Alone

Halloween, Froyo, and Poop

"Halloween! The sexiest holiday." Josh screams running down the hallway. Everyone has parties. Everyone has sex. But not me. We're the only people who don't have fun on Halloween. My house gets egged. I get egged. Once people put out their pumpkins it's and invitation for the jocks to throw eggs at us. Halloween is torture for us. By us I mean geeks.

I meet up at school with Nathan and Alex. "Why aren't you wearing hats?" Is the first thing Nathan says. "What" Alex responds. "On Halloween seniors rub hair removal cream on you head."

"That's a myth." We hear from behind us. "Sorry I wasn't eavesdropping I was just walking by and heard you." It's Noelle, "Never mind that literally the definition of eavesdropping so I guess yeah I was." She's talking to us. "How would you know?" Nathan questions her. "Because it didn't happen to me last year." This confuses all of us. She is a freshman this year. She must have stayed back a grade. But how come she's our age. "You stayed back a year!" Alex blurts out. "Sort of. It's complicated." Then she walks away. She leaves us all wondering. "Can you believe that Noelle talked to us?! She's popular." Alex says. "And you ruined it." I say. "How?" Alex asks me. "By making her feel bad. 'You stayed back a year!?" I say mocking him. "Whatever it's not like she likes us anyway." Nathan adds to the conversation.

•••

At the end of the day I'm tired and in a horrible mood. This is just like any other day. But all day I've been dreaming of going down to the mall and get frozen yogurt after school. Finally when school ends I take the bus to the mall and go to yogurt land. I love frozen yogurt. It is my one true love. I'm sitting by myself at a booth eating a bowl filled to the top with frozen chocolatey goodness when the ring of a doorbell goes off. It happens whenever someone walks into yogurt land. I cold breeze flows in as the door opens. I look to my side and see Noelle. Of course. I must look like such a dork. Then as luck would have it she slides across from me in my booth. "This seat taken?" She asks as I peer into her bowl. Strawberry. Disgusting. She has strawberry and mint flavored froyo with gummy worms on top. Does she have taste buds? "Hello?" She says trying to get my attention. "Oh yes hi. Um sit. Wait. Never mind." I say spazzing out. "Uh sorry" she heads towards the door. "No come back your can sit. " I yell. " Sorry I'm such a weirdo" I say to her and hope she'll join me. "We all are." She says back to me and comes over to my booth. I can't believe this is happening. I'm crapping my pants. I take a minute to mentally check if I craped my pants. I didn't in case you were wondering. As I am having a mental conversation I realize she had been talking. "You know what I mean " is all I hear. I begin get to nod my head. My teacher told me that if you nod your head you can be thinking of anything but the person who is talking will think you are listening. As I begin to understand what she's talking about I 'casually' bring up what happened this morning. "You know. In the hallway," I explain my apology. "Oh yeah it's totally cool. If you were wondering why I did 9th grade twice and I'm still the right age is because I was really smart in 7th grade so instead of going into 8th they had me skip a grade and put me in 9th a year early. I didn't do to well because I think wasn't ready emotionally or some shit like that. They had me do 9th grade again. We could have avoided this but my parents insisted that I was a genius and shit. Now shit is all I do. Which lip gloss bring out my friends eyes and how do I get to as many keggers before curfew"