Hush Baby, Hush

The Man With The Crucifix

The first thing I noticed as I struggled to stand and ignore him at the same time was a wooden fixture dangling from a silver chain around his neck. Dark wood and crudely carved the cross rested against his equally dark shirt, brown like rich soil. Obviously the ignoring part didn’t work out as well as I intended.

A tap to my elbow both saved and startled me, I turned my head to the right and held tightly onto the strap of my backpack. Shawna grinned wide and revealed the smallest gap between her two front teeth, the rest of her small and pearly whites aligned themselves perfectly, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

Beside me the boy/man shuffled papers and gathered notebooks. For the entire forty or so minutes he’d spent in class he had switched from taking abstract notes in one book to taking full blown notes in another. It was wrong of me to spy since I wasn’t supposed to know him but I was just so curious. And it was wrong of me then to continually ignore him as he stood right beside me.

I was just awkward and dramatic.

He hadn’t said anything to me throughout those forty minutes and for that I was thankful. Maybe he had forgotten that he’d seen me? Hopefully that look of recognition in his eyes was due to the fact that he’d seen another girl sporting the same big ass afro puff that I did?

Whatever it was I didn’t want to stay to find out. I just wasn’t right around guys, especially guys I’d made a fool of myself in front of. I was lucky with Austin….well maybe not so lucky. And then the guy before him I happened to trip over in the tenth grade.

Not that I want to date him or anything…

Thoughts like that forced me to come to the undeniable fact that I had a bad habit of lying to myself. As sad as it was there was something about his hazel eyes, long curly hair and bronze colored skin that made me want to linger. Even his scar made me want to stick around, but it hadn’t been that way when I’d first spoke to him.

Maybe because I was itching to run like hell.

To give credit where it’s dude I had to admit that despite his antics against society he was a good looking guy. And he smelled pretty damn good.

Chris all you smell is aftershave and soap…fuck wrong with you?

“Work …” I trailed and looked through her hoping that Hazel eye boy was waiting on me rather than just sorting through his backpack.

What was that tingly feeling? Was it like or was it rebound?

Rebound. You don’t know him.

I bit my lip and nodded, my conscious had a better way of sorting things out and I barely gave her credit. Yes, it’s a woman.

His shuffling continued and my better mind resumed. I reached forward and interlocked my left arm with Shawnas right arm and carried on with the conversation, “but there’s always saturday.”

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“Travis,” Ashly pushed away his peach brown arms with her light brown one, “Why don’t you go away?”

Crunching on an over munched mouth of salad greens and cucumbers I waited for his usal plea. The sandy haired boy with the plump red cheeks, brown eyes and skinny body plopped in the seat beside Ashley. She turned her head to the side, pressed a hand against her cheek to block his view and mouthed something to me and Shawna. Her pixie cut honey blonde hair gave her the look of a pretty boy, much to her dismay whenever we told her and when she threw up her hands at us not comprehending what she had whispered I shrugged. Shawna raised her hands palms up.