cigarette daydreams

/4

A weekend passed. It snowed, big, fat flakes that weighed a million tons and took years to shovel. That was how Karden spent his weekend. He also spent it wondering about Lydi, but since the two happened simultaneously, and the former was far more reasonable than the other, he preferred to think he only did one.

Lydi Stern was a puzzle. He understood that. He just didn't understand that he wanted to understand her.

It confused him, too.

So he shoveled. He got cold. He thawed indoors. And he went out and got cold again. If he hadn't been so preoccupied with thinking about not thinking about Lydi, he might have found some strange metaphor in that. Something deep, or meaningful.

But there was just the shovel. And Lydi. And the absence of Lydi.

"You don't even know her." Muttered words, rising in a cloud of steam in the air. "I don't care if she's new, or if she listens to good music, or if she's interesting - you don't know her, and you don't want to."

The pep talk didn't work.

Strange - they normally did.

Monday was cold too. By that time, Karden was so frozen and thawed and re-frozen that he felt he resembled a slushie that's been left on the sidewalk for an hour and then stuffed in a freezer in a belated attempt to salvage it. His cheeks burned as he walked into first period.

Lydi was there. He knew it without looking, since he knew she was in exactly seventy-five percent of his four classes, and English was one of them.

He didn't want to think how he'd memorized her schedule.

Today, instead of sitting third from the left and two seats back, he went all the way to the back row. She was sitting there, organizing her pens by color - she had a full rainbow, and then some.

"Is this seat taken, Lydi?"

"If you take it, it will be." She didn't look up.

"So it's not."

"It will be."

"By who?"

"You, I assume, but if you don't sit down soon, someone might steal it from you. I'm very in-demand, you know."

It took Karden a while to figure out she was joking. Slowly, he set down his things and pulled out his school-loaned copy of Pride and Prejudice. Lydi's was already laid out on her desk, and she was flipping through it absently.

Karden stared at her for a long moment, then looked up as someone entered the class. Amber Delaney. She sat in the very center of the room, because the loved to be the center of attention, and had never realized that it was just an expression.

Karden gave Lydi one last look, then he collected his things again and moved back up.

He sat next to Amber.

She told him about her new purse.

And, though Karden never saw her, Lydi watched him, and couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.

But people always disappoint each other.

So it's okay.