Chapter2

After that kiss I couldn’t sleep for days. The fact that Jared had to spend that following weekend with his dad did not help my ever building anxiety. The anxiety I fought  since I thirteen had led to several problems, one of the worse being self-harm. I spent that entire weekend after the kiss thinking if I should tell him about it now that we had kissed and might be together. I would’ve too, but a thought lingered in the back of mind that if he knew he would run. If he knew he would drop me and never come back. So I decided against telling him and chose to wait as long as possible. I even considered waiting for the day my bracelets slipped and he saw them to say anything. So with my bottling anxiety and him being away I sat in the living room with my mom.

                I didn’t like family time. I hated it with a raw anger that I hid behind a façade�"a masquerade some would say. Mom yelled a lot. Mostly about nothing but sometimes she had her reasons. That time she was yelling about how I failed to rake the yard. “You are such an incompetent, irresponsible, and disrespectful person! Do you not care how our house looks?! We look like white trash!” she spat in my face.

                “Well, mom, technically we are white trash.” I choked out. Instantly I knew I made a mistake. I stiffened my limbs waiting for the backslap that usually followed a smart a*s remark. She put her hands on her hips and stared at me.

                “What did you just say?”

                Mom was like any other southern mother. She had blonde hair, wore worn out t-shirts, denim shorts, and flip flops. She had hazel eyes that bore into you as she spoke. Her voice was heavy from years of smoking and she was olive skinned. But to me she was beautiful.

                “Well white trash is described as a poor family living in a trailer in a rural neighborhood.” I said with my hands clasped tightly on my thick tan thighs. She said in frustration.

                “I’m done. Just�"just do whatever.” She walked off to her room to do some more cleaning. She always wanted to have the house clean for when dad came home off the road.

                My dad was a truck driver and spent three weeks on the road only to come home for two days and then it was back on the road. I missed dad a lot.

                That Monday I went to school and sat with my friends in the lunch room. I told them about the kiss and they instantly blew up.

                “Oh�"my�"god, you guys will be the cutest couple ever!” My flamboyantly gay friend Tyler cheered. Tyler was short and chubby but the only openly gay kid in school so he had some following. Our school was mostly rich kids. By ‘rich kids’ I mean people whose daddy owned a store in town, was a doctor in one of the many clinics, had a big farm, and the most cars. Those kids were who everyone wanted to be. Popular.

                “I would ask him to be your boyfriend, just saying.” Sierra said in a sassy tone. She was one of those big girls whose voice was just naturally sassy. She couldn’t help it and tried her best to sound sincere in the times it was needed.

                I sighed a long sigh and put my head down. I wouldn’t even think about asking Jared to be my boyfriend. It would look bad on me because I was a sophomore and he was three grades behind me. Sure he was only a year younger than me but because he wasn’t always the brightest crayon in the box, he failed some grades.

                When I made my way home that day I saw Jared on his bike waiting as I got off the bus. I felt a tiny bit on anxiety in my stomach looking at him. I don’t know why I always felt that when I had saw him. Looking back now I now see it must have been my body sending me warning signals.

                As I stood there and locked eyes with him he smiled that stupid smile and my anxiety jumped around in my stomach and tried to pull me back from walking forward. But unfortunately my heart was screaming “oh my f*****g god its him its him its him. Gofuckingsayhitohimyoudipshit” I smiled back and crossed my arms as I looked up at him. He looked away quickly and laughed.

                “What you giggling about boy?” I said putting emphasize into my already s****y southern accent.

                “Hey now, I don’t giggle. I’m a man. we don’t do s**t like that.” He laughed and shook his head.

                “Man?” I raised my eyebrow at him, “You ain’t even hit puberty yet hon.” He looked at me and l looked at him and the wind blew my hair in a way that made us both laugh. I liked his laugh but it wasn’t special in anyway. It was like any other boys laugh. But I liked it because it was his laugh and his laugh made the Earth rotate and the sun shine. I always thought the sun shone only because he was there to give it a reason. I wanted to bring up the kiss but I couldn’t. I was scared. But he did.

                “Why did you kiss me?” He said without looking at me. I felt it then. The sense of dread I felt the night after the kiss when I lied in bed wondering if the possibility of a sort of togetherness would happened. I could felt the sweat pouring from my racing head.

                I decided to play it nonchalant. “I wanted to.” I said slowly making it seem like I really did. I did. As I sat there in the silence I decided to ask something else. Something I was afraid of the answer to. “Was it wrong?”

                He looked at me. “No.” he said as he looked me in the eye.

                I went to say something when he walked over to me and kissed me long and hard. He tasted like Mountain Dew and pretzels. I liked it. It made me think of how even though I saw his as the center of the sun he was still a person. A living, breathing, mortal, and tangible person. During that kiss I thought about how I didn’t want it to end. But eventually he pulled away and without a word to me he hopped on his bike and rode away.

Author's Note

This section highlights more of how he is confusing and just plain odd Please excuse most grammar problem

Reviews

[Bre-Anna miller]

i like it it highlights everything that he goes through and it is so differnt from everything else