My Endless Journey With You•Hannie

Steady Grounds

Annie's POV
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     The next week comes along, and Julia and I are officially talking to each other regularly again. Clare and I are still the same we have ever been, because the drama hasn't affected her or Michael. Although there is one person who I have not made amends with yet, and that is Hayden.
     I get on the bus for school and I walk to find someone to sit with, then all of a sudden I hear a call from the back,
     "Annie! Annie! Over Here! Michael isn't here today! Over here!" Clare shouts as I quickly run over to her and drop my bags onto the seat. I look across the isle way to see who is sitting across the way from us and it just happens to be Hayden and Julia.
     "Hey Annie." Hayden says gloomily.
     "Hey..." I saw awkwardly. I notice him take out a small piece of paper and write something on it. Then out of nowhere he hands it to me. On the paper it reads:
     "We need to talk! Is it ok if we walk home together from the bus stop after school?" The paper asks. I look at him and nod, with a disappointing smile. Even though I'm not disappointed. The entire rest of the day I feel anxious for this "talk" that I'm awaiting. I still sit with other people at lunch.

After school, the last bell rings and I hop out of my seat so fast, that my chair nearly falls over. My last hour is Math and I'm in Pre-Algebra. I instantly run out of the classroom and run all the way to where the buses are parked outside. I find my bus that reads the letters OL (it doesn't stand for anything, they're just letters). I run up the steps and find an empty seat. About two minutes later Clare comes walking on with Hayden and Julia. Clare comes to sit by me, while Julia sits with Hayden behind us.

As we approach my street, I can feel butterflies tingle in my stomach. The bus comes to a halting stop. I get all my stuff and get off and so does Clare. Clare's house is right by the bus stop, whereas Hayden and ours are down the street, because we live across from each other. And Michael and Julia's street, is the stop before ours, because they live on a whole different street, same subdivision, but different street.
I get off the bus and start walking with Clare and Hayden. We suddenly arrive at Clare's house and she runs up her driveway to her front porch. She smiles at both of us and heads in. Now it is just Hayden and I.
"Hey, so we need to talk." He says.
"That's agreeable," I say as I roll my eyes.
"Let me explain myself," he says apologetically.
"Explain what?" I ask, even though I already knew.
"About the night of the fall dance," he answers.
"Ok..." I say as I start to shut up.
"That was a whole big misunderstanding, I do not like Savanna, we are definitely not a thing. You and Julia went to the bathroom and I came out looking for you guys to make sure you were ok. There was a huge line outside the girls bathroom and you guys weren't in it, so I figured that you were in the other bathroom down the hall. So I went down the hall by the vending machines and Savanna was standing there alone. I asked her if she had seen you guys anywhere and she said she saw you guys go down that hall..." he explains.
"Why would you trust her!" I blurt.
"Because we have lots of classes together and we sometimes talk, and she seems nice, but now I know she's aweful!" He pauses, and then continues. "Anyways... she then led me down the hall to where I thought we were going to find you and Julia, but then she stopped me and said that she lied and that she didn't actually see you guys, and I was furious. I yelled at her for a second about how confused I was and then all of a sudden she started to cry for no reason. I now realize that they were probably fake tears, but I didn't think about that in the moment!" He said with regret.
"It's ok, you didn't know. But I don't get it. How did she start kissing you!" I say with a tad bit of anger.
"You'll see, just listen. " He continues, "So anyways I don't see many girls cry, because I live in a house of boys, so I didn't really know how to react, so I went up to her and patted her back for comfort. She instantly stopped crying, and she said that she wanted to fix her makeup cuz it was all ruined from the tears, so she then took out her lipstick and smeared it all over her lips to where she probably had like ten layers of pink lipstick on." He says with a small giggle.
"She's gross!" I say as I laugh a little.
"I know! Anyways after she put on ten pounds of lipstick, she asked me how she looked and I said she looked fine, except she had a small smear of black mascara on her cheek, so I took my silver handkerchief out of my coat pocket and I wiped the mascara smear off her cheek, then all of a sudden she told me to stop and we made eye contact, and then... well... she pressed her lips on to mine. I was so shocked that I didn't know what to do, it was like my first kiss!" He said. My heart sank with sadness because he had forgotten about our kiss when we were four.
"Oh..." I say with a frown. He then continues,
"I suddenly pulled away and asked her what she was doing I was so confused she told me to let her kiss me but I said no. She obviously didn't care, because she grabbed my shoulders and kissed me again, and this time I was even more shocked and panicked even more that I completely forgot she was even kissing me. But I jerked myself away instantly and tried to wipe the lipstick off, but it just smeared more. Then she leaned in again and I just... well... I kinda just let her kiss me I guess. And... then you showed up, and I was in such shock and confusion that I didn't even know what to say." He says as he clears his throat. I look over at him, and he looks like he is about to cry. Then all of a sudden I feel my heart beating very fast as I suddenly wrap my arms around him in a hug. He hugs me back as we approach our houses.
"Well... uhhh... here we are, I have to go!" I say as I start heading up my driveway.
"Wait! Let's keep walking!" He yells. My heart flutters as I turn around. Our houses were the last two houses on the street, which leads to a dead end, and then the woods. We both walk right into the woods and continue talking.
"Oh and by the way, when I said Like my first kiss I said LIKE for a reason, because you were technically my first kiss, although we were four." He says as we both start to laugh. "Don't you remember!" He asks.
"Oh I remember!" I say as I laugh. We laugh for a little while until we approach a small bench. We used to sit on this bench all the time when we were younger. We used to have the best talks on this bench. The last time we sat on this bench was when we were eight years old, and we had a huge fight. That's why we never came back, because from then on we thought it was bad luck. But today seems good, maybe we can restore that good luck. Maybe we can restore US.