Ashe went to the library the every chance he got. He would roam around the shelves thinking about his night with Nia at the BlackBerry. It wasn’t exactly what most would call a great first date or a date at all. They just sat there in a booth enjoying the music and each other’s company, not really saying much. Still, Ashe wanted to thank her. However, hadn’t seen her all week.
He found her sitting on the floor in the far corner of the poetry section, her head buried in the same black book Ashe had seen earlier.
“Hey,” he said. Nia saw Ashe then quickly spun around to bury the book in a messenger bag she had with her. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, you just surprised me. That’s all,” she said.
“Sorry. Thanks for showing me the BlackBerry. It’s really cool.”
“No problem,” she said. “It’s a lot better than the Scene.”
“That’s for sure.” He sat down next to Nia with his back against the wall. “So, what are you doing here? I can’t find you anywhere else.”
“Not much,” she said, “just a lot of reading, poetry and stuff. Did you want something?”
Ashe sighed and straightened himself, “Well, I was just kinda wondering if you wanted to go to lunch or something.”
“I don’t feel like going to lunch today,” she said.
“You have to eat something.”
“And I will,” Nia stood up and started walking past Ashe, “later.”
“When later?”
“Much later,” she turned back and tossed something at him. Ashe caught it and examined what turned out to be a black pocket book labeled, “The Waves of Darkness: The Epitaph of Dusk.”
“What’s this?” he asked as she walked away. Instead of answering, she just gave a small wave and walked out of sight.
Ashe sat there for a while, flipping through the pages of what seemed to be dark poetry.
He stuck it in a pocket in his messenger bag and sat there. The girls he would usually meet were simple, or at least to him they were, but Nia was different. ‘She’s going to be…difficult,’ he thought.
Ashe went back to class and the rest of the day went by uneventful or at least it does when you just sit there in class staring out the window waiting for it to end. At the end of the day, he slung his messenger bag around and plugged on his music player. Walking out of the main building, someone slapped him in the back and gave him that wide grin he’d never really get used to.
“What’s up guy?” Sue asked, bopping around. “How’d you like your first week?”
“Tell me something,” he said. “Are you naturally this chipper or did you have coffee and sugar for breakfast?”
“What?” she asked
“Never mind,” he said. “What is it?”
Sue laughed nervously and adjusted her glasses. “Oh well, I was just wondering what you were gonna do this weekend? Check out the town?”
“Maybe. I got a place to hang out. What about you?”
“That’s cool. Me? I got a bunch of stuff to. I gotta arrange all the stuff for the Pumpkin Bash; then there’s the stuff for the elementary kids and I gotta meet up with my brothers for something stupid I gotta do, ya know?”
“No. Not really,” he said flatly.
“You an only child?” Ashe nodded. “I got a couple of brothers myself. They’re always ragging on about something. It sucks that my dad always takes their side.” A ring came from Sue’s pocket. She pulled her cell phone out to take a glance then shove it back in. “Damn, I gotta run. See you later okay?”
“Sure,” he said. With Sue running in the opposite direction, Ashe headed over to the BlackBerry. It took him a while to find it, trying to remember all the streets and turns and whatnot. He finally managed to find the spot only to see Nia walking out with a paper bag.
“Hey,” she said. “I knew you’d come here.”
“Hey, so where have you been?”
Nia dug her hand into the bag and shrugged, “Around.” She pulled out a cookie, “Want one?”
Ashe grabbed the cookie and took a bite. A sour look went on Ashe’s face after taking a closer look at the cookie. Raisins. One by one Ashe started to pick off the raisins from the cookie.
“You don’t like raisins?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “They used to be grapes. They were nice juicy grapes, but they were left out in the light. Now they’re all dark and twisted, like they had their lives stolen. They weren’t even given a chance.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked.
“Yeah, I heard it in a movie once.”
“They may be dark and twisted on the outside, but they’re still sweet on the inside. That’s no reason do condemn…raisins. They just had it hard for a while.”
Ashe quietly ate his cookie while mulling over what Nia said. Some people don’t need a reason to condemn…raisins. They just do, without a second thought, just like him. “Are we just going to stand here?”
Nia turned around and started walking.
“Where are you going?” Ashe asked.
“I don’t feel like being here,” she said. “We could go for a walk if you want.”
“I guess so,” Ashe followed close behind Nia. What was with this girl? One day she’s there, the next she’s gone. Then she brushes him off when she does show up and now she wants to walk with him. Why did this seem so weird? He knew that it was rude but still he asked, “Where were you?”
“What?”
