Flowers Grow Here

CHAPTER 1

    Honestly, in my eyes, talking to people about feelings is a real pain in the ass.
    I don't mean the motherly, "Oh, how are you feeling today," kinds of feelings. I mean the kind of feelings that require in-depth explanations and long words that describe a specific emotion. The kind of feelings that involve telling someone you trust about them. Those kinds of feelings.
    Talking about feelings is worthless.
It's not necessarily a bad thing to talk about them, it's just annoying. And I know, talking and opening up about my inner monologue is supposed to be healthy, or whatever, but that doesn't mean that I can. It's sort of hard to talk about personal things like that without getting the stink-eye from people eavesdropping on the conversation, or worrying about whether you've said too much and ended up hurting someone with your own deep, dark view of the world. Which is essentially the reason why I abstain from it.
    But some people... Some people don't exactly know how to turn their mouth off. And Sabrina-Rose Carter is one of those people.
    "...so, I told Harry that I loved him, and you know what he said to me? He said, 'Sabrina, what in the hell are you talkin' about? We've only been going out for two months!' Can you believe that? So he said, 'I'm not ready to be in that kind of relationship with someone like you,' and he just left me standing there in the Dunkin' Donuts parking lot! How was I supposed to handle that, Luis? I mean..."
    I stared at my sandwich and my Diet Coke as she rambled. I've forgotten how long I've been sitting here in the already loud lunch hall, listening to her high-pitched voice wail into my ear about her relationship troubles. I had absolutely no idea how to help her or console her because that's not exactly my cup of tea, so I just took a bite of my sandwich that was filled with tasteless meat from the school kitchen.
    After another eternity of tuning her out and staring at the gray table beneath me, I got shoved in the shoulder by a sharp-nailed hand. "Luis, are you even listening to me? I'm asking you for sympathy here and you're just staring off into space!"
    I blinked once and looked at her, staring blankly at her worried and angry expression, and noted how her lips sort of disappeared when she was frustrated. "Huh?"
    "Have you been listening to me?"
    "You were talking about Harry."
    She was quiet for a moment. "Guess you were. Can you believe he broke up with me?" She stared at me and stuck her bottom lip out, in almost a mock pout, and I sighed softly before shaking my head. "No, no. I can't believe it."
    She groaned and threw herself onto my side, looping her thin arms around my chest and putting her head on my shoulder while I took a sip of my Coke. "Oh, Luis, you're so good  at making me feel better."
    "Harry just walked in, didn't he?"
    "Shh! But yeah, so shut up and play along."
    I glanced at her before just continuing to sip my drink. Upon glancing around the lunch hall, I caught a glimpse of Harry giving me a death stare; he was broad-shouldered and rather ugly, to say the least, considering the poor excuse of a beard, sideburns and black beady eyes that hurt to look at. I sighed and looked at Sabrina again. "I still don't understand what you saw in him."
    "He was nice to me! He got me nice things. He had money."
    "You only wanted him for his money?"
    "Well, not exactly. He was nice!"
    "He's ugly."
    "You're not a looker yourself, Luis."
    "Mhm. Thanks, Sabrina." I rolled my eyes and got up to toss the rest of the sandwich away while she huffed loudly and crossed her arms. "You're probably just jealous of him."
    I sat back down and squinted at her. "Oh, definitely not. I've seen how you eat, you're expensive. I don't get that kind of money from the florist." The corners of my lips turned up a little as I watched her gasp. "How dare you! I eat like a lady!"
    "You eat like a man who's been starving for three days."
    "Ugh, whatever." She put her elbow on the table and placed her chin in her palm, observing Harry from where he sat with the soccer kids. And my eyes ended up following her gaze absentmindedly.
    Those kids were loud and way bigger than I was. They were built up from exercising too much and drinking protein shakes made of eggs and kale, and for some of them, the diet worked. My eyes drifted over pale skin and brown, greasy hair until they landed on the lineman that always somehow caught my attention. Goddamned Leo Davies. He was in the middle of telling some sort of story, standing up and waving his hands sporadically as the kids at the table laughed around him.
    I sighed, and Sabrina nudged my ribs with her bony elbow. "What're you sighing for? You didn't get on the soccer team and you're sad about it?"
    "I tried out for soccer last summer, I knew I wasn't gonna get on the team. So no."
