Spooky

Chapter 21

-Shadow's POV-

For the past two or so days, Scourge has been acting really weird. Aside from his awkward questioning on Saturday night—or, well, Sunday morning by that point, but whatever—he's been saying and doing some just generally bizarre shit. Monday evening, he was gone—said he had "some people to go see," whatever that means, and he didn't return until well past curfew. When he did, he reeked of smoke, but seemed weirdly excited about something. Wouldn't tell me what, just said he was in a good mood, but clearly whatever happened got him really wound up, and it took forever for him to fall asleep. I vaguely heard him tossing and turning for quite a long while... Then, on Tuesday, we had an extremely weird conversation at lunch. Steel was still taking a test, and Rouge had left to go to the bathroom, when Scourge just sort of abruptly started asking me questions about, as he put it, "goth stuff." It was all fairly normal, if a bit silly, until he randomly stated, "I'd...like to date a goth."

A bit taken aback, I'd blinked at him for a few seconds. Why would he tell me that? I had asked myself before shaking it off and saying, "Well, uh, I know some goth girls from different schools, maybe I could introduce you?" It was only a half-lie—I've met some people outside of school, usually at Hot Topic, but I've only kept in touch with a couple of them, and I don't think they have anything in common with him, anyways.

To my surprise, though, he just coughed a little, scratched his nose, and shrugged. "Nah, nah, that's—it's fine," he laughed shortly, shifting position slightly. Afterwards he had quickly changed the subject, just moving right along, and by the time our group was fully assembled he was pretending like it never happened.

I've honestly been thinking about it ever since. Why would he say he wants to "date a goth," but immediately shoot down my suggestion to introduce him to my goth friends—er, acquaintances? I'm the only 'goth' he knows, so how else would he expect to meet other goths if not through me? He could go to a Hot Topic or something by himself to try and meet people, but the mere image of him standing among the dark band t-shirts and random edgy merchandise makes me want to laugh. He would be so lost and out of place—not to mention that, again, he wouldn't have anything in common with them, really. In any case, it was a weird thing to say, I think. I don't really know if it's some typical male-bonding thing to have such bizarre conversations. Maybe I should ask Rouge later or something, I dunno. I've never had a conversation so weird with Silver, so I guess maybe this is another Scourge-only oddity. Rouge is a lot better in social situations than I am, so maybe she'll know if this is a normal thing or not.

"Uh, hellooo," a voice interrupts my thoughts, and I snap back to attention. Rouge and I are sitting at our Chemistry class's lab tables, supposed to be doing something with some chemicals, but the two of us haven't really done anything all class, we've just been talking.

"Sorry," I blink, coming to. "What was that? I spaced out."

My best friend shakes her head, amused. "I said, why d'you think he'd say something so weird?"

"I dunno," I say, scratching my chin. "He's been all over the place... He's always been all over the place. It's so weird to think that, two months ago, we were practically fighting." My mind flits back to the memory of walking out of the art room, where Scourge shoved me to the damn ground in anger. It still kinda pisses me off to think about it, but it's almost like after the day we ditched school he got a lot less rough around the edges. I think once he realized I'm not afraid of a little trouble, he started to respect me a bit more, or something like that. Something certainly changed then, snowballing into a bizarre friendship, and now I have no idea where it's going. I really kinda hate this crush I have, particularly given the way we were at the start, but I think both of us regret how this began. I mean, he did once say we got off on the wrong foot—I think he genuinely wanted to change things. And he did. And now we're friends. And I somewhat can't believe this is my life now, but here we are.