An Unresponsive Universe

Chapter two - Destiny appears like coincidence that seems like fate

Iris

I was so proud of myself, making another person fall in love with "Ice-Cream w' Friend". Of course, how it happened was the least expected way. And by 'how it happened', I mean: at two in the morning in front of a dance studio to a dyed-hair wanna-be rocker dude. But life has its ways to make you keep going on a certain path. I won't question anything.

When I first saw him I got scared. He was looking at me so intensely that it made me feel really tiny. I then remembered what my mom told once, 'look at a person's hands, you can see how someone is feeling by their hand placement or movement'. My eyes traveled to his shoulders, then his arms and finally found his hands resting inside his pocket. His posture made the bad-boy act desperately yell 'awkward' and heard from 50 feet away.
It made me remember my friend, Tess, who's fairly awkward. She always says something that now I must quote; "It's only awkward if you make it awkward"... Such a smart girl.

Luke and I ended up going back home around 4am. We were going to pass out any moment there so I gave him a ride back.
He was really nice, quiet most of the time; but when he spoke, he only said really funny or smart things. I would love to hang-out with him again, for him to make me company... but I know it's one of those 'James Blunt - You're Beautiful' kind of moments.

That was the first night in a while that I slept. I woke up at 10:30 the next day after a slumber of 9 not imterrupted hours, which was a miracle. Take in consideration that in six months I slept 336 to 504 hours, while normal people slept 1,008-1,344; the same amount of hours that you sleep in a week, I sleep in a month. 

That phenomenom night, before closing my eyes I realized: if he were my friend, he'd be the help everyone has been saying I perilously need.

- - - - -

I woke up the next day tardy for school. I used to arrive late because I always took the long way there, but there's a huge difference today; I overslept. My body was in such a peaceful state that I just didn't want to wake up.
As my day-to-day routine, I got another detention for that afternoon. I didn't mind anymore, and since teachers got so bored at seeing my face regularly, they took 5 minutes off the '15 minutes per "crime"'.

Tess waited for me outside school so we could go to Winter Winds like we did once a week. It was a cute coffee shop downtown with a book and a music shop in the back. They always play amazing music, not Billboard Top 50 though, and their cranberry tea is just too much to handle. Not to mention that the food is amazing and the place always has this pleasant faint scent of coffee with cinnamon, which makes me wish it were my home.

As Tess went to order our cranberry tea with vanilla cookies, I put our stuff in the red leather corner couch before going to check new music and books in the back; everything as usual.
Discs here were never in order. The first time I came here I found country, latin and jazz music in the rock genre. I got so frustrated that I went to complain to an employee.

"Excuse me sir" I said tapping impatiently a boy's shoulder.
"May I help you?" He asked me back with a smile on his face.
"Yes, I strongly recommend your people to put the music and books on the shelves in order. It's extremely rude having your clients looking around for something because you're too lazy to put things in place".

The guy looked at me and cracked a smile, as if he had been waiting for someone to say what I said for a while now.

"Come here, take a sit" he said as he politely pulled a chair for me.

I looked at him questionably, trying to understand why he had a smile in his face after I practically told him he sucked at his job.

"Our manager has a different way of viewing things. When we applied for the job, she explained how people usually look for familiar things, just because they know them and understand them. She emphasized on how it makes their perspective stay the same; therefore their decisions won't change, their life won't change, society won't change and this world won't either" the boy explained.