Diary of a Rockstar

Chapter 3

Chapter 3; Emotionless, Expressionless, and Unresponsive::

It was a sunny day.  This wasn't truly a bad thing, sure, but sunlight hurt Jade's eyes sometimes.  The fact that she'd slept so poorly had not helped in the least.  She wasn't going to let herself believe Mike was real and concrete until she saw him again, talking to HER.  She trudged to her second class, dragging her feet tiredly and then dropped her bag in her chair to take off the jacket she shouldn't have worn.  She pulled out a book and her iPod, shoving the white earbuds into her ears.  The class started and she drowned out the professor's droning with her reading and music.  She was enjoying herself.  No one was bothering her.  She mouthed the words to the song blaring in her ears, her eyes flying across the off-white pages of her book.  She lip-synced the last words to the song.

"I won't be ignored!" the singer screamed and everything went silent for a moment.

"Miss Jewell?"  Her head snapped upward.  Her professor's eyes were watching her interestedly.  He glanced at toward the door.  Another song started loudly in her ears.

"Standing alone with no direction," the singer started in his rangy voice.  She looked at the doorway where her professor's eyes were locked.  Her heart jolted.  The very man who was singing into her ears was smirking at her from across the room, his dark hair pushed stylishly into a faux-hawk.  She pulled her headphones gently out of her ears and closed her book.  The other people in the class were staring at her, awestruck.  She sighed loudly and stood up, shouldering her blue and black bag, and walked toward him.  He smiled at her.  A buzz of murmurs broke out behind her.

"Thank you," she heard Mike chirp at the professor and then the door slammed.  She rounded on him.

"I said I had a break at noon." He looked down at the display on his red iPhone.

"11:57."  He smiled.  She rolled her eyes and turned to walk toward the lobby doors.

~*~

She sat in a not-so-plushy blue booth inside of the University Center building, her eyes locked on the equally blue table top to avoid the stares of the people passing by.

"Man, you'd think you were famous or something." Mike grinned.  She picked at her sandwich.  He watched her for a few moments.

"So, I came back." She looked up at him, pushing a piece of turkey into her mouth.

"What?" He leaned back on his seat.

"I came back. Last night you said everyone goes away."  She shook her head, swallowing a bite she'd taken.

"No, I said everyone goes away in the end." He nodded.

"Oh, excuse me." He eyed her and then looked down at his piece of pizza, clearing his throat.

"So, don't you have people you normally eat with." She nodded.

"Yeah, I normally eat with my friend, Emily." He looked around.

"Oh, crap, sorry. I'm keeping you from her."  She raised an eyebrow.

"No. She would have just sit with us.  She's sick today." 

"Oh." She ate the last bit of her sandwich.  She could tell he was watching her and really wished he'd stop.

"You're kind of awkward." She jerked her gaze upward.  She blinked for a few moments.

"...Thanks?"

"Well, that didn't get the reaction I wanted." He scratched the back of his head.

"Wh--..." she cut herself off.

"You just...You're kind of unresponsive."  She blinked.

"What do you mean?" He thought for a moment.

"You don't react to things. You're expressionless...emotionless, even."  He pondered for a few moments more.

"It's like talking to someone on the internet, and you're watching them on webcamera, and they say 'laugh out loud,' but you don't see them even crack a smile on the screen."  She nodded.  He'd actually pinpointed something an online friend had mentioned about her once.

"Oh."

"Why do you do that?" She was then completely conscious and aware of how blank her face truly stayed most of the time.  She hadn't realized that all the emotion she used to feel had drained away.

"I've always been chastised for showing emotion," He cocked his head to the side, clearly not understanding what she meant.

"When I was a little kid, It was happiness.  I would get excited and laugh loudly.  And someone would tell me, 'Shut up, Jade! God!' Then, when I was a teenager, It was pain.  Sadness, I guess.  I would cry and someone would tell me to just get over it. And now, it's anything else: Excitement, nervousness...I get berated a lot." He didn't say anything for a long while.

"But you feel all those things, don't you? Happiness, sadness?"  She shrugged.

"I'm not sure what I feel, honestly. I've lied to myself for so long, pretending I don't feel anything, I'm not even sure if I do anymore."  She wondered what he was thinking.  She didn't often find herself doing that.  She normally didn't care enough about other people to give a damn what they thought or had to say.  Just Emily; but she was one of the so-called "chastisers" Jade hated so much. Mike looked down at his iPhone and punched a few buttons.  She watched his calendar pop-up on the screen.  He looked at the day's date: Monday, September 8, 2008. 

"You should be having Fall Break soon, right?"

"It starts this weekend and goes through next week."

"Do you have anything special planned?"

"Not really. I was going to go home, but my mom has to work all week.  And my birthday is on Saturday, so, I might do something then."

"Okay." She watched him messing with something else on his phone.

"Why?"

"Wha--..uhmm," he closed his eyes and shook his head, "I was just going to ask if you needed a vacation.  I have an artshow next week and there's this artists convention with a lot of kids your age coming into town."

"In California?" He nodded absentmindedly, looking back down at his phone.

"Wh-..I don't have the money to travel like that,"

"Don't worry about it. I'll cover you."

"For a $500 plane ticket?!"

"You can pay for the hotel if it makes you feel better." He watched her for a few moments and then pressed his lips together, clearly holding in a laugh.

"I guess that's a reaction I was looking for."

"Let me get this straight. You've known me for a total of two days. You don't know if I could kill you at any moment and steal everything you have."  He laughed and rolled his eyes.

"And you want to pay to fly me back to California with you to go to an artshow and hang out with a bunch of people I've never met before." He smiled gleefully and nodded.

"I don't understand you, Michael Shinoda. I have to get to class."  She stood up from her seat, shouldering her bag, and walked across the University Center.  He slid out of the booth and jogged to catch up with her.

"Do you want to go or not? I have to get your ticket in order if you do."  She stopped in her tracks.

"Ah--...I guess." She laughed facetiously.  He stood there for a few moments more and then nodded.

"Good. We'll leave on Friday."  He started to walk away from her.

"But I have class on Friday!"  He turned around, walking backward toward the exit.

"So skip. One day of missed classes never hurt anyone."  She shook her head and let her shoulders slump as he turned around and walked out of the building.  What the Hell had she just agreed to?