Serendipity

Chapter 2

It took me a solid thirty minutes to walk home, which became a painful reminder of why I had asked Jason to drive me home after school in the first place. 

As I neared the corner, I saw that Jason’s rusty, red truck was sitting in my driveway. My stomach shifted and I suddenly felt like throwing up. I shouldn’t have over-reacted like I did. I acted like a child, but all I wanted was for him to care. His music had kept him away all summer and now we were drifting even further apart. 

I sucked a huge breath in before entering my house. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

“Oh Jason, I’m sure she’ll only be another minute,” my mother giggled at him with her voice 2 octaves over her usual one. “I don’t know why in the world she wouldn’t want to ride home with a handsome man like you.”

Gross, I thought to myself. I was willing her to stop attempting to flirt with my best friend. It was embarrassing to have a mom who acted more my age than I did.

“No, she’s angry with me. She has every right to be too,” he replied. Regret laced his voice, but I ignored my sudden urge to give him a big squeezing hug. “I better get going. She won’t want me here. Pushing her isn’t in my best interest here.”

Time to make my “enterance.”

I opened the door and slammed it before walking into the kitchen.

“Hello,” I greeted them. I was back into my blankness. It was my goal to irritate both of them with it.

“Why hello darling,” my mom greeted back in her best, fake, mother-of-the-year voice. “I don’t want you walking home from school again, understood? Those neighborhoods are full of ghettos.” She stuck her nose up and walked out. She was a very snobby person, but I knew that wasn’t the real reason she didn’t want me to walk. She wanted me to ride with Jason.

I rolled my eyes and began to walk past Jason before he grabbed my arm and turned me around.

“Squirt.” His voice was so low, I almost couldn’t hear it.

“I have a project to do,” I announced very clearly. As I reminded him, I reminded myself. I turned around to look for the devil himself but he was no where in sight.

“Outside,” Jason answered the unasked question that was in my head. I nodded to him. I grabbed my camera out of my bag and excused myself outside where I found Nathan rolling around in the dirt with my dog, Sam. I laughed at the funny pictures I took of them before I heard the truck pull out and then get farther and farther away. I felt a guilty pull in my stomach, but I just ignored it.

I coughed so they’d know I was there and then laughed at the similar reaction that the two had. They both looked up at me and then tilted their head slightly to the right side. If I didn’t know better, they could’ve been twins. They even had the same midnight black hair.

“So, the project,” Nathan said as he brushed himself off. 

“Right,” I said once my laughter died down. “She said it had to do with misunderstood things or people. Any ideas?”

We went to go sit on my patio to think. We sat on the love seat that my grandmother had bought for my family, though it was really for me because I’d fallen in love with it at the store. It was black wood with cherry red cushions that your butt can just sink into. I laid my head back and placed it in his lap and let my legs hang off the side of the comfortable seating. His hands were mindlessly playing with my hair.

“I have an idea, I think,” he said. A smile was playing at his lips.

“Shoot,” I said looking up at him. His eyes shot down to look into mine and I felt a sudden jolt in my stomach. 

“Well, you,” he muttered.

“Me?” I questioned. “Me what?”

“You for the project. Misunderstood and all that,” he said simply. He shrugged as if it were the most obvious and reasonable thing in the world.

“You have a point that I’m misunderstood, I’ll admit,” I began. “But we also have to show who I really am at the end. It’s part of the assignment to show the real person or thing. And I don’t even know who I am, so doing me for the project can’t work.”

He looked over at me and squinted his eyes as if he was analyzing me.

“Guess we’ll just have to discover who you really are then.” When he said that, my heart jumped into my throat.

“Guess we will,” I replied slyly. I giggled to myself and then a flash went off.

I looked over to Nathan and saw him holding my camera in his hands. We’d have to photograph me everyday. No pressure to look good or anything. I groaned internally at my misfortune. 

“We’ll have to take pictures of you everyday of course,” he grinned at me. He’d read my mind, or rather the sheet of paper Ms. Xuom had given us, which was more shocking than him reading my mind, to be honest.

“I’ll agree to be our project if you  do one teensy tiny huge favor for me,” I bargained. He glanced at me skeptically. “Just, do what we did at the end of the school day, but in front of, um, Jason.” I hid my burning face in my hands but I peered between my fingers when I didn’t hear a burst of laughter or a rude comment. He looked amused and had a twinkle in his eye that signaled excitement in me.

“I have a plan.”

He explained the plan to me and I couldn’t have been happier with it. 

After he went home, I called Jason to set the plan in action.

“Delilah? Oh thank god. Are you still mad at me? I could always ask Ms. Xuom to switch partners. How was it today? I didn’t want to stay but your mother wanted me to and I didn’t want to be rude.” he babbled when he picked up.

“Jason, shut up. I’m still mad at you so I don’t want to talk for long. I just wanted to see if you could pick me up in the morning. I may be mad at you, but I’m angrier with your prick of a friend,” I explained.

“Yeah, I can ditch band practice tomorrow,” he said in a sense of relief. He was probably I wasn’t icing him out.

“I don’t expect much talking tomorrow either,” I stated bluntly.

“I didn’t think so kitten,” he sighed. He called me kitten because he thought I was sweet looking but I was innerly feisty and stubborn.

“Smart boy. Bye,” I said and snapped the phone shut before he could get a word in. I feel back on my bed and before I knew it, sleep overcame me.