Only Words Bleed

Not Judging the Cover of the Book

Violet's Pov:

The next day seemed to go on as normal. I get up, I walk to school, I listen to the teacher's monologuing for about three hours, then it was just me and my friends sitting at our usual lunch table amongst the chaos and clamor that was the cafeteria. Not my favorite place to be amongst the collections of people that were dispersed throughout the large room, but I was cool with my friends and our little group.

Nothing unusual going on. Just Brody and Ruby talking about their next baseball practice with Sophie commenting in every so often, Aasim quietly reading his book as he ignored the bickering of Mitch and Marlon who would keep daring each other to do dumb shit or other, then that left me as I quietly wrote down another exaggerated tale of one of my pictures. This time it was about some beautiful foreign lady who we ran into at the mall, now turned into a manipulative psycho who tried to kidnap one of my friends, thanks to my pencil and creative imagination.

Though now that I've really taken some time to think about it our table is a lot quieter than I remember it being. It's still loud with the constant supply of conversations taking place, but the lack of annoying jokes and off-key singing has really put a dent into the normal chaos that I'm used to. That's when I realize that we're missing a certain piano playing jokester at our table.

I must be losing it if it took me this long to misplace our theatrical comedian. Though I can't blame myself too much with the lack of sleep I received last night and pretty much every other night this week. Nothing I need to my friends to worry about. If I'm lucky no one will notice right away. I turned to the redhead next to me and tap her shoulder to get her attention.

Sophie turns to me with her naturally cheerful smile. "What's up, Vi?" She asked in her bubbly personality.

I gestured to the open seat next to me hoping to get the point across without having to speak, trying to show my concern for the lack of a person next to me. I know I saw Louis earlier and it wasn't like him to be late for our daily meet up at lunch, usually wanting to get in as much time as possible to play one of his stupid card games. Even if he can be annoying as hell to the point I want to shove pencils in my ears to drown out his nonstop talking, I really did care about him. He'd always been there for me when I needed him most.

Sophie seemed to pick up on what I was trying to ask. Having a little brother at home who also didn't talk much made it easier for her to understand my silent expressions more than the others. "Oh, Louis? He said he'd be a little late today. Apparently, he's bringing someone new with him that he wanted all of us to meet."

I gave her a confused look and jotted down a quick response. "New person?"

Sophie took a sip of her Starbucks iced coffee as she read what I wrote. "Yeah, I think she just transferred here or something. I think her dad actually got offered a job. So her family moved here from Georgia so he could teach history or something like that. You'll have to ask Louis about it. He knows more than me."

As if on cue, music man appears from the crowd of people around us. "What up my fellow Ericsinners?" He happily greets getting a groan out of almost everyone in our group. "Too much?"

Marlon shakes his head popping a chip in his mouth. "You gotta keep trying Lou."

Louis waves him off. "Fine, will work on it later, but right now I want to introduce you all to a new friend of mine. This here is Clementine." I watch him step aside as he gestures to what might be the prettiest girl I've ever seen.

She has short, dark brown curly hair, that sits under a worn-out baseball cap with the letter D on it, tan Carmel skin, and these honey gold eyes, like pools of liquid amber that I could absolutely get lost in. Hey, that was actually pretty good. I should write that one down. Then I realize I'm staring longer than I should be and quickly divert my gaze down to the notebook in front of me as a slight blush overtakes me, hoping no one caught it.