The Fan

Chapter 27

Aidyn's POV

As a child, I had extreme difficulty making new friends, most likely as a result of hanging out with boys my whole life. Not once did I make a friend with another girl before second grade, when I met my best friend of eight years, Sofia Hernandez. 

Unlike anyone else I knew, she introduced me to the world of women, with makeup, dresses, and "normal girl" music. We did activities that I would have never ordinarily done, like playing dress-up for hours on end, simply because I had never been taught that that was something that girls of my age did. 

My mother was raised with seven siblings in three different households, five of which were boys, so she never received the stereotypical girl experience either, and never understood that some considered it weird that my only friends were boys. 

Sofia and I got into less trouble when we were together, instead doing more ladylike activities that her Catholic Mexican mother had instilled in her. However, as time progressed, her mother began to relax a bit, letting Sofia do things that she wouldn't have when we were younger.

In third grade, I decided to introduce my friends, Sofia, and the small group of boys I always spent time with. Her mother relaxed further as her marriage got worse, and Sofia began to develop habits that I had learned from a young age due to spending more and more time around young boys.

Eventually as the years went on, we gained and lost friends, but no matter who came and went, three of us always stayed. Me, Sofia, and my best friend in the whole world since I was three years old. He would joke that we were more like boys than he was, due to our tomboyish ways.

We had forgone the girlish activities and chose to instead act out scenes from our favorite movies, getting dirty and wrestling, and overall tomboy behaviors. We went through a lot of things over those eight years, from my mom and stepdad's wedding, to Sofia's parent's divorce. No matter what happened, we always knew that we had each other, and life was easy. Until middle school, that is.

We all went to different middle schools, but we stayed in touch with the help of our parents. In sixth grade, we did whatever we could to keep talking, but it quickly became difficult. IN seventh grade, I went three months without contact with Sofia, and one and a half months without contacting him.

It was the longest we had ever been away from each other, and seeing each other after those long stretches of time was like meeting with people that I used to know, but could barely recognize. Everyone changes in middle school, and that was especially true for Sofia. She started thinking she was cool, and called people the N-word, but with b's instead of g's. It was hard for me to be around her, especially when she started vaping. 

He, however, changed a fractional amount. He was still the same person I had known all my life, still my best friend, and even when we didn't see each other for a long time, when we did come back together, it was like nothing had ever changed. 

Eventually Sofia cut all ties with her childhood around the end of seventh grade, when her mom was forced to move them both, as well as Sofia's brother, Sebastian, to Mexico in order to take care of her parents. However, this was not the only reason Sofia severed ties. She had grown tired of being a child, and thought that by vaping and smoking weed in the seventh grade made her older, or seem older, at least. I went to her going away party; He didn't. He wasn't invited; I was.

She tried to get me to vape, but I told her and all of her little friends that I had never met before that I had asthma, something she knew about, and that if I did that, my chance of having an asthma attack would double. She pulled out a small bag of weed and said, "Suit yourself" before walking out to the backyard, leaving me alone to go hang out with my parents, something I was grateful for.

The whole time I was there, I felt like I was suffocating, because I had never known such betrayal. To me, it felt as though she had left her old life behind to become some... someone else, and that person was not a good person. My parents made me stay the night, but by the time everyone decided to do shots, I was more than uncomfortable. 

But he and I? We became closer than ever, hanging out and bonding like we used to. High school was hard for me, because he skipped two grades ahead, a true math genius, and left me behind. We still hung out and did things together like we always had, but we no longer had classes together, and that took a toll on me.

When he graduated my sophomore year, I was over the moon for him, happy as could be because my best friend had just graduated high school, and I adored him for all of his accomplishments. 

And then he left.

"Ah, he's just a really close friend from my childhood." I said, biting into a buttered blueberry bagel. He nodded his head before jumping down.

"How close?" He asked, getting pretty close to me, himself.

"I mean, I've known him for the past fifteen years, so... how close do you think?" I replied, taking a sip from my coffee as I set my bagel down.

"Did you two ever... date?" He asked, causing my face to turn bright red in embarrassment. 

"Yeah, in like the fifth grade." I said cautiously, laughing a little to myself at the absurdity. "For like a few months. I think I broke up with him because he wasn't paying as much attention to me during recess." I giggled a bit.

His face darkened and he stepped slightly closer so that our chests were touching ever so slightly. "So would you say that you're exactly... needy?" Taehyung asked, looking down at me, his expression unreadable.

"Um, I have to go to school bye!" I said, leaning over to finish my coffee really quickly, before stuffing my face with the rest of my bagel so as to not have to answer any more questions. Dashing out of the kitchen, I ran into Tyler who was just now coming out of his room, looking incredibly sleepy but still ready to go. "C'mon, we've gotta get to school!" 

Grabbing him by the wrists, I ignored his cries for breakfast, offering to buy him something on the way instead. We got into my car and drove off, playing music loudly so as to keep my thoughts at bay.

~~~

??? POV

I was driving down the road, y'know, checking to make sure that nobody was trying to come up behind me in the windows. Can't have anyone pulling a Fast and Furious on me, no sirree. A car began to drive next to me, their music so loud I could hear it over the sound of the highway. 

"Small penis." I said, pointing over to the car. Frank looked up and chuckled. 

"You're so judge-y, Walter. Lay off him, would'ya? Let's just finish this job so I can get back home to the kids. You know, it's Trisha's birthday in two days, and I gotta be home or the missus will kill me." He smacked my arm once before taking a bit from his beef jerky. 

"Alright, alright." I pulled off the highway, taking the exit onto the freeway. A few paces down the light turned red and I braked, but not before the same car from earlier pulled into the next lane, passing us up before stopping at the light.

We pulled up next to it, and I finally got a chance to look at the driver. It was an old car, some classic rock song playing from its speakers loudly. I looked down and was met with the face of a girl, about eighteen or so. She looked over at me and winked before driving off at the now-green light.

"Well, you were right Walter. She doesn't have a penis at all." Frank said, laughing. 

Heyo!!! Sorry for the short chapter, but I wanted to get an update in today and I'm bored at school, so. Anyway, thanks for reading :)