VALOR

Part 2

Exams ended and summer came and went, but when freshman year came around, I was excited to go to school for once, because I got to see the mysterious Valerie again.

On the meet-the-teacher day, my mom pulled up to Wolf Creek High school, and left me to get my schedule as she found a parking place. After I got my school and ID and schedule, I spotted you in the hallway, and tried to non-awkwardly end up in your line of sight. When you passed by me without noticing, I gave up and began to walk away. That was foolish, I thought. If you wanted to talk to her you should have asked like a normal person.

That, of course, was when I tripped on a step and crashed spectacularly into a set of lockers and landed face-first on the ground. You turned around at the noise.

"AJ! Is that you?"

"Unfortunately."

I could tell you were trying not to laugh. "Hey, man, I'll help you up." You helped pull me to my feet, and asked "So, how was summer?"

My mind flashed to the various clinic visits I'd been to and all of Katie's dance recitals I had been dragged to by my mother.

"Nothing much, how about you?"

You snickered a little as I realized too late that my answer didn't fit the question, but you brushed it off. "I spent the summer working on my watercolors and visiting museums. Tried to sell some of my work but didn't make very much."

"Oh, you're a painter?"

"Eeh, painting has never particularly been my thing, but I'm an artist, anyway. I do a little of everything. Hey, wanna trade schedules, see if we share any classes?"

I fished my schedule out of my pocket and unfolded it. You held it side-by-side with yours.

"Hey, it looks like we have English together right before B lunch. Unfortunately, the rest of the guys all have A lunch."

"Oh, no," I said. "We'll have to be alone together. The horror!"

She laughed and then glanced at someone behind me. "Hey, I gotta go. See you in English?"

"Yeah, see you there."

I later found out that that someone was your boyfriend, Gabe. He was your type, too-- he was also an artist. I saw him drag you over to the Drama department's table, and he convinced you to sign up. I sighed, knowing you would never pick me over him.

We quickly found out that English was pathetically easy (after all, if I had a passing grade it must have been), and spent most of the class periods just talking about stuff as we mindlessly copied down vocabulary words we already knew. It started off discussing the latest episodes of Epic Rap Battles of History or Thug Notes, or whatever we'd done with the rest of the guys the previous weekend, but then the conversations turned more serious so I let you talk. 

"I just don't know why they're still married. My dad's a fucking asshole."

"In what way?"

"He's a narcissist. I remember once, when I was eight, he threw a chair at the dining room table because my mother had made him a home-cooked meal."

"What?"

"I know. He'd thought we were going to eat without him since he was working, but then he came home to a full table of food with an already full stomach, and, understandably, my mom was annoyed at him. I was too stupid to know what was going on and I begged my dad to take me to Burger King. At some point, things escalated, and he tossed the chair. He broke most of our china and put a good dent in the table. But what I remember from that night was getting Burger King, and then sitting there and eating chicken nuggets in a parking lot while my dad fumed about how horrible my mom was. I basically ignored him and played with the dancing dog that came with the meal. But he refused to acknowledge that anything was his fault. It was her who should have communicated, and how dare she be annoyed at him for something that wasn't his fault.