02
15th October, 2010
Getting used to certain things can be hard. Time is known for a lot of things, but making you immune to life and its consequences is not one of those. Whether they happened on a regular basis, or just occasionally, some things just take a lot of time getting used to.
Among those certain things is the feeling that you get before you are going to step onto the stage to perform for a crowd that turned out to be larger than you anticipated. Living in that same street for almost five years, it'd been a ritual of sorts for me to perform for the almost same crowd, every year. It had not, however, ever helped me to get over the jitteriness that always made itself known on such occasions. It was that shaky feeing you couldn't seem to get rid of despite having practiced your performance about a thousand times already. Stage fright had always been one of my Destructive traits.
Among those certain things was also the feeling of talking to Isaac Harlow. To a girl like me, who had always been considered the most talkative of all, conversing with people had always come naturally. I wasn't one to run out of things to talk of, not even when it was a stranger I hated on the receiving end.
Not even when the stranger on the receiving end was Isaac Harlow.
"You're a murderer. God, so much blood. How did you even do that?" I asked him, my eyes wide as they stared at the pool of blood in front of us.
"C'mon, stop saying that already! What did I do?" Isaac defensively said.
"Oh, God, someone call the police now. There's too much blood. Isaac is the culprit, get him arrested, somebody!" I called out.
"Hey, stop! I don't even know where this came from!" he yelped.
From behind me, Ethan, one of my friends, Hannah, and one of Ethan's friends, Lane, laughed. Hannah went to my school and was one year junior to me, and our parents were friends too. She was kind of funny, and we were kind of good friends.
"Look at what you did, Isaac! You murderer," Ethan joined in, and Isaac's head snapped to look at him in an almost comical way.
"Not you too!"
We all laughed, Isaac too. I liked his laugh. It was honest and rare, and it had this weird warmth that came with it when you heard him laugh. Even through his make-up covered face, you could see his whole face lighting up with that laugh.
I looked at the 'blood' that covered the floor once more, before turning and grabbing Ethan's hand to drag him to one of the many chairs. Surprisingly, though, for some reason, Isaac followed us too. He took a chair beside us, and leaned forward with his elbows resting on his legs.
"Where did all that paint even come from?" he asked, looking at the liquid patch again.
"Must be from earlier, I guess. There was some art competition held here, wasn't there?" Ethan guessed.
I shrugged my shoulders. "Suppose so."
Isaac looked at me. "What school are you in, again?"
"Smiths'," I told him. "You?"
"Trinitans' High School," he drawled. I'd heard of that school before, but it wasn't too popular. He was the first person I knew that went there. "I know a few people of your school, you know."
Surprised, I asked him, "You do?"
"Yeah. Some girls." He didn't elaborate.
When I thought about it, it wasn't too surprising, really. Smiths' Girls' Academy was, as the name suggested, an all girls' school. He was Isaac Harlow, of course he knew girls of my school. I didn't bother asking much and just said, "Oh."
