Everyone Has a Past

Eleventh Grade

Everyone has a past. Even if you're ashamed of it, you still have one.
"Hey!" A familiar voice shouted down a overly crowded hallway. I practically dug my way through strangers and their overfilled backpacks.
"Excuse me," I said, trying to slide in between two groups of people.
"Um, yeah, excuse you. Who are you to even be looking at me right now?" I had bumped into the most popular girls at school. Alexis and her minions. She stood looking at me in utter disgust.
"Oh, hi. Sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"Shut it." Alexis said cutting me off mid-sentence, "Listen Christy, I don't ever want to see your ugly little face anywhere near my locker ever again. Understood? And I especially do not ever want anyone to see me talking to you. So back off. I'm letting you off easy, so take this as a warning."
"Okay, thanks. Sorry again." I was already starting to walk off when I noticed that she had called me Christy. "It's Shirley by the way!" I yelled, but I knew that she didn't care.
When I finally made it past the clutter of the other eleventh graders, I got to my new locker, although it was the same as last year. I could vaguely tell by the worn off 'you suck!' and the half peeled butterfly stickers that had been glued onto my locker by some random student. I honestly didn't mind either one. The stickers gave it a nice touch that no other boring blue locker had. I sometimes wish that they were all the way on still. I had named every one of them. Eight in total.
"Hey! I called you." I spun around to see a short mass of glasses and a baggy, burnt orange sweater.
"Whats up, Shirley?" said another voice coming from my right. Through a crowd of students I could see messy hair and a leather jacket.
"Apollo!" I almost shrieked at the sight of him. He'd been in Juvie almost all summer for bringing drugs on to school property, so I hadn't been able to see him. He had a goofy grin that spread across his face when he saw Colton slouching against his locker.
"Aw, hey little buddy," Apollo walked about three steps in order to screw up Colton's hair.
"Quit it, would ya?" Colton was laughing but was clearly irritated. He was sliding his fingers up and sideways through his dark brown hair when Apollo punched him lightly in the arm. "Ow! There was no reason for that to have happened."
"Oh come on, that didn't hurt," Apollo was laughing now, but Colton wasn't, "t'was but a love tap." He said with a little twirl of his arm and a curtsy. His face became scrunched and he tried not to laugh any harder than he already was.
"Now listen, I missed you, and stuff, but there's no reason for you to come back and act like a prick ."
"Just a prick? I'm disappointed in myself for not being more." Apollo's voice was extremely sarcastic, and his eyes were a swirling storm of excitement.
"Well, all you are for now is a prick. You know my pact."
"Holy mother of god! You two are ridiculous," I was trying extremely hard to hold back my smile.
As soon as I said this Apollo started to laugh his weird little air laugh, and Colton rubbed his arm with a chuckle.
"Hey, what happened to Delores?" Apollo asked pointing to a little blank spot on my locker door.
"Huh? Oh, I don't know," I said with a sigh, only then noticing that she was gone, "I guess the summer staff could only get her off." There were only seven butterflies on the now duller metal door.
"So that leaves Adelaide," Colton said pointing to the smallest of the stickers, a blue, purple, and light pink butterfly with short antennae, "Beatrice," this time pointing to a larger butterfly with yellow, orange and butterscotch coloured wings, "Dixie," He looked at me questioningly before pointing.
"This one," I said, quickly moving his finger to a cherry and garnet red butterfly, the largest of them all.
"Oh yeah. Then there's Jane," Apollo beat him to touching a small light blue, half torn butterfly, "Lorraine," his finger moved to a medium sized lilac coloured sticker.
"Of course there's Nora," Apollo said this time, taking his hand out of the jacket's pockets and placing one finger on the teal and seafoam green butterfly. Nora had always been Apollo's favourite, for reasons unknown. And probably reasons not needed to be known.
"And lastly," Colton said looking up at Apollo, "Agatha" they said in unison.
Agatha was the oldest. Not that she had been there the longest, just that Colton wanted her to be the longest living butterfly on earth. Instead of making it a reasonable number such as 13 months, he decided to make her 147 years old. Her birthday is on November 1th and he always brings cupcakes for us to celebrate with.
"Wow. Very impressive." I said with a smile.
"Want to go get some coffee or something?" Colton asked, "I mean, tomorrow's our first actual day of school so-"
"First day of school, huh? I do believe that we are all in eleventh grade. Not kindergarten." Apollo said, rubbing his eyes as he leaned against the locker beside mine.
