breathe.

15

PAST

"So whatever happened to that girl you were kissing at the garage gig?" I asked him.

He chuckled lightly, scratching the back of his neck. Oh, the universal guy sign for uncomfortableness. "You mean, Scarlette?"

Ew, even her name sounds like a whore name. Scarlette.

My mind wandered off to his sex life. How experienced he was. Hell, I'm sure he experiences it at least once every week.

I shuddered at the thought. I'm crushing on a manwhore.

"Yeah, whatever happened to her? You guys dating now?" I asked impatiently. What? I need to know these things.

Oh, don't look at me like that, I'm one of his best friends and he is one of mine.

"Oh, no." He laughed. I internally melted at the sight.

His laugh meant smiling, and him smiling meant dimples. The way he looked now was much similar to that of a sex god.

God, I'm so freaking cringy.

I couldn't help but feel just a bit jealous. Why couldn't he see that I liked him? I swear if I was anymore obvious, I'd have held up a stupid pink sign saying I'm in love with Aiden Grey in huge sparkly letters.

"No, uh, I just walked up to talk to her. Seeing if she was okay about last week's break up." He said, shrugging it off. "Then she just kissed me."

I stared at him for a good moment. He looked out into the trees, picking up rocks and throwing them as far as he could.

"Anyways, what did you want to talk about?" He asked, squinting one eye as he aimed to throw another rock.

We sat on top of a huge boulder, surrounded by plenty trees and bushes.

The ground was soft but not moist. I heard the trees rustling as I looked down at my hands, watching them fidget.

I stared harshly at the ring that said FRIENDS in rainbow coloring.

I wanted to talk about us. About my feelings for him and how he'd never feel the same because of our social statuses.

It irritated me how school was like that. It divided us into separate classes, taking on what we wore and how we looked. Everything we did mattered. What we were interested in, mattered. And for that, we rank ourselves from lowest to highest.

I was on the low side. I was more like an outcast to myself because of how I dressed, how I acted. My interests never matched together. I mean, how are young going to like Metallica and play piano at the same time? How could you listen to one of Green Days songs and then immediately play a world class symphony from one of the highest and most classicall musicians afterwards?

People always looked at me different because of how mixed I was. How messed up my interests were.

I guess when you put it like that it doesn't make much sense. What I'm trying to say is that, the popular girls dress a certain way and act a certain way and therefore are immediately ranked at the top because of their standards. Jocks link Aiden are ranked higher as well because of the way they act. They goof around and make sexual jokes and their looks take a big part in the role. Whereas, we less good looking people aren't really paid attention to most of the time. What I can't seem to wrap my brain about is how Grace can be so beautifully perfect and still be friends with me.

And that's why Aiden will never like me back, because of where I stand in the social ranks. "I know I'm not the ideal girl that a guy like you would look for but I'm loyal and I'm respectful. You guys treat girls like they're toys yet somehow I seem to look past it. I know you'd never understand where I'm coming from and that's because you don't see it from my eyes. Yet, I get it. I totally get it. You'll never like me because of how many friends I don't have. You'll never look at me that way because of where I stand in the halls of Greendale High. And it's okay, I guess. I just needed to tell you how I see you as. But you don't need to say anything, I guess Scarlette beat me to it."