Her Pen-Pal

Chapter 2 - Hunter East

'It's 2am so you're probably asleep, but I hope tomorrow goes better. Remember you got this!'

That was the message from Zues-Man I had woken up to when logging into my laptop. I had only opened it to edit my schedule for the next week. But it's always a pleasant event to have a message from him to wake up to now and then. So I type a quick reply.

I throw on a light cardigan to cover-up and tie the old laces of my trusty pair of boots. They tap against the wooden floors of the kitchen as I head to the fridge for breakfast.

"Sleep well, honey?" My mother, Grace, asks as she pours herself a cup of coffee, "Want one?" she gestures to the steaming cup.

I kiss her on her rosy-cheek, "I'm good, and good morning too."

"I didn't see you after the beach gathering?" she brings up the events of last night with a slight hint of wanting to know more of what I did at the back-to-school party.

"Don't worry, I was in bed by 10. But it wasn't really my scene anyways."

She almost groans as if the news is disappointing instead of relieving as most parents should react. But my mother was once a student at the same school and she loves to constantly bring up the sort of antics and events she would get up to when she was, and I quote; 'Still youthful enough to party till dawn'.

But right now I need to save myself from that ten minute speech and get to school for early choir practice. So saying a quick goodbye and grabbing breakfast of honey on toast to go, I eat whilst biking my way to school.

This early is when the students of my scene surround me before the others got here to spike up my nerves and stress. Around these dedicated singers and studiers, I feel most at home. Mainly because they are too focused in what they are doing to even pay attention to my own tasks.

By the time the school bell rings to signify 5 minutes to get to class, I'm sitting at my desk, book at the ready with my always-with-me journal. I jot down daily tasks, then once finished I flip to the back and add the details of my dream last night.

I write in secret about Zues-Man, about my dream where he rescued me from evil sorcerers, the way I imagined it felt to be around him in person and how handsome I had been creating him to be ever since we started getting closer all those years ago.

And at the point where Maybelle enters the class and heads in the direction of the desk next to me, I close the journal and place it securely in the small front pocket of my bag. I send her a quick smile before returning my attention back to the Mathematics book.

But Maybelle was clearly not in a good mood. And somehow in the 5 minutes before the teacher should arrive, she manages to rant about her whole morning and unfortunate encounter with Hunter East.

"I should've shouted at him." Maybelle exclaims, huffing in anger, "if only I hadn't held my tongue."

"I'm sure that wouldn't have ended well."

She scoff, "He nearly hit me with a two-hundred kilogram worth of metal!"

She pulls back her blonde hair into a tighter ponytail and snaps the hair-tie back. It nearly tugs on her skin and her thin eyebrows. One would think that she'd have no more hair by the way she constantly rips at the roots and her scalp.

I open up a fresh checkered-blue page and draw my own outline on top of the pattern. At 14 years old I had developed and perfected the most sufficient and productive way of designing school-book pages for every class. it involves several highlighters, templates and sticky-notes, but it helps me keep calm when the tests start rolling in.

"At least I am very unlikely to see him again," Maybelle starts talking again, tapping her pen against the desk, "Plus he barely seems to remember anyone at this school anyways."

"It is peaceful without him here," I reply without taking my attention away from the page, the idea of wasting more time chit-chatting not exactly on my top-priority list.

"I know right!" she nearly proclaims too loudly for a classroom, "Whenever he appears, everything just goes bongo with his presence. It sounds silly but I swear that guy just carries around that vibe."

That vibe...

And just as if it's fate, the door swings open and smacks against the wall, the whole class now staring in shock at the sudden noise. Papers from the teacher's desk fly off onto the carpeted floor, loose posters on the wall flapping about in the sudden gust of wind. And Hunter East comes strolling in.

If motorbikes and leather had a living form.

He's no longer carrying his helmet, just a scruffy black bag and a worn out jacket with a broken zipper. Eyes covered by pitch-black glasses, his long legs moving straight for the back desk with no facial-expression at all. As though this is some routine for him.

Maybelle mouths a "Oh My God!"

Slowly I give a glance over my shoulder, finding him sitting in the shadows of the back, comfortably seated into a chair with his legs stretched out underneath the desk. Even from this distance, the scruffs and stress marks are obvious on his dark jeans. Either it's a style or he has some side-hobbies that require major labor work.

And as I turn back to my book and notice how there is now a long red pen-line running through the outlined page, I realize something disturbing.

Hunter East had managed to successfully forced me to not pay attention to school work.

Without physically contacting me, his presence had made me mess up a simple task.

I can only hope, for the sake of my academic year, that this weird distraction will be cancelled out in short time.

But for now, Hunter East is in the classroom.