Lost & Insecure

Fourteen - If You Want Her...

Eddie leaned on the doorframe of Dana's room and lightly knocked on the wide open door. "What are you doing?" He asked after receiving no response from her. Dana shrugged, and Eddie walked over to her. Dana was sitting at her desk, blankly staring at the screen of her laptop, scrolling up and down through an empty word document.

"I'm just bored." Dana finally spoke up. She broke her gaze with the computer and glanced at Eddie who was squatting next to her.

"Bored?" Eddie raised an eyebrow at her. "Since when do you get bored?" Eddie smiled, somewhat mocking her. Dana just shrugged again and slightly shook her head. "Did you try math?"

Math was brutal for most people. Teenagers everywhere complained about it like it was a form of torture. Not Dana, though. Dana was a math nerd. It was always her best subject, and it was always something that just made sense to her. When the rest of the world went crazy, Dana had math. And if she was to ever get bored, Dana would do something math related. The activity usually consisted of math puzzles or extra homework problems from school.

Dana reached into her desk and tossed a Sudoku book to Eddie. He flipped through the pages, noticing that every puzzle had been solved. "That occupied me for a little over an hour." Dana pointed out.

"Okay well," Eddie sat the book on Dana's desk and stood up, "in case you were too consumed in your boredom to notice, the doorbell rang. It's for you."

Dana groaned, pushing herself out of her chair. "Doesn't anyone use a phone anymore? It's the twenty-first century - we're supposed to avoid as much contact with each other as possible. That's what the internet is for!" Eddie laughed at her as she disappeared around the corner.

Dana ran downstairs and stopped once she saw who was standing at the bottom of them. Dana sighed and sat down on the stairs. She groaned again and planted her face into hands. "I'm sorry. I completely forgot!" Dana groaned again at her own mistake and looked at the girl in front of her who was somehow still smiling.

"It's okay," Marissa's smile forced a small grin to appear on Dana's face; she couldn't help it.

"No, it's not." Dana pulled herself up and walked the rest of the way down the stairs to meet Marissa. "We were supposed to work on our project today. I'm sorry. I guess I'm just feeling a bit out of it lately."

"No need to apologize. I get it. We all have our good days and our bad days."

"Even you?" Dana's eyebrow furrowed. "You're always smiling, and in a good mood. How?"

Marissa shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I just don't have anything negative to worry about."

"I'm jealous," Dana admitted aloud.

Being bored was a rarity for Dana Thomas. Being 'out of it' was even rarer. Boredom with Dana was boredom with any other normal teenager: just an excuse. It wasn't that she had nothing to do, it was that nothing appealed to her. Dana wasn't bored. She was too busy letting her thoughts get to her to focus on anything else.

Until Marissa showed up.

Marissa was exactly what Dana needed. She was a distraction. A distraction is the best thing that can happen to the teenage excuse of boredom. It doesn't have to be permanent, and it doesn't have to even last that long. It just has to do its job and preoccupy the boredom until life can figure out how to get in the way and fight off all the boredom.

And that's exactly what Marissa did.

Marissa convinced Dana to hang out for the rest of the day. And along the way, somewhere between the zoo and go karting or maybe just before the bet on who could hit the most trees at the driving range, Marissa managed to distract Dana. It wasn't until after Dana had dropped Marissa off and was already on her way home when her boredom began to catch up with her again.