    "You look like you're lonely. I'm sitting right here, Luis, talk to me..." She drawled out the last word as she put her hands and chin on my shoulder and batted her eyes. I just shrugged her off my shoulder to make her get off of me, and she shot me a look before turning away to pick at her cold lunch.
    I stared at Leo without much of a second thought. I watched the way his mouth moved, watched the way he easily formed words and slammed his hand on the table at the climax of whatever story he was telling. I can't read lips, so it just looked like gibberish, but man, was that gibberish interesting.
    And then his eyes were on me. He looked at me with slight interest, a smile still on his face, and I held his gaze for a brief moment. He was looking at me. Leo Davies was looking at me.
    I constantly forget that people other than Sabrina could actually do that.
    He smirked in a sly, attractive sort of way that made him look like a fox. Leo had always been slick with his words and with his movements, but to be truthful, I never genuinely thought that he had any real reason to look at me other than to give a vague apology if he bumped into me in the hallway, or passed me on his bike on the way home.
    And then he winked at me.
    I immediately felt my face burn to a crisp before I managed to look away and at my almost empty can of soda.
    I felt like mush. Did that just happen? It had to be my imagination. My heart thudded so loud I thought it was audible. I cast a glance at Sabrina, who was giggling and waving lightly to the other table, and I realized what had happened. He had been looking at Sabrina. Everyone always looked at Sabrina, with good reason of course. She was pretty, with her pin-straight brown hair and clumpy highlights and bubblegum pink lip gloss that she always applied. It makes sense that people looked at her.
    It makes sense that no one looks at me like they look at Sabrina. Obviously.
    I got my limbs back into control and stopped feeling like a puddle of embarrassment as I got up to throw my Coke can out, and when I sat back down Sabrina was jabbing my side. "I think Leo winked at me! Did you see that? Or were you off in space again? He was looking at me!"
    That's when the shame rose within me, filling out my whole chest with a burning sensation unlike the one from just mere seconds ago. I was filled to the brim with an inky blackness that I felt so often nowadays, and I stared blankly at the side of Sabrina's face as she grinned hopefully at the table across from us.
    "I thought you loved Harry."
    "Well, things change. If Leo wants me, he can have me." She looked at me with this face that I couldn't quite understand. Her eyes glanced over my face, and when she looked into my eyes, I turned away from her. I didn't like that face on her, it almost looked sad. Sabrina was never upset; she was always loud and bubbly and excited about everything in her path.
    She turned away from me and dragged her bag up from the floor to fish for her lip gloss, and I sat quietly in my own small puddle of self-loathing until the period finished. Sabrina got up from the table and walked out without me, and I knew that I somehow had gotten her upset with me. Somehow in a matter of minutes I had managed to embarrass myself and end up inadvertently ticking my only friend off.
    I wandered through the hallways like a mouse avoiding the eyes of a hawk overhead, despite being able to see over many of the people walking past me. I consistently get bumped in the arms or stumble on an untied shoelace, and am reminded of where I am instead of zoning off like I normally do. I overhear someone make a jab at me, mentioning something about basketball, and I bite my tongue. I don't even like basketball.
~~~
    After lunch was sex ed., which never really made any sense, because learning about sex was not a topic to speak of right after eating cafeteria food. However, that's where they placed it in my schedule, and that's where I've been for the last semester. It isn't like it matters now, with just two weeks left in the school year.
    "All right," grumbled Mr. Baldwick, "y'all have a new assignment about abstinence."
    "Another one?" groaned a kid in the back of the class, whose voice I recognized instantly. Leo. "Why do we gotta do another stupid assignment about this? It's not like any of us are usin' it." This got other kids in the class to giggle or blush, and Mr. Baldwick just gave him a tired look.
    "Leo, I know that you've got a bad case of 'senior-itis', as everyone calls it, but so does everybody else, and that doesn't make you special."
    "Mr. Baldwick, dude, just cut us some slack, alright? No one cares about abstinence anymore."
    "Of course people care about abstinence."
    "No, they don't. The only people who care are religious nuts or people who are absolute losers."
    "Abstinence is safe."
    "So's a condom. What's your point?"
    I watched Mr. Baldwick's face scrunch up like it always does when he's frustrated. A thought rushed to my mind, and I didn't even realize I was talking. "Careful, Leo, you might make him so mad his combover will fly the other way."