"You know what I mean. Today isn't real school, it's basically just a day to get used to the school that hasn't changed in twenty years."
Apollo laughed and I slammed my locker shut.
"Okay, let's go." I grabbed Apollo's hand and pulled the six and a half foot giant through the large clammer of chatting kids. Colton was shoving his way through the crowd directly behind us, holding onto Apollo's jacket so that he wouldn't get left behind. We were ducking underneath couples holding hands and jumping over spilled backpacks and books. When we finally got to the back entrance of the school, Apollo and I had to duck behind a fake plant and wait for Colton. Several people passed us, but no sign of him.
"Hey!" Colton flailed his arms frantically from the other end of the hallway.
Of course we couldn't see any more that just his hands and a small section of his sweater. Apollo struggled to get up from the tight space between the plant and the sectioned off wall. When he finally did, he cooly walked through the rambling students without having to duck, jump, push, or shove. People may have been slightly terrified of him. I guess that didn't work out too well earlier because I was holding his hand and pulling him behind me.
"Hey, sorry." '
"Dang right, you should be. I was nearly trampled to death." Colton was half kidding but half being dead serious. He's strangely small for a sixteen-about-to-turn-seventeen year old kid. He doesn't usually complain about it unless it's in a circumstance like this.
"Listen, man," Apollo said with a chuckle, " You're a lot less intimidating when you can't even utter a curse word."
"Oh my god, stop. You know that I made that pact and I intend to keep it until our senior year." Colton and Apollo were walking back towards me and the plant. I jumped up and jokingly dusted off Colton's shoulders.
"That was a close one, huh?" I laughed but he scowled at me.
"Laugh all you want. I'm the only one that can actually drive, so do you want to do something or sit in this dump all day until I come to pick you up?" Colton was walking out the door pridefully swinging his sweater's oversized sleeves by his side as he walked. Apollo stared at me, dumbfounded. I shrugged and skipped out the door after Colton. I could hear Apollo running to catch up with us.
The sun was extremely bright and it was around eighty degrees. It was a lovely day to go to the woods, or the park, but my friends weren't really into that kind of thing, unless, for Apollo, it counted as a place to get high.
Colton's hair was blowing wildly when we reached his old Volkswagen Beetle. It's pretty beat up but I just think the old paint and the few dents give it character. Colton calls it Josephine, but I had started to call it Paul a while back. They're very different, so we had decided to negotiate and call it Paul when I'm around, and Josephine any other time. I opened up the passenger side door and crawled in. Apollo opened the back door and ducked to barely fit within the tiny car. He's six foot five, so it's pretty hilarious to watch him get into cars.
"Where to?" Colton slammed the driver's door and put his keys in the ignition.
"Why not stop by the farmer's market?" I asked excitingly. "They have a deal on strawberries, and they shouldn't be very busy today. Plus I'm not really in the mood for coffee."
Apollo leaned forward awkwardly and propped his elbows up on both front seats, "Anywhere that will get me out of this ant car," He said with a smug smile.
"Farmer's market it is." Colton tugged on his seat belt and buckled it as he was pulling out of his designated student council parking spot.
The roads were unbelievably full, but there wasn't much delay. People were driving like maniacs, so everything was moving pretty fast around us.
"Oh look," Apollo said pointing out Colton's window, "It's Derin and his gay wad of a girlfriend."
"Move your arm!" Colton said, swatting at Apollo's hand and swerving a little, "Why do neither one of you have your seatbelts on?" He had both hands on the wheel, clearly tense.
"They don't do anything. Plus, I trust that you can drive well enough not to kill us." Apollo hunched back into the back seat and propped his feet up on the console.
"Would you move your feet, please and thank you?" Colton's shoulders raised and he took a deep breath.
"Calm down, Colton," I said, repositioning my legs into indian style, "And get your feet off the console, Apollo! You're dirtying up Paul!"
"I thought it was Josephine," Apollo said questioningly, moving his feet.
"Well, it was." Colton said as he started to relax, "But Shirley calls her Paul."
"Hm, I missed a lot didn't I?"
"Yeah you did!" I said, remembering all that happened over the summer. My thought was interrupted by a loud splat against Colton's window.
"Holy shiz!" Colton screamed, swerved, and almost ran off the road. Through the back left window Apollo and I could see Derin, Kensly (his "gay wad" girlfriend), Alexis, and her boyfriend Curtis.
