2018 Writing Scrapbook

Truthful Rumors

She could remember the first time that she noticed him. That she really, truly noticed him. It was not that he was beautiful. His hair was ruffled and his eyes were too large, too cold. His body was lanky and unnaturally skinny, his face in a perpetual frown. But he had entranced her. And she had entranced him. He walked down the hall glancing at her, and her back at him.

Perhaps he was looking at her because he had heard of her history. Of how she was a good girl turned bad. Light turned to dark. Vignettes of gossip woven into epic tales. Or perhaps he was looking at her for the same reason that she was looking at him.

She knew his name, and yet she didn't know his name. Words, masculinity, they had been floating around her head. She knew of Brendon Thauner. She'd heard of how he was a flirt, how her good friend Lina had loved him so dearly before they all met. How he had never returned her affections.

But when she saw him that day, when she couldn't take her eyes away, he had no name. He was ambiguity. He was nothing but raw emotion within her. It was like one of those first startling moments when you were walking half-asleep until you hit your foot on something and are woken from your dreams.

She acted as though she had paid him no attention. He was just a passerby in the halls. There were more pressing matters at hand. It was a fundraiser that they were attending, after all. Her eyes flickered to him whenever she got the chance, and his eyes flickered to her until they didn't. And she realized that she had been the only one feeling what she had that day.

Life went on, of course. There were other boys in her high school. There were other dreams to aspire to. She refrained from chasing them and tried to unsoil her name after what had happened, but this yielded few results. Her reputation would always get in her way.

There was one in particular that she turned to. He was her friend, and he teased her. She believed that she had met her intellectual match. He was handsome and understood her. They had a world in common. But as the semester went on, they grew apart. He became hostile, and she couldn't quench her feelings for him. She simply thought, "If only he would've seen me for who I really am."

But he only said to her, "We can never be together. Not after what you did. People like that don't change. They just go down the same road over and over again."

She believed him, and so that boy faded into oblivion. Her passion disappeared, and such emotions died. But in the snowy balms of winter as flakes drifted through the heavens, she still saw him. She knew not of his name. He was still a mystery to her, even as she walked down the halls with others- boys who were fond of her, friends she herself was fond of.

Until they met. She had been walking with a friend after school, when at once, he walked up to them. There was that connection in their eyes once more, whether it was real or fictitious, and his deep blue eyes met hers in a cross of light and darkness. She saw something- humor, and looked at his nametag. "Brendon Thauner," she whispered. Then, a perkiness appearing in her personality, she went on. "Brendon Thauner! I've heard your name, seen you in the halls, but I never put the two and two together!"

"Yeah," he smiled. "I've seen you too." They conversed for a bit, but he drifted off with her friend and went to a club. But she thought about him long and hard.

That very night, the first of winter break, she received a strange text from a friend, one trying to win Lina over. "Do you know anybody who would be willing to flirt with Brendon for me? I'm trying to get him away from Lina."

"Well... how about me?" she replied.

"You'd do that for me?"

"I guess. What's his number? I'll text him."

So she received his number, and she did text him. She remained anonymous, an unknown entity. "Who are you?" he asked.

"A freshman girl who thinks you're kind of cute."

"What's your name?"

"Not saying. You'll have to guess."

But alas, he guessed on the first try. "You're Marcy! He told me that you would be willing to date me!"

A plan that had failed.

"Listen, Marcy, I'm sure that you're nice and all, but the things that I've heard about you aren't the best..." he began. "I'll give you a fresh start, but if you want to be with me, I need to know the truth about what happened."

With hesitation, she started typing. And then sentences flowed. Paragraphs. A whole novel woven through texts of his sympathy and her therapy through her words to him. And suddenly it was no longer about him, and she was sobbing as she thought of what she had done. She ranted, cried, treated him as a social worker instead of a friend. She poured out her soul to him, and when she was done she shook and quivered beneath the blankets.

And he had one response: "I'm sorry, but we can never be together. Not after what you did."

And in her thoughts, she could finish that familiar line. "People like that never change. They only go down the same road again."