    Leo turned and looked at me, and after a split second a smile grew on his face. "I think that'd be pretty funny to see." The class was snickering at this point, and Mr. Baldwick grabbed a ruler and hit it against the desk once, a sudden thwap ringing out through the room. The class went silent, and Mr. Baldwick grunted, "That's enough!"
    "Y'know, Mr. Baldy, some people can actually afford good wigs. I guess your combover makes you happier than a decent, high-quality toupe."
    "Alright, principal's office, now." Mr. Baldwick was almost visibly fuming, and Leo got up from his desk to saunter to the doorway through the throngs of snickering kids sitting in rows. Leo looked at me for a moment as he passed my row, and threw me a smile. I felt my ears heat up a little and I offered a slight smile. He nodded his head once at me, and I felt a sort of cool, mutual understanding between the two of us. We had come together to make a bad teacher furious, and I felt my chest swell a little. We were getting along, in our own little way. The door separating us had opened in one easy click.
    I had thought the euphoria of that moment would last, but then Mr. Baldwick cleared his throat and shot me a look. I startled upwards and folded my hands on the table. Mr. Baldwick sighed. "You're all such delinquents."
    The comment was aimed at me.
    I shrunk down in my seat a bit and pulled out a notebook when instructed, starting to blur out the voices of others around me. Mr. Baldwick was discussing the assignment, stating that we had to work with partners, and let kids get up and move to their friends or close acquaintances. No one moved towards me, which was completely understandable at this point since I didn't talk to anyone in class. Mr. Baldwick mumbled the names of each pair, and when he saw me sitting alone he stated loudly, "Can't you find someone to work with? I'm not allowing students to work alone."
    "Uh." I looked around for a moment. "Is anyone absent?"
    "Leo just left." Mr. Baldwick looked around at the new pairs of students before groaning. "You two are the only ones left. If either of you try to be a wise guy again, you both are getting detention."
    I felt my heart drop through the floor. I could almost see it flopping around on the ground like a fish out of water. "Leo and I? We're working together?"
    "That's what he means, dude." I turned my head to look at a kid in the back with floppy hair, leather jacket, and rings around his eyes. I forgot his name, but the shame rose nonetheless. Feeling my face burn brighter, the kid snickered. "What, are you gay for him or something?"
    I'd never heard that word be used against me before. It was never spoken of aloud, like the concept itself was unnerving and completely unheard of in our little corner of the universe. A chill ran up my spine as the other kids in the room laughed, and I slunk down further into my seat and pulled my collar over my mouth. I could almost feel the bile rise in my throat from the embarrassment and guilt that ran through me.
    I shouldn't be feeling ashamed. It was probably just a joke, but still... It irked me to even be considered to be gay. It wasn't me. Like my father says: I'm just relatively picky with my girls.
    I'm constantly questioned about Sabrina. I never saw her as more than a sister. She's been my only friend throughout these four years of high school, and she's tried hooking me up with several of her friends. None of them ever went well.
    I was shoved out of my personal emotion-hole by Leo coming back into the room with a yellow pass to hand to Mr. Baldwick. Mr. Baldwick hummed half heartedly as he took the pass, waving him off. "You're working with Luis for the project. Move a desk over."
    I sat up again and made eye contact with Leo for a second. My hand raised without my brain willing it to, and I ended up awkwardly waving at him before slamming my hand down on the desk and sucking in a breath through my teeth. Leo made a slight face, and looked to his friend group who had abandoned him before walking over to me with a dejected look in his eye. Despite this, he smiled at me, tugging over a desk after grabbing his backpack and sitting beside me. "Hey."
    "Hey."
    "So do you know what this project is?"
    "It's just Baldwick telling us to avoid sex until marriage."
    "Like that one scene from Mean Girls."
    "Uh." I knew what he was talking about, but was still floored by his knowledge. Leo immediately blushed and lifted a hand to wave it off. "I mean, I only know that movie 'cause my sisters make me watch it all the time. I'm the only brother, y'know? It's hard."
    "I..." I blushed alongside him, almost feeling his worry and catching it secondhand. "I've seen it too. Once. So I guess I know what you mean."
    "Yeah." Leo ran a hand through his hair before turning away to grab his laptop from his backpack. "Let's just work."
    I watched him for a moment before grabbing my own, opening it up. "Sure."
    I attempted to quell the fluttering in my chest. Maybe we weren't terribly different, me and him. Maybe a project about abstinence, of all things, would bring us closer.
    Closer as friends. Obviously.