Walking Sins (BoyxBoy)

Helicopter Mom

Sassie, Cassie or Cassandra^
-your pick

You never quite realise how intimidating silence can be until it's there. And there's nothing else, just silence. Plain old, boring, silence that seems to stretch on and on and on.
But what's worse than silence? Not knowing what to fill it with.

Not knowing if you should speak or stay quiet. If you should cough to break it - shatter it - or stay silent, so it doesn't shatter. In retrospect, I take back my first point. It's not the silence that's intimidating, it's the people around you that are intimidating.

And Mister Carron was very intimidating.

Not in the sense that he glared at everyone, but in the sense that he smiled with his eyes. Not because he spoke harshly, but because everything he said or did was meaningful or profound - even the shitty poem he wrote on the bathroom wall.

So him - the kind, nice, talkative, and apparently popular kid - being silent?

Terrifying.

Also taking into consideration the fact Ms. Chinnigan still hadn't returned, there wasn't really any reason for us to be quiet - which made my hands all the more clammy.

I cleared my throat, "So why are you here?"

He turned his head, looking at me from the desk to my right. "I already told you," He frowned, "I thought you might like the company."

I shook my head, "No, not that," I could feel a small smile playing at my lips. "How did you get here?"

"Oh," he blinked, "I told Mr. Raymos that I thought he looked like a chicken nugget." I bit back my laugh, a smile definitely on my face. I looked at him shaking my head.

"But people like chicken nuggets."

"Not if they looked deformed."

It turned out that my laughter was to be the sound that broke the looming silence. It was sharp and abrupt, unexpected to the both of us.

"That's a nice laugh."

I looked at him briefly, averting my gaze because I felt too pressured to keep it. If he realised that I had taken his compliment as innocent flirting, he didn't mention it, but that didn't mean I couldn't feel stupidly giddy about it.

I looked at the left side of his face, slightly past his jaw and onto his neck. "Well that's a nice freckle."

Mortificarion. Mortification at its highest level. It was one of those thing that you say and immediately want to start bashing your head into the nearest surface.

He gave me a side-glance, "Well that's certainly something I haven't heard before."

Despite my complete embarrassment, I was pleased to see that he still smiled.

It dawned upon me that the silence had returned, and honestly, I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. It meant that I wouldn't say anything too horribly stupid, but it meant that if I did speak, it would most probably be something horribly stupid.

I was pretty much torn between speaking and not speaking.

Luckily, Ms. Chinn returned and spared me the need to decide on my internal predicament.

She sat down quickly upon arrival, and even from my seat three desks away, I could hear her labored breathing. She crossed her arms over her stomach - a signature stature, I realised - and stared at us for around half a minute while she tried to get her lungs to respire.