Dark & Light

~Chapter Two~

Chris's POV

***

Sure, I had met someone. Wait. Hold on. I hadn't met anyone.
Because I didn't even know her name.
That meant:
a) no online stalking, or rather what I like to call "researching;" there was no name or identifiable information to use to look her up. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a creepy stalker, I just will use online methods to learn more about a girl because I'm a nutty introvert who cant always even say hello when I see a pretty face.
B) With the way that girl seems to be, I just know she has a boyfriend. Happy, full of light-hearted-ness, and extrovertish, she just has to know and already have "someone." At the same time, I sensed more than knew she was hiding something deep within that she just wouldn't let anyone know about.
C) All I had done was not even the equivalent of meeting her. Encountering her was way more like it. So why was I making a big deal out of it? I guess it's that gut feeling you get...when youre sick of all those past probs. When you want to move on, and doing something special will help you get over a phase in your life. Or over your entire last life.
Cause that's all I wanna do.
Thinking even harder about it, though, I knew it just wasn't pure selfishness on my part like that. I longed for love and connections. At the same time, I turned them down every single time an opportunity presented itself.
That was me all the way anyhows.
I sighed, sipping the last of my caramel frappe later on the way as I walked towards the part of my life that daily spelled doom and despair as a permanent mark in it.

***

Somehow, I've really let myself go.
I stared down at the grades report handed before me scowling ingly by my merciless algebra teacher. Sure, I was a high school senior. I was also really bad at math. So bad that I was taking the same course for a second year because I got a glaring red you-know-what the first year. Under the same teacher enrolled in the same course, I was failing again. Except there'd be no more options. No more next year to re-try. I had to graduate this year, and with my Algebra class to complete, with a D or better. Obviously I wasn't wanting a D if I could help it, but just passing the course in my book would be a miracle.
But hey, that comes with being "troubled" right? Don't make assumptions from what I just said. But just because of my supposed "bad boy" looks, I'm thought to just be as much one as I look, so why not say I'm troubled anyway?
With my long hair, deep colored eyes, tall stature, pierced ear, and rebellious looking clothes, I guess I was the typical rebellious bad boy in appearance to say the least.

