The Outcast

Chapter 23: Dirty Mouths and First Dates

A/N: Happy/Late/Overrated/Commercialized/ Valentine’s Day!

Chapter 23: Dirty Mouths and First Dates

Nirvana Evans

Usually when you’re little and say a bad word, adults threaten to wash your mouth with soap. It’s normal to call people who curse or cuss a lot ‘dirty mouths’ and yet if you think about it that really is ironic because technically we all fall under that category. The human mouth is the filthiest part of the body, yes even dirtier than your butt. The mouth is home to billions of bacteria and if that didn’t shock you enough well I could also tell you that the number of bacteria in your mouth is similar to the number of people living on planet earth. I think if most people knew that they would have a hard time kissing others. They would think twice about swapping saliva with another person.  I know so many health and sanitary facts so then why the hell had I gone and let River kiss me? Why had I kissed him back? And even more critically why in the world did I feel the burning need to do it again?

The night that River had kissed me I actually couldn’t fall asleep. I’d spent the whole night analyzing my feelings for him instead of going away to dream land.

He was an amazing friend and he was always there for me when I needed him. We hadn’t known each other that long and yet I felt so connected to him, like we’d shared a past life together. He was also really good looking which appealed to the little shallow monster we all have inside us. And I couldn’t deny that the kiss we shared provoked strange feelings to erupt in my system.   

But the thing I most liked about River was that he always made me forget about all the bad things that were happening in my life, which seemed to be a lot lately. First I’d lost my best friend and found out she never really was my friend, then my locker had been vandalized and finally my entire diary had been published on every social network Tara could get her hands on. I mean assuming it was Tara which was the most obvious option since she was capable of that and more. I wondered what else she had in store for me? I shuddered at the possibilities.

At least you have River by your side to face her wrath; a little inner voice reminded me.

That’s right. River and I were officially dating now even though it was being kept a secret. I didn’t want to keep our new relationship on the down low but it was necessary if I wanted to keep my friendship with Will and avoid hurting his feelings. The good thing was that River was a very understanding person so he hadn’t gotten mad at me when I’d told him about Will.

It was Thursday today and I hadn’t returned to school ever since the diary incident. I wasn’t brave enough to show my face to the people who’d been teasing me throughout my entire high school life after they’d read my deepest and most private thoughts. The page from my diary that they had published on the school newspaper was just a small preview of what they’d spread all over every social network. River had told me it would be easier if I showed up to school instead of hiding away because the more I hid the worse the teasing would be whenever I did decide to come back. But I just couldn’t make myself go to that hell. I was a coward I admitted it and River probably was right but I wasn’t ready to go to school yet. Those people had bullied me before having almost no reason to and now that they did have a reason. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to walk those halls now. Utter hell.

I had lied to my mom and told her I had caught a bad cold and that I was too sick to attend school. I’d even convinced her I had a fever using the old heating-up-my-forehead-with-a-blow-dryer trick, which she’d fallen for. I also refrained from checking my phone because every time I did there was either ten new facebook notifications telling me how someone else had commented on a photo I was ‘tagged in’ which happened to be one the many countless pictures of my diary they had published. They’d even gone as far as to create a Nirvana ‘The Freak’ Evans profile page for god’s sake! Or there were countless texts from random people commenting on things from my diary or calling me names. The most popular one seemed to be ‘Outcast’. How these people had even gotten my number was beyond me.