"What's up losers?" Curtis shouted, hanging halfway out the front window. They started to speed off when Alexis poked her head out the back window and flipped us off with both hands. Curtis threw an egg but missed, spilling unborn baby chickens all over the road. Only then did I realize that there was an unborn animal splattered on Paul.
"Pull over!" I screamed and yanked on Colton's sleeve.
"Okay! Okay! Calm down!" Colton said frantically. I practically hit the ground running when he was pulling over on the side of the road. I ran around the back of the car and stood beside passing cars. I scooped off the little bit of egg that was still on the window and dug a little hole with my sandel. When the window was mostly clean, my hand was half full of yellow goo. The hole was big enough to fit all of it, although it was rather small. Apollo knocked on the window and mouthed "What are you doing?" I held up my hand and pointed to the ground with my not egg-filled hand. Apollo shrugged and slouched back in his seat. I crouched down and let the baby slide out of my hand and into the small crater.
"I'm sorry that you never got to meet your mother," I sighed as a wave of sadness rushed over me, "Neither did I. So I guess we're kind of alike. I bet you think that Curtis is a jerk too, huh? He's the one that threw you and got you into this mess. I really don't like him or his friends," The cars around me started to slow down and I decided I better go back to Paul. "Well, it was nice getting to know you," I scooped a little bit of dirt into the egg filled hole, patted it to secure the soil, and started to walk off.
"Okay," I said with a fake smile, "let's go."
"Are you okay?" Colton asked, "Do you still want to go to the farmer's market?"
"The farmer's market! I forgot!" I had genuinely forgot that we were even going anywhere. "Let's go! What are you doing? The strawberries might all be gone!" I was actually concerned that there might not be any strawberries left.
Colton turned his keys and waited to pull back onto the street. When he did, Apollo reached for the radio to turn on some music and, surprisingly, Colton let him. Music blasted through the old speakers as we rolled all the windows down. The sun was high in the sky, but leaning farther to the west than the east. The trees rolled along, throwing out reds, oranges, greens, and browns. Apollo was hunched in the back but still tapped along to the beat of pop-rock. Colton was wheel drumming and I was singing the whole time. My brain had almost drowned out the thought of the chick until we reached the farmer's market. My long blond hair was a tangled mess and my legs were halfway asleep. The sun was about seven feet off the ground from where I was sitting.
Colton parked in a little gravel spot facing away from the sun.
"That big ball of gas sure is bright," Apollo said, squinting and struggling to get out of the car. "And 'Paul' has gotten smaller." He added, making air quotes. I stood there laughing until he stumbled out of the car. Colton looked at the ground and laughed, his hands shoved in his pockets. We walked together in an awkward line most of the way to the large garage doors. Apollo stopped a few steps before we reached the door.
"What's wrong?" I asked, walking backwards to stand next to him. He was looking at the sky, now a swirl of colours. The cumulus clouds made it the perfect picture, with their tops painted a blood red and their bottoms a beautiful orange. The trees had become black within the light of the sunset. The market was on top of a big hill, so it felt like you were looking over the whole world, the lights on buildings just small lanterns inside of a black abyss. The sky itself was a storm of reds and oranges and yellows.
"It reminds me of an ember," Apollo said, shattering the silence.
"Hm," I made a noise and pushed my shoulders upward. My upper body was getting cold because all I was wearing was a cutoff tank top made from a reddish-purple material with bright yellow sunflowers, painted on by my grandmother.
Apollo stretched one arm out and over my shoulders. Colton was leaning in one of the huge doors, staring at us quietly.
"So you actually missed me, huh?" Apollo looked down at me and cocked an eyebrow.
"Yeah," I said with a smile, "just a little bit." He held up his fingers and made a small space between them. His brown eyes looked at the sky and then back at me.
"Come on!" Colton yelled from the door, "If you want any blueberries we need to hurry up!"
I took Apollo's arm and walked to Colton.
"It was strawberries, actually." I smiled at him and he pulled his sweater sleeves farther over his hands.
The market smelled strongly of stale cologne and fresh vegetables. Colton scrunched his nose and pushed up his glasses when we walked past the jalapenos and peppers. His glasses had gone farther up his face than wanted, so instead of pushing them down, he took them off, cleaned them, and then put them back on.
"Hi, Ms. Ross!"
