lone star ✧

Chapter 5

Faraway

0:03 ──⊙──────── 5:24

↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺

Lucinda laughs as they video call for the first time. Raymond was surprised to find his phone flashing as he never gets notifications from anyone. He accepted the call eagerly, excited to see Lucinda's face even though he'd already seen her earlier that day.

She's sitting on her bed wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and Raymond thinks about how nice it is to see her like this so casually. Her arms wave around and her new brown hair bounces slightly as she tells her story about her new friends dying her hair at her home. It's really pretty actually, Raymond thinks. The light color matches her skin tone, and it settles nicely around her shoulders.

"Okay, so we bought the dye at the drugstore, right? We didn't even look at the before and after photos before we bought it. And then we got confused at why there's no difference when we did it on Emily," she says, looking enthusiastically at the camera. "But luckily, we didn't start on me yet, so we went back and bought a lighter color. Look how nice it turned out!" She gestured to her hair. "It's kind of bad because we accidentally got a lot of it in my sink and now the sink is patched with brown," she says, laughing.

"It's really nice," says Raymond, smiling and at ease. "Matches you a lot."

Raymond feels like he can do this forever. A call with just the two of them, talking about life like nothing else matters.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Turns out that Lucinda's new hair, along with her involvement in the cooking club, somehow gains her new friends. Popularity is strange like that. To me, it is the least thing these kids should be worrying about, but it seems like the most important thing for them.

Raymond can't even go anywhere alone with Lucinda without being intruded by someone. They walk down the hall now, half a dozen girls and boys flocking around Lucinda, and Raymond feels incredibly overwhelmed. It's a feeling he's accustomed to—the suffocating heaviness on his heart—and he runs to the nearest bathroom. Lucinda probably wouldn't care where he went anyway.

As he tried to take deep breaths, he thought about this new Lucinda he has to get used to. Jealousy washes over him. But he doesn't have the right to be jealous, right? Lucinda isn't his or anything.

He leaves the bathroom after a while, slips into the art room, and this time he draws a storm—gray clouds invading blue skies.

The yellow walls seem to lose their color a little bit.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"Don invited me to his party on Friday! You wanna come, Ray? It'll be super fun, it's at his house and everything. His house is so big too and there's a pool," Lucinda says as soon as he catches up to Raymond.

They're walking home from school and it's one of those rare days when none of her friends are around.

"No, I can't come. I have dinner with my family. Sorry," Raymond says, face hardening.

Lucinda stops him from walking so fast. "What's wrong, Raymond? I think you have something on your mind. You can tell me, you know."

"I don't. And you wouldn't care about what I say anyway. I'm not going to the party thing."

Lucinda furrows her brows as she looks worriedly at Raymond. "Of course I care! I always care about you. Is it about my new friends?"

Raymond turns away. "Well, not really, but I just—"