My own reality

21

The football pitch is buzzing with so much life and energy which is nauseating for me. About five other schools have come over to play in the games. The bleachers are full of people talking and laughing and being all happy. Everybody has their faces painted red and white, the schools colours, and is wearing Number 1 fan gloves.
I, on the other hand, am wearing a yellow shirt and pink shorts. I did it to remind Tiffany about our first kiss. At the sides of the pitch she dances and cheers with the other cheerleaders as the footballs run into the pitch. I star at her and I feel a smile playing at my lips. She looks so beautiful.
I move to the first row of sits of the bleachers and occupy one. When all the cheering is done, and everyone is in position on the football field, the cheerleaders move to take their sits on the first row.
“Tiffany,” I call to her. She turns around and sighs.
“What,”
“I saved you a sit,”
She rolls her eyes and takes it anyway.
I stare at the football game that I’m not really watching. I stare at Ruffle on the far side of the pitch, calling for the ball and running wide, but all I think about is how to start a conversation with her.
“We failed the essay,” Tiffany mutters. “Because I did it all by myself,”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I was...”
“Jason,”
I look at her.  Her face is calm and neutral. “Yeah,”
“I owe you an apology,” she looks down and twiddles her thumbs. “I over reacted,”
I stare into her oak brown eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I should’ve seen this coming,” she says. “The cross twins, I should’ve seen that they were behind all of this. It all makes sense now,”
I frown. “I’m confused,”
“You heard about ‘Weirdo Special,’?”
I look away. “Yes,”
“They...We do this thing where we pick a nerd or weirdo or junior and...” she closes her eyes.
I see where this is going. “I wasn’t the first?”
That explains why Tasha and the bar tender recognized my situation.
“It’s always the same,” she says. “We manipulate this...person by taking them for a ride and paying for their makeovers to make them think we’re all friends. Then one of us sort of...seduces this person to erase all doubts. I mean they be all like ‘I just had sex with one of the hottest girls in school so that now makes me cool,’ then we take them to a party, specifically a club so that it’s easy to...you know...”
“Ditch them,” I finish for her. 
“We get them stoned and silently slip out.” Tiffany sighs. “Cooper came up with it and you are like the fifth person they have done it to,”
“They?” it sounds angrier than I mean it to.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I know it’s so bitchy and cruel. I never realized how much we were destroying people,”
I wait for the hot bubbling sensation to take over. Nothing happens. I’m supposed to be angry right? I want to be angry but I can’t seem able to. ‘How could you do this to people?’ is what I want to ask. But I simply stare at her stare at me.
“Please say something,” she mutters. “You are making it worse when you don’t,”
“I can’t be angry with you, Tiffany,” I say.
She smiles weakly. “Do you still want to kiss me?”
I nod.
“After everything I’ve done?”
“It’s the human flaw to fall in love,” I say. “No matter how horrible or mean or cruel the person is. When you’re in love, you’re in love,”
In that moment, I realise I’ve never told Tiffany that I love her. It didn’t occur to me that the strong attraction I had towards her was love. But I said it before I thought it and now I fear I’ve blown it all. But when Tiffany wraps her arms around my neck and locks her lips with mine, all my worries fade away.
I lean in and kiss her back, tracing and rubbing my hands around her back and thighs. But something is different, something is wrong. The pulsing energy I usually fill when I kiss her, (though I’ve kissed her once) isn’t as heart racing. I pull back and look into her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She sits back and sucks in a deep breath.
“There is something else I need to tell you,” she says. “I—”
The crowd suddenly erupts in gasps and exclamations. I snap back to the real world.
“What happened?” I ask the cheerleader besides me.
“Someone got hit,” she says.
I look at the pitch. Paramedics rush to the fallen player. I strain my neck to see who it is but the commentators save me the trouble.
“Looks like we have a man down from East shore high,” I hear the voice over the speakers. “Let’s hope Ruffle recovers fast enough to get back in the...wait, it looks like he has a concussion,”