Homecoming Date

                I wake up to the morning sun shining through my window. I pull myself out of bed and I stare out of the window to look at the maple trees that surround my house. The trees remind me of the encounter I had with Ezra, the boy who could control the tree roots of these trees. It’s been days since I first met him and I haven’t seen him since then. I’m beginning to think that it was only a dream that I made up to keep myself busy. The encounter I had with him was too extraordinary to be real.
                After replacing my pajamas with a white t-shirt and faded blue jeans, I walk downstairs into an empty kitchen. A sigh of misery blows out of my mouth. Ever since I moved to Dove Creek, Colorado, my parents have been busy with work. They moved here for job opportunities and now they’re stuck working at their jobs on a Saturday.
                Things haven’t been the same for me since I moved from Lindon, Utah to Dove Creek. My parents have had to work more hours than they did before with their old jobs. I wish they hadn’t quit their old jobs. They were paid more and worked less. They only quit their jobs to move here and find jobs that they enjoyed. I don’t know if it was a midlife crisis thing or what that led them to the decision of moving to the middle of nowhere after quitting their jobs.
                My parents overworking themselