We met in High School

First few pages of a short story about a young couple I’ve been thinking about.

We met in high school, oddly enough. It was the start of grade eleven and I was freshly seventeen, my birthday being the summer before. She was nineteen, being slightly delayed due to everything being what it was. Plus the year or two of ESL slowed her down a fair bit. She wasn’t dim or anything, she wasn’t held back, she just didn’t get the chance to go forward until the last couple of years, if you get what I mean.

I started this off wrong, huh? Lemme start again. My name is Leslie Whittaker, and I was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. There’s more you could say about me, but beyond that you just get into the boring nitty gritty of things, none of which interests anybody, really. All those novels about people growing up and their rough childhoods and all that crap are about as dull as is possible, I find. It doesn’t help that those kinda books are all they hammer us with in school. Books are always worse when you’re forced to read ‘em. Funny, that.

Okay, so, anyway. Grade eleven. September fourth, the Tuesday after Labour Day. Apparently there was some kind of shindig the night before where most of the kids in my class gravitated to, but I, being the lovely iconoclast I was, neglected to show up. Instead I spent a lovely evening reading shit on the internet complaining to my blog that I was bored. Odd how those two things never connected in my mind, possibly because I’m an idiot.

So I show up to school the first day, tired after getting no sleep, and bitter at having wasted my night accomplishing squat, when I met Her. With a capital H.

See, I’m making a big deal out of this whole thing, but really there was no shining light, or chorus of angels, or even me realizing anything was different than me meeting anyone else in the halls, and, in a way, I suppose there isn’t. It’s just… well, I’d better let the story tell itself, huh.

This is why I never put this to paper before today, you see; I always get distracted by shit and end up rambling about my cat or something. I’m a terrible writer, when you get down to it, but really, who isn’t? All the best authors kinda all suck in their own way, if you know what I mean, so me sucking more than usual pretty much just puts me in the middle of the pack. At least I spell most of my words right, even if my comma usage isn’t exactly perfect. I strike a solid 50-50, if nothing else, which I guess is better than most.

So, there I was; grumpy, purple haired punk kid carrying an oversized empty backpack and matching bags for my eyes as well. I wasn’t really looking where I was going, but I was such a tough bastard that I didn’t have too. The smaller kids were terrified of me, mainly because I was older and thus, according to their older siblings and friends, likely to slam them into a locker and steal their lunch money or somethin’. The older ones got out of my way because I didn’t get out of theirs. Although; the effect was ruined by the ones who failed to back down when prompted, causing us to cash into each other, which happened more than you might expect. Or not, if you’ve ever been in a highway hallway.

In any case, it was one such altercation that left my grabbing my books at the feet of Ling Zhao.

“Oh, sorry!” she said, dropping to all fours to help me grab some of the pages that spilled out of my binder.

“No worries, not your fault.” I mumbled, not wanting to sound too magnanimous in case it hurt my hall cred. “Not like you bumped me on purpose or anything.”

Ling smiled at that. Her teeth were white, which matched her pale skin and set off a nice contrast with her pitch black hair, which hung down to her shoulder blades in lazy waves. Her eyes glistened behind her glasses, which is what really caught my gaze and held it.

You know how some people just grab you by all of your senses and just shake you silly and scream “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!”? Maybe not, but surely you get what it’s like to suddenly meet someone who every atom of your body screams “I want to get to know you better. Please, let me”.

Not that I believe in love at first sight or any of that crap. Lust at first sight, maybe, but not love. In most cases your inner messenger turns out to be full of shit, and the person turns out to be as dull as a block of wood with the charisma to match. That one moment though, no matter how it turns out, is pure godamn magic, and it’s worth all the heartache in the world to feel for one second.

“No, of course not.” She said in slightly broken English. I snapped out of that brief moment, feeling as if I had been standing there staring at her for ages, when most likely I barely made eye contact with her. “Still, politeness, yes?”

“Uh, sure.” I replied, startling myself with my searing wit. “Never hurts to acknowledge someone else has worth” shut up shut up shut up what are you talking about you stupid bitch?

She just smiled again, obviously not understanding whatever it was that I was trying to say. Not that I did either, and I was the one that godamned said it. “I find that to be the case,” she said.

She handed me the last of my errant pages, and I crammed it unceremoniously into my bag and zipped it back up. “Thanks.” I said quickly, and scurried away from her with my head down.

Damn it all to hell, hat the shit is wrong with you, girl? Why wee you such a complete bitch to her? What did she do to you aside from bump into you? Something she apologized for even though it wasn’t her fault! Jesus Christ in hell, what’s wrong with you?

I continued heading down the hallway, any pretense of appearing savvy and cool long since annihilated, determined to reach my locker before I humiliated myself any further. I was seventeen though, and even I knew that it was unlikely I would be so lucky.

Truly I must be psychic.

“Hey, doll.” Said a voice to my right, as I tried to cram my bag into my tiny little excuse for a locker. “What’s up?”

“Go to hell, Justin, I’m not in the mood.”

“Why, you ragging again?” He said, crossing his arms and leaning back even further. His swept his stylishly long bangs out of his eyes, a habit he did whenever he tried to look cool. It never worked. Not once.

“At least I’ve hit puberty.” I slammed my locker shut and flipped my combo lock into place, pushing it shut with my binder.

“Nah, I hit it last week. Wanna see?” He sneered. He pushed himself upright and started to follow me. That’s one downside of being the only punk kid in school, you kinda stand out in a crowd. Also having bright purple hair tends to help, I find.

“Honestly Justin, could you be any less original?”

“Probably not. Until get my kicking rad hog and start singing quasi-rock anthems on the school bleachers. But I’ve got a busy schedule, so you’ll excuse me for not playing along right now.”

I turned to him. He did this every day, almost, and any attempt of getting him to shut the hell up seemed only to draw him closer. Not like I could tell him I was gay without causing further unwanted social attention. Also, that would most likely get him more interested than anything else. Justin was yet another example of a boy’s sexuality being raised by porn. Sad, really. At least he hadn’t started dressing like a pizza delivery kid or some shit. Yet.

“Justin, I have to get to class and I’d rather not you follow me there, okay? You’re creepy enough as is.”

Justin shrugged and strolled off down the hallway. I sighed deeply, glad he didn’t do his usual stick-around-indefinately-annoying-the-shit-out-of-me thing, which was a pleasant respite.