“After that time at the BlackBerry, you just sorta disappeared. And now you come back here wanting to hang out again. What’s with you?”
Nia blinked and said, “That’s not something you can just ask someone you don’t know.”
“Then let me know you,” he said. “Do you want to hang out with me or not?”
“I do,” she said. Wow, way to be blunt. “You seem different from everyone else. Usually, guys are just supposed to try to impress the girl, but it’s like you didn’t even try. Winter marks the earth with snow; darkness shatters went the wind blows; in the mist of all, the one stands in the gray daze, mourning the fall.”
Ashe stood there with a blank look on his face. “…what?”
“It was in the book I gave you,” she said, “Gray Daze by Samuel Barker.”
Ashe stood there with a blank look on his face. “…what?”
“It’s a poem,” she said flatly.
“Ah, right,” he said. “Okay but why did you-”
“It reminded me of you,” she said, “a little. You always wear that big gray sweater.”
“It’s the only one I have,” he said.
“Usually, it means uncertainty. Not being able to decide from black and white. Light or darkness.”
“Then I guess it suits me. I’m always just sorta thrown in the middle,” he said. “In high school, everyone is labeled and sorted into cliques. It makes it that much easier for society to label you and see how much you’re worth.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Nia.
“Oh it gets better. Where do you go when you want to be different? When you’re the new guy, where do you go get grab yourself a big handful of friends and ol’ chums? You can’t go with the jocks because you don’t like sports. You’re not smart so you can’t be a nerd. And then the geeks won’t take you because you have no idea who the hell Captain Kirk is. There’s the Goths, but they don’t like you either because you can’t stand their music. You’re just sorta thrown in the in-between zone, ignored from all sides. It’s a lot easier to tell in a small place like this.”
Nia sighed. She looked at him and shook her head. “You’re such a hypocrite.” Ashe narrowed his eyes. “For a guy who doesn’t like raisins, you sure act like one.”
“Yeah well I guess that makes me a self-hating raisin in a bowl of cereal.”
Nia raised a brow, “Cereal?”
“Yeah, you know? Raisin Bran?”
Nia stuck out her tongue and shook her head, “That stuff’s gross. You’re more like a raisin in a bowl of oatmeal with that sweater on.”
“Hey,” he said. “At least I help lower heart the chance for heart disease…and stuff.”
Nia laughed. “No you don’t. You’re the raisin, not the oatmeal.”
“But I help.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do…I help the oatmeal taste sweet. See? That’s something,” he said.
“Well look at you, the prideful raisin,” she teased.
“Shut up,” he said playfully. “Okay, so you caught me. I’m a raisin, but it’s not like I wanted to be. Besides what’s the point?”
“You’re asking,” she said, “what’s the point of being?”
Ashe gave her a confused look. Nia looked down at the ground, as if she was looking at a way to dig up the answer.
After a while Nia’s eyes lit up and she said, “My friend, even if the morrow is barren of its blissful sea, live on and be now and forever, my living legacy. Do not through away what is rightfully yours, for it is yours and only yours, now and forever, its one and only gift. Birds will fly as fish will swim, now and forever, as your life is the only one I have truly fought for. To live is to live as to die is to die, now and forever, live…just live.”
Ashe stared at Nia with a blank look, “You really like poetry.”
“Do you?” she asked.
“Not really,” he said. “It sounds cool in music though. It’s kinda like my favorite band, All-Singing All-Dancing.”
“So…they sing and dance?”
“No,” Ashe said. “It’s a rock band. They got the name from their favorite movie, Fight Club. I haven’t seen it in a while, but I think it goes something like, ‘We are the all-singing all-dancing crap of the world.’”
“That sounds…pretty bad,” she said.
“Yeah it is,” he said. “The music’s good though.”
Before Ashe could keep going, his phone rang. He swore silently when he flipped the phone open, seeing his father’s name on the screen. “Hello…What?…no I‘m not…but…I‘m just out for a walk…with a friend…no…but…fine…”
He shoved the phone back into his pocket and looked up at Nia’s curious face. “My dad,” he said. “I gotta head back.”
“Oh,” she said lowering her head.
“But if you want,” Ashe said, shoving his hands into his pockets looking for something. After some searching, he found what he was looking for and handed it to Nia. “It’s a two-way pager. We can text each other like this, if you want to.”
Nia took the pager and ran her fingers through it. “Thanks.”
Ashe looked down into his pockets looking for the other pager. “So are you gonna be at school tomorrow?” He looked up and saw that Nia had disappeared.
The pager in his hand vibrated. Ashe flipped it open and found one new message:
I’ll see you there ;)
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