s locker, tapping my feet impatiently as I wait for her appearance.

The school bell has rung, which means that she could be coming any time from now. She’d probably visit her locker to dump her stuff, right?

“Hey,” Kayla says as she approaches me, and for a moment I don’t know what surprises me more, the fact that I can’t recognize her voice anymore, or the fact that I can’t recognize her at all. She looks like she just dropped from the gates of Heaven to the pits of hell. Well, it wasn’t really Heaven, but she had such a high and mighty presence.

I realise the two blonde girls who are usually sticking themselves to Kayla are not by her side today. I throw a glance at the gang of jocks and cheerleaders’ side, and I spot them within the group, with a new ‘God’ to worship. I guess they knew what happened to Kayla, and they ran before they could get involved.

I stand up straight. “Hey…” I say, “How’s life?” Now that Kayla’s not so against me anymore, I feel kind of weird. Never have I expected to have a normal friendly conversation with Kayla.

“Did you really mean that question? Because you know pretty well how my messy life has been,” she says. If there’s one thing that didn’t change about Kayla, it’s her ability to throw sarcastic and snide remarks.

“Well,” I start, “let me rephrase it then. How are you feeling?”

“Terrible? What else can I feel?” she replies.

I keep quiet for a while while she dumps her books into her locker. What would Sam do?

“Despite your very touching speech at the pub the other day,” she speaks, “I’m going to abort it. Sorry I can’t protect it.”

I shake my head. “It’s the wiser choice, I guess. Aborting it is better than losing it because you’re careless... I think.”

She nods slightly. “It’s a pity though, babies are cute.”

I shoot her a slight sad smile. “Well done, you did a great job protecting it and not collapsing,” I say and Kayla chuckles. I know what kind of chuckle that is. You do that when people praise you, but you yourself don’t think that you’re that good of a person.

I bring my shoulders up. “What’re you going to do now since school has ended?” I prompt. Maybe I’ll go somewhere with Kayla, and then we’ll talk more and hopefully I can find an area in which I can help her with.

“I don’t know, go home? There’s nothing much to do,” she says, shutting her locker and turning to look at me. Her eyes, although they don’t bear that much hatred anymore, never fails to send shivers down my spine.

“Alright, I’ll go with you then. We can do homework together and maybe watch a movie or two. It’s time us girls get together and have fun,” I say.

“Yeah, maybe. There really isn’t a time when we were together without Sam, huh?” she says.

I nod slowly. “As cliché as it sounds,” I say, “Sam is always with us. In here.” I point at my heart.

“That doesn’t change the fact that sometimes you’re disgustingly mushy,” she mumbles, and I laugh a bit. She looks at the ground for a while, hesitating whether to take up my offer and hang out together.

She looks up at me, and then behind me. Breaking into a small playful smile, she says, “I don’t think you can make it today. Looks like someone’s waiting for you.”