The Oblivious Oblivion

Chapter 2: Come To An End

Our town isn't big at all, consists of maybe three thousand people, and my class holds about two hundred and fifty students in it. So there's a good ten to fifteen kids in every class, but I don't see Clover until the third period. That sense of dread like you're standing at the edge of a cliff has lodged itself at the back of my throat and is giving in to no demands. I feel anxious throughout the first two classes, and I nearly choke as soon as she walks in. Holding her books tight to her chest, I hadn't noticed her outfit before but it just fits her so well. Although it's nearly the end of spring she still strides in as if she owns the room dressed in a cyan sweater tucked into her black shorts tied with a black belt over her black leggings. She wears the outfit and, if I'm being honest, it wears me.

"You don't have to drool," Baker says as he sees me staring, she's acting as if she doesn't notice it, looking away and sitting graciously on the other side of the science room. The two of us are already sitting at our lab table, he snaps his fingers and waves his hand in front of me. "Dude, are you even listening to me? What the hell man, Earth to Theodore?"

"What?" I finally say snapping out of the trance as someone walks in front of me. In this small town, we live in everyone knows everyone, rumors spread quickly, all that stupid small town shit. Baker and I met last year at the homecoming dance of freshmen year. I sat in the back of the gym room on my own trying to recover from my first panic attack, and he came over and sat with me. Didn't ask a question, didn't try to help, just sat there with me, and I needed that. Watching Clover out on the dance floor happy made me smile but seeing her in the locker room making out with another guy made my heart shatter into a billion pieces. Pieces that have only just begun to bring themselves together, and I am still in love with her. He knows it, knew it when he saw me walk in and see her, drop my cup and run out. He stood outside the bathroom door and waited for me, then stood on the gym floor as I tried to recover until finally walking over to the table to just sit with me. He's been there for me when she couldn't be. We're not as close as me and Clover, but we're still close.

He's of Puerto Rican descent and it shows, he walks like he knows it but not in a way like, "look at me". He walks in a way like, "back off, I can handle myself". Before him, I didn't even know there was a difference. He combs his hair back into his regular floof and smacks my hand with the comb as soon as I turn to look at her again, and I know I shouldn't I just do. Her long flowing hair fits her so perfectly, hangs right around her middle back. You know she loves it too, she loves to show herself off, but not in a provocative way. I choose my friends right.

After I finally look up at him, I ask, "What are you doing?" He sits there with this look in his face, the look I know all too well and answers so softly I nearly don't hear it at all over the blaring music.

"Being a friend." He doesn't even need to explain, I know perfectly well exactly what he meant. For a split, second anger flared in me, as I thought he was coming to talk to her, but he was coming to talk to me. Just as I was about to.

As I said before, word spreads quickly in towns like mine, and in schools of this size, it would spread like a lit cigarette in the dried grass of the New Mexican desert. Quickly.

As soon as I realized it, I never had a problem with Baker's homosexuality, or in particular his interest in me. I didn't feel the same back, and I feel bad for him every day, but we became friends, and that's what I'd want if she doesn't feel the same back. I look back over at her and he smacks me again. "You really fell for her?" He gives up and joins me as we stare not even hiding it, and he props his head up in his hand. I don't respond.

The bell rings and the teacher walks in and we both straighten up forwarding our attention to the teacher. Another forty minutes and two minutes of boring pain and suffering of "science" that I spend most of staring at her. And I can tell as she looks back in her peripheral that she enjoys it. I don't really know what to do with that.