She Strikes Again

Jessie lives life in her own little world. But when Devin steps in, Jessie gets the chance to see life from a brighter point of view. At least until he's gone.

The next morning was almost Déjà Vu, but not quite.

Not quite, because this morning I knew he would be there. So I made sure I was nearly late for the bus.  I drew out eating my breakfast, one flake of the damn tasteless cereal at the time. And for the first time in my life, I actually looked at what I was wearing before I put it on.

Not that being on time was on my list of important things. Somehow “punctuality” didn’t fit in with ranch dressing, guitar solos, and converse; all of which were on my well-developed list of important things in life.

And, apparently, the bus driver decided punctuality wasn’t important to him either. When I got to the bus stop, Mr. Sunshine was rocking back and forth on his heels, grinning like an idiot, and not a bus in sight. The driver had some nerve to be late today, of all days.

“Hey,” Devin grinned and walked over to me, “look, I’m sorry I got a little upset yesterday. We’re cool, right?” Don’t look at him and he’ll go away. “Right?”

I gave him my best annoyed, long, drawn out sigh. “Sure, whatever.”

He did a little fist pump, like he’d just won the lottery. This kid needed to find something more important to be excited over. If he was this thrilled about getting a two-word-almost-positive answer from me, I prayed to god he wouldn’t have something really worthwhile happen to him later in life. He’d have a heart attack from joy.

He bit down on his bottom lip and looked at me for a minute. He went to open his mouth, and I interjected.

“Don’t waste your breath-“

“But-”

“Just shut up.”

He walked over to me, standing in front of me so that we were inches apart. I took an automatic step back, glaring.

“What is so damn important that-”

He had the nerve to interrupt me, “Look, we started off on the wrong foot yesterday. I’m sorry if I did anything to offend you,” as if he had done only one thing to offend me, “can we start over?”

“Life doesn’t have a rewind button and neither do I. You have been permanently added to my ‘annoying people’ list.” Where the hell was the big yellow pit of doom when you needed it?

He pulled another one of those moves ego-boys were famous for: changing the subject. “Why don’t you come over and have dinner with us, Jessie? You and your whole family. We’d have so much fun.” Have you met my family?

I put on my most sarcastic grin, and rested both my hands under my chin, “Oh yes, I would be just honored to dine with you this evening.”

He laughed as the school bus pulled around the corner, “Great, I’ll see you and your folks at seven.” I was kidding. He, apparently, wasn’t.

Before I could mouth off at him about the different levels of his idiocy, he climbed on the bus and into the utmost depths of the ‘cool zone’. I rolled my eyes, and took my normal seat across the aisle from some looser who never talked to anyone and spent all his life just moping around and bitching at people. Pathetic.

I eyed down the list of artists on my I-Pod, finding something that fit my mood. “Goodbye, You Suck” seemed to fit. Ignoring the stares of the surrounding people, I tested the limits of the headphones shoved into my ears.

The bus couldn’t have gone any slower if it tried. And to top off an amazing start to a morning, the bus driver announced in her aging, cracked voice that we could be having a bus evacuation drill this morning.

After two years, though, Mrs. Gerude had learned that it was better to just let me do what I want, and not to argue with me too much. So, as the bus halted in front of the school and everyone else noisily clambered out the back, the front door was opened for me and I climbed out the front to begin my death march towards the school.

Before I even made it halfway up the main staircase, I heard brisk footsteps behind me. Catching-up-to-you kind of footsteps. I hated that kind.

“What do you want?” I turned around quickly, only to be faced with a kid I hadn’t spoken to once in my life. Damn I felt like an idiot. I had assumed it was-

“Oh, um, nothing,” he looked at me like I was crazy.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I mumbled, and began to walk up the stairs again, a little more quickly this time.

 It seemed the poster committee had recently been distributed steroids. Every wall in the school had at least one or two oversized sheets of paper reminding anyone stupid enough to take the time to read them of the upcoming dance. As if everyone didn’t already know. As if any information they found important enough to be plastered an umpteenth billion times over the school walls wouldn’t already be widely known by the pathetic population. I walked past poster after poster without reading them. I wasn’t even an environmentalist and I still considered this a waste of trees.

I arrived at the door of my homeroom on time, due to my rushed stair climbing. Not about to break my year-and-two month long streak of being at least two minutes late every day, I crossed over to the other side of the hallway and leaned against the wall defiantly. And then I almost reconsidered as Mr. Sunshine came swaggering down the hallway.

He walked towards me with a raised eyebrow, “Should I ask?”

“Do you want to make it home alive today?” I gave him a cold once over. Any normal person would have just shrugged and walked into homeroom, if they had even been stupid enough to bother to speak to me at all. Not Devin. Of course not him.