"Oh, dear! Who's this you've got with you?" Ms. Ross has a very Mrs. Doubtfire-ish voice, and it's the cutest thing in the world.
"This is Apollo!" I said, yanking Apollo by the sleeve and pulling him away from a bucket of spices.
"Hi-i-i..." Apollo said with a fake chuckle and a death glare into my very soul, although he was still smiling.
"Oh my! Colton, dear, I've got you a little something here in the back!" The little woman's extremely wrinkled face bunched up and showed a denture filled smile. She wobbled her way through stacks of empty and full crates. Her long, white dress covered her from the upper neck all the way past the toes. When we finally got to her little office, her cat, Winkers, jumped down from a small windowsill and landed on her desk, scattering newspapers and pens all over the floor. I greeted him immediately and Apollo stood awkwardly in the doorway of the room. Winkers' fur was a mix of white and brown and he had a funny little patch that made him look like he had a moustache.
"Hey, he kinda looks like Hitler." Apollo said, one corner of his mouth forming a grin. No one said anything so he pointed at Winkers, raised his eyebrows, and nodded.
"You stupid boy!" She shouted and threw a shoe at Apollo.
"Whoa! Chill!" He ducked and then held his hands to his chest. Ms. Ross looked at Apollo with a cold stare and held it there for about fifteen seconds until Colton screamed. Her other cat, Vincent, jumped down from a large house plant and landed on Colton's shoulders, which resulted in him yelling.
"Holocaust survivor," I shuffled over to Apollo and whispered while Ms. Ross started digging in a box behind her desk. "She doesn't even like it when anyone mentions Germany. Still salty from the war I guess." Colton was sneezing madly as he tried to dust the cat hair from his sweater.
"Here you go, dear," Ms. Ross' voice was back to normal, but her eyes seemed upset. Her feet dragged through an ocean of papers that seemed to flood her office. Boxes were piled up behind her messy desk, one of which she had dug through and handed to Colton. She pulled out a burgundy oversized sweater vest and an army green sweater.
"These are for you."
Apollo jokingly rolled his eyes and I lightly punched him in the arm. Mrs Ross stared coldly at him when he laughed almost silently. Colton poked his hands out of his sleeves and delicately grabbed the neatly folded sweaters.
"Thanks, Mrs. Ross." Colton was smiling humbly. She knits sweaters in her free time, which is a lot of the time, and gives them all to Colton. Mrs. Ross's little window had turned dark blue and the clouds had become just a mixture of the evening sky.
"Well, I guess you all better get going." Mrs Ross smiled, and one-arm hugged Colton.
Apollo started walking out the small door that he'd been standing by, I followed and Colton walked out behind both of us with Mrs. Ross following.
"I almost forgot!" I spun around quickly, throwing one of my arms in the air. Mrs. Ross looked at me with a puzzled expression. "Please tell me you still have some strawberries."
"Well, I'm sorry to say that they just about all sold out. Ol' Edwin and his grandbabies came and got a good load of them."
"Who's Edw-" Apollo attempted to ask who Edwin was, but Mrs. Ross cut him off.
"However, I do have some nice and fresh ones, ripe in my garden. " She smiled and led us all over to a large, cloth zip-up, partially seen through door.
Humid air rushed over me in a wave as Mrs. Ross unzipped the door. Apollo ducked into the greenhouse behind me and took off his leather jacket. He was wearing a dark red shirt underneath with the Dead Kennedys logo on it. Colton walked in with no maneuvering of his height. As we walked through the greenhouse tunnel, Apollo kicked a total of about nine plants, and knocked over at least three of them. Colton had pushed up his glasses a multitude of times, and Mrs. Ross just waddled through with no problem.
When we reached the end, Mrs. Ross unzipped another door, identical to the first, and a blast of cool air and darkness surrounded me.
Apollo stumbled and pulled out his phone for a flashlight, Colton swatted at an unseen swarm of insects, and Mrs. Ross waddled her way through high grass to reach a small field of strawberry plants. I gasped with delight and she just chuckled a little. Apollo knelt down to pick one but came to an abrupt stop as Mrs. Ross smacked him lightly on the hand and smiled.
"That one's not ripe yet."
Apollo turned around to look at me with an astonished look on his face.
"Wow" he mouthed, making very little sound which made it hard to figure out what he was saying.
I laughed just a little and then shivered, remembering just how cold I was. Apollo stood up and walked over to me. Mrs. Ross picked up a little wooden basket and started to pick strawberries.