Her Mysterious Ways

Chapter 8: Everyone has a Story

"What do you want?" Andy snapped at me. We were both siting in the cafeteria. All of the jocks were in the gym playing some kind of sport, so nobody that mattered was here to see me talk to her.
"To see you. What's going on?" I was a bit concerned by her anger. She was a weird person, but she wasn't mean as far as I knew.
"Nothing as far as you're concerned." She wildly scribbled something in a really old notebook. And when I say wildly, I mean like really wild. It looked like she as about to find a cure for cancer or something.
"What are you even doing?"
"Nothing." She didn't even look up.
"Well you're always doing something. It's impossible to do nothing." I grinned at my comeback.
"Did you know that within the word impossible it says I'm possible." She still didn't look up.
"I did actually. Did you know it's rude not to look at someone when they're talking?"
"Yep. I did."
"Okay then." I knew that I wasn't going to get anywhere continuing like this, so I grabbed her notebook right from her and tried to read it.
"What are you doing?! That's mine! Give it back!" She almost yelled. All the words in her notebook were handwritten. Before she started to try and grab it from me, I made out a quote on the bottom left hand corner of the page she was writing on when I took it.
It said 'Everyone is more than they seem to be. Everyone. Every single person on earth has a different story. Just remember that.'

It was such a true statement. Well, at was at least true to me. I didn't want to tell anyone I lived with my grandma and I didn't want to tell them that we got Christmas hampers from the food bank that their families probably donated. I just couldn't let them see who I really was. If I did, I wouldn't be popular and I wouldn't be liked and everyone would hate me. Society did that to me.
"C'mon Cole. Give it back. Please. I need it." Andy whined, snapping me out of my daydream.
"Oh. Here you go. Nice quote about everyone having a story." I commented.
"Thanks. It's really meant for people with substance though." She told me. Then she put her notebook in her drawstring bag and got up to leave.
Just as she took her first step, I got up and grabbed her arm. She whirled around and looked me dead in the eyes. Her eyes were so pretty.
"I have substance." I said simply.
"Well, everyone has a story. You just need to tell people yours. Maybe they'd even like you better. But then again, you're just a poor little rich kid so your story is probably one with a happy ending, and we both know that happy endings are never as interesting as unhappy ones." She barely smiled, but she did, and it was all for me. A smile. Just for me. It was amazing.
"Well, not Andy. Have a great day. I'll see you.. around." I mumbled. I wouldn't see her tomorrow.
"Okay Cole-the-apparently-not-typical-jock. See you tomorrow." I let go of her arm and she left. She was a pretty amazing friend.
*
*

Home was the usual. I edited photos and helped Gracie do her homework. Then I had to convince my grandma that she was not 17 years old because she wanted to try and do the splits. Good thing her doctors appointment was the next day. I think it was critical to all of our health. I mean, if she did the splits in front of us, we would both be scarred for life, and we could have easily died from it.

So this was my life. It was the same at home every day, but since Andy came, everyday at school had been different. Yes, my friends thought I was on drugs because I hung out with her, and the girls stopped flirting so much, but I didn't even know if I cared as much as I did before I met her. It seemed like a more miniscule thing now that Andy had put it in perspective. She seemed to put everything in perspective, like maybe she lived in perspective of everything. It was almost not right how wise she was for her age.

So then it was storytime. Gracie almost always made me tell her a story about something or other. That night it was a kingdom that she wanted to know more about. She needed to know how in princess movies the people always fell in love and how happy endings worked, so I decided to tell her my version of a fairytale.

"One day there lived a peasant named Anne who moved to the kingdom of Altica. She was very beautiful, but no one stopped to look but one person in the whole kingdom. Now, there was also this guy names Colie. He was a knight that everyone looked up to and he was very well liked by almost everyone in the kingdom. So there was a peasant and a knight. In those days, knights were supposed to marry daughters of older knights and peasants were supposed to marry peasants. If you did so much as try to talk to a peasant if you were a knight, you would get in really big trouble, and the same for peasants who tried to talk to knights. Do you got it so far?" I tried to tell this story in a way that she would understand.

"Yeah, but why can't people marry the people they like? It's not fair. And, don't stories have a princess and prince and they marry each other?" Gracie was snuggled up to her old giraffe teddy with a very confused look on her face.

"Well, they couldn't marry who they wanted to becaause the people in the kingdom didn't like things to be different then they already were. And, in this story everything is different, but don't worry, I'll answer your questions." I winked at her and continued."So anyway, there was a beautiful peasant, and the only one that could see her beauty was the knight Colie. He tried to get to know her everyday, but she was a very wierd girl. She didn't like to let people get to know her, but that made the knight like even more.

"Then one day the knights friends told him to stop talking to her or else no one would like him ever again. He didn't want to lose his friends and be hated by the kingdom, so he only talked to the peasant girl when no one was looking. He told her that she was beautiful and that he wanted to marry her one day, but she always said that it wouldn't be good if they got married, so he went home everyday and tried to think of something different to say to her the next day.

"Now, little did anyone in the kingdom know that the knight had a secret. His family were all peasants. He actually didn't even live with his parents. Instead, he lived with his grandma and his little sister Grace." Gracie smiled when I said the very clase adaptation to her name. "He didn't want to tell anyone because he was afraid of what the other people in the kingdom would think. He had a secret life.

"So the knight lived his days trying to get the peasant girl to fall in love with him, but she didn't and he kept getting more sad and more sad until..." I stopped the story right there, because I didn't have anything else to say about my story. I guess it would have to wait until the story went on.

"Why are you stopping?!?!" Gracie whined.

"Because little readheaded girls need to get to sleep." I teased.

"But the story just started!" She argued.

"And someday we will end it. I will make you a deal. If you go to bed without any conmplaints, I will tell you more of the story when I find more out about it." I nodded, urging her to take the bait.

"So you don't know how the story ends either?" She questioned.

"Ummm... no. I have to... find out more about it at school." I quickly came up with an answer to her hard-to-answer question. I didn't want to ruin her childhood.

"Oh okay. Goodnight Cole." She smiled and adjusted the blanket to get comfortable.

I kissed her on the forehead and gently said, "Goodnight Gracie." I started walking out the door when her little voice travelled to my ears.

"Thankyou Cole. I love you."

"I love you too." I smiled and closed her door all the way but a crack. She didn't like the door being closed all the way because it was too dark, so I always left it open a crack, but no more than that.

It was these nights that I liked the most.