“Maybe not,” he returned my once over, “intent on being late, perhaps?”

My voice held no life, “You know me so well.” It didn’t exactly take a genius to figure out what I was doing. He shrugged and leaned against the wall next to me, doing his best to mock my exact posture and pointed straight-ahead stare.

His gaze shifted over to me, and poked my shoulder, “Poke.”

I lost it. “You are so f*****g annoying!” I stormed off down the hallway, and ran right into Matt as I turned the corner. Not what I need right now.

“Hey, Jess-ay. What’s up girl?” I couldn’t decide whether he was drunk, hung-over, or a combination of the two.

“If you value your life, you’ll shut up Matt.” I rolled my neck around my hand, and turned to walk back to homeroom. Matt trotted after me and slung one of his giant arms behind my neck.

“Jess-ay, chica, chill down. You’re so wound up.” Definitely drunk. I threw his arm off of me, and decided breaking my record was better than being continually tormented to all of infinity.

With a huff I stormed into homeroom and ignored the teacher’s curious stare. She opened her mouth, and added another annoying statement to the list I had already heard this morning, “Jansen, you’re on time!” And to top it all off she used my real name.

I didn’t even dignify her comment with a response, and flopped down at my desk. As I sat down, I noticed something that made me want to be sick. Sara was leaning over Devin’s desk skillfully, chest hanging down for a perfect picture of any boy’s definition of perfect exposure. They were talking, not loud enough for me to hear, but you didn’t need to know much about Sara to guess what they were probably talking about.

Then again, a small part of me, a very small part, wanted to hear this. No part of me could come up with a worse torture than being hit on by Sara, whether you were responding or not. And knowing Devin-I snuck another quick look over- he was most likely responding. His eyes were wide, drinking in the show. He looked captivated, like a kid with a piece of string.

I watched, slightly interested, as she stood up, gave him a flirty wave, and then flounced back to her desk. Devin was still grinning from ear to ear as he followed her with his eyes.  Mrs. Achill gave an annoyed huff as Sara walked in front of her, then turned to speak to the rest of the class.

“Hello class.” Totally lifeless voice. “Today is Tuesday, October 3.” As if we didn’t already know. “Please rise for the pledge of allegiance.” A few kids stood up, while everyone else looked around and laughed. This was her first attempt to have us do the pledge in a month, and it was turning out about as well as it had last time.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sara motioning to Devin for him to sit down. He looked at her, looked around, and then discretely took his seat. Mrs. Achill caught this, and preceded to give us a ten minute lecture on the importance of patriotism. I caught like three sentences of it between my attempts to sleep.

“Ungrateful kids-

“My husband, Robert Achill, was in the military, you know. And he-“

“Can’t believe you would show such disrespect to-“

The bell finally rang, mercifully cutting off her rant, dismissing us to the nest forty-five minute torture session.  I jumped out of my seat, and made a dash for the exit.

I was one of the first ones out of the room, and yet Lyss still beat me to the door. And, today, she wasn’t alone. Practically attached to her was James.

“Hey Jessie,” he said. He had some nerve. Didn’t he know I didn’t really want to see his face right now, especially when it was so close to Lyss’?

“ James.” I gave him a curt nod. That’s all he really deserved right now. Actually, he deserved far less, but I had to be nice to him. He was like the version of a brother I actually wanted.

We loitered just long enough for me to catch another glimpse of Sara and Devin walk out the door, she still drooping herself over him. Lyss followed my eyes to the pair of them, and she snorted.

“What’s the sudden interest?” She raised an eyebrow.

I shrugged, “A part of me actually wants to thank her for torturing Devin more than I ever could.”

James looked at them over his shoulder as we turned to walk in the other direction, “How is she torturing him?”

“Do you know Sara Jay, like at all?” I demanded, resisting the urge to slap him.

He shrugged, and ran the hand that wasn’t holding Lyss’ through his hair, “I don’t know. I heard she can be kinda mean, but damn she’s hot.”

Lyss and I smacked him simultaneously, though it probably had more of an effect from Lyss. Emotionally, at least. She was his girlfriend.  I smacked him around on a daily basis.

“Sorry, Lyss,” He looked over apologetically, “but you know she ain’t got nothing on you, babe.” Lyss giggled, and I slapped James again. “Damn, what was that for?”

“For being pathetic,” I retorted sharply, and then walked away from the happy couple.

What had this world come to?

Reviews

[Daydreamer54]

I'm kinda getting tired of her "life sucks and so does everyone in it" attitude. Hm, I wonder what sara wanted to talk to devin about...