Can You Not?

Chapter 9

Buttons was doing very well. In fact, Buttons To Push was featured on the web comic emporium site for the first time since Norah uploaded the first page two years ago. She didn't know what to do with the excitement she was feeling. Her parents wouldn't understand, so she couldn't run downstairs and tell them. Instead she picked up her phone and sent the words 'I've been featured!' to at least three of her friends.

Jena responded immediately. "Holy shit! Really? Congrats, Doodle!"

She replied with a quick thank you.

Sierra sent her own congratulations not long after. "I knew you could do it!"

Ellis, as always, just had to take it to another level. Ten minutes after she sent him the text, he was knocking on her window. When she opened it, his head popped in, followed by the annoying noise of a party horn in his mouth. He was wearing a tiny party hat with polka dots on it and he held a sparkler in one hand. He didn't stop blowing the horn until the sparkler was in her hand and lit. She couldn't help but smile, even laugh. They hopped around the room until the sparkler was burnt out and he was out of breath.

She looked at him though her eyelashes. "It's actually not that big of a deal you know."

"I don't care," he said, throwing his hands in the air. "I'm happy for you. Your comic is a success."

Norah sat down on her bed. It only just hit her. When she checked her stats after finding out, her page views had already gone up by a thousand. People liked her story. They actually liked her story. Ellis fell down on the bed next to her, still with that stupid horn in his mouth. Sometimes it was very hard to believe that he was older than her. When it finally got too annoying for her, she pulled it out of his mouth and the noise was replaced by his laugh.

"Too much?' he asked through a grin.

"Too much."

She lied down next to him, both of them on their back. Her hands rested on her stomach. The heartbeat in her ears was steady but loud. When Ellis shifted next to her, it sped up and she hoped he couldn't hear it.

"Hey," he said. "Since I'm here, you wanna revise?"

"Not really, no."

"You wanna come over to my place and play Xbox?"

"Nah."

"Wanna make out?"

She erupted into laughter. "No!"

"Why not?" He asked it in a whiny voice.

"Because."

"Because is not an appropriate answer."

"Whatever. Get out of my house."

It was three weeks since Colleen had last spoken to any of her friends. Despite that being a bad thing, everyone just left her. It was the way she was when she got into a new relationship. She's devote every waking minute of every day to being with that person, to establish the relationship and considering who she was dating, it was kind of understandable. So when Norah's phone rang one night and the caller ID showed Colleen's face, she just knew something was up.

"Hey, Col," Norah answered. "What's up?"

For a few seconds, there was no response, but then Norah heard the sniveling. She could clearly make out the sounds of Colleen sobbing into a tissue to dampen the sound.

"Col, what happened?" Norah asked more adamantly, but quietly.

"He cheated," Colleen choked out. "He cheated on me with a girl in ninth grade. Ninth fucking grade!"