***

Just a week of thinking about that girl had passed, but it had felt like a very long time. I had been with her five minutes; I had thought about her since then for millions of minutes. She had made me almost happy when I was with her. It was so crazy.
Like for real Chris Walker?! You really have bubblegum for common sense inside your brain.
I had gone back for another one of those caramel frappes a few days ago. And of course to see if the girl with the beautifully bright eyes was there too.
No such luck. Crochety old cafe owner Christy was, and made me the same thing I had ordered last time, but it tasted bland somehow. Call me biased, but it did.
Now I just shrugged as I walked to the tiny school library available in our low-budget urban public school. Though we had a great amount of students who attended Jefferson High, there was just too much else needing to be done to the old school for the library to be expanded. It was literally the librarian's desk, some tables and chairs, and about ten bookshelves stuffed with books. It was cramped, tiny, and very cold. And I would have to be stuck there every day in math tutoring until I learned more of my Algebra and my grades went up in the class.
I pushed open the door and entered the cramped space that almost had me feeling claustrophobic as I walked towards the table and chair. Someone, apparently a very short woman, was my tutor, though her back was turned as she seemed to be looking through a backpack, shuffling through papers.
She turned around and began to greet me with a small smile, then stopped, a look of slight surprise on her face and her smile was then completely gone.
It was the frappe girl. Call me stupid, but that's all I could think of calling her.
But who cares because it was the girl I had met. The girl I had been thinking about ridiculously since last week when I ordered a cream-topped caramel frappe.
"Hey," I heard myself say. I stared at her. Her hair fell in waves, colored light brown, almost caramel, below her shoulders. Her eyes were sparkling and edged with matching eyeliner and mascara. She was wearing some sort of grey cardigan with worn skinny jeans and moccasin flats. But man, she was little. Maybe sitting behind a work counter had made her look taller, or the fact that she had worn her hair in a high bun with a headband.
As these thoughts ran quickly through my brain, I suddenly realized she was looking at me as I was looking at her.
"Are you, uh, my tutor?" I asked quickly.
"Are you Chris Walker?" She asked uncertainly.
"Yes, that's me."
"Then yes, I'm your tutor."
I could feel my eyes enlarge with surprise, but I tried to act normal. For real? Then a very discouraging through ran through my mind and I questioned it aloud before I could even think not to.
"How old are you?" Maybe she just looked like a teen. What if she was way older than I thought? I cringed both at the idea and how bold my question was, not to mention that it was probably impolite.
"Um, I'm seventeen." She hesitated, then asked me the same.
"I'm, uh, eighteen. Are you a high school junior?"
"Senior. I'm assuming you're a senior too?"
"Uh, yeah. A terrible math-student senior."
"We can fix that with tutoring." She quickly looked more confident of the situation as the awkward situation of the tutor being younger than the student was done away with.
"Why don't we sit down," she continued. I glided into a seat beside her, and looked at her as indifferently as I could.
She coughed. "My name is Paige. Nice to, uh, meet you. Again."
My heart skipped a beat. So she did remember me.
"Nice to meet ya. That's crazy, you were, um, at the coffee shop last week working, right?"
"Yeah, I was." She looked uncomfortable.
"Why don't we start figuring out specifically what you need help with here." For some reason, I thought she meant help with more than just Algebra.
"I don't need help."
"You don't have any problems?" Did she mean problems in math or elsewhere?
"No, I do have problems. I just know how to take care of them myself." The thought of her knowing about my personal problems was embarrassing, as was the fact that she would be tutoring me in basic first year high school algebra.
She looked at me closely, and seemed to understand how I felt saying those words.
"That's not a good thing, you know, shutting other's awareness off from your problems can never be good," she said, looking down at my textbook I had brought.
I shrugged silently. "They're manageable." Inside my conscience was yelling at me for speaking such a falsehood. Totally not manageable! the little voice inside prodded and corrected me.
"Problems are not manageable entirely on your own," she replied. "You need help of some kind no matter what you're experiencing."
"It really doesn't matter to me. No offense, but what would you know about this anyway?"
I could see the hurt from my words betrayed in her bright, lovely eyes. Immediately I was sorry. I know knew there was a chance that this seemingly smart girl was hiding something. That behind the smiles there was more than happiness within her. Or less than it.
"Sorry," I mumbled, shifting uneasily in my chair. "Just, you, uh, seem like you're perfectly happy," I lied.
"You just don't know," she said frowning, her lips now set firmly.
"Let's get to studying."
"Sure, yeah," I said, trying not to sound babyishly apologetic in my tone.
She looked at me, her eyebrows raised just in the slightest at me, with her eyes staring curiously underneath.
I sunk lower in my seat, slipped my beanie over my head more to hide my face as much as possible, and listened as attentively as I could to her now talking about algebraic concepts I had no understanding of. I couldn't comprehend half of what she was saying, but I kept my eyes as much as I could on the problems in the text we were reviewing and off her kind, gentle face and away from lovely voice that quite honestly had my heart beating horribly fast.
The same thought that was becoming a conviction ran again and again through my mind.
There's some thing about her.

But a warning just as much as the previous thought ran through too.
Don't you dare think anything further. Stop, just stop now. She's your math tutor. She could never relate to your problems and be your friend.

Chris, that ever persistent voice warned me.
She's a happy girl full of light.
While you...
...You're dark and problematic and stupid and troubled, Chris Walker.

***

Woo hoo! The first full length point of view from Chris, "Mr. Phone Obsessed." ;) How do you like Chris and his written point of view so far? What do you think makes him think what he does right now of himself? Is there anything Paige could be hiding behind her smiles and easiness that Chris suspects?
Let me know in the comments your thoughts, comments, questions, and suggested improvements for the story- I love hearing from you, and getting comments makes my day! :)

Xx,
Veronica