Strawberries & Cigarettes

Chapter Twenty-One

            Across the hall of the local high school, the two sneak glances at each other like nobody’s business. The whole situation is getting downright ridiculous, is what it is. They haven’t contacted each other for at least a week now and it’s been making them both miserable.  She looks the same as usual with her pale corn-silk hair obscuring half of her face and her haunted brown-green eyes staring down at her feet as she lingers by her locker. She was beautiful all the same, though, which confused Leighton deeply. He didn’t understand how such a person could exist. She did all the same, though. And for some reason Leighton was acting like a fool letting this prolonged thing that wasn’t-really-a-break-up-but-kind-of-was drag on any longer. Bracing his shoulders and taking a deep breath, he started to make his way across the hall to confront her and wondered along the way where all these emotions had come from. It was driving him insane and he wasn’t sure he could deal with it anymore.

            Just to his luck, the bell rang which draws Moet’s attention away from him and before Leighton can call out her name, she’s swallowed by the busy crowd of students cluttering the halls all trying to get to the right place at the right time. Sighing, he turns around and heads for his Calculus AP class that he didn’t really find necessary but went to anyways because at least there he knew all the answers. At least there everything made sense and he knew what to do.

            Sitting in her math class, Moet couldn’t stop thinking. The problem was, she wasn’t thinking about the murder as she was probably supposed to but she was thinking of the boy-genius standing across the hall with his messy brown hair and slate gray eyes. She knew he was about to walk over to her and talk to her but the bell rang, she freaked out, and decided to hurry to her next class even though she wanted to talk to him too. Maybe she was afraid of what he might have said. That they’d break it off for real. That he didn’t love her anymore. In her mind, she saw their relationship as a thin strand of a spider web quivering in the wind, hardly visible, but still there, struggling to stay whole.

            Quinn was the one that suggested that they should take a break from this whole crime-solving thing probably due to the fact that Moet had acquired a habit of moping around quietly and staring at the ground whenever they sat around trying to come up with suspects. That didn’t help much, she guessed.

            After class, she gets her things and looks around for Leighton one last time but can’t find him. Sighing softly to herself, she makes her way to the parking lot to meet up with Quinn at his car when she hears her name being called behind her.

            The first thing he does when the sixth period bell rings is he tries to look for Moet. Unable to find her amongst the after-school crowd, he walks towards the parking lot to see if he can find her there. Looks like today is his day because the moment he’s out of the school’s front double doors, he sees a slender figure in the distance with long, pale hair that he would recognize anywhere.

            “Moet!” He cups his hands around his mouth and calls out. Hurrying towards her, he sees the figure stop and look back.

            His eyes flicker to the dark figure of Quinn near the car, and then back to Moet.

            “We need to talk.”

            She nods and tells Quinn she’ll be a minute and the two walk towards this semi-private area near the edge of the parking lot with hardly any students hanging around the area.

            Before Leighton can say anything, Moet bursts out with an “I miss you,” from her lips before her cheeks stain with a red blush and she looks down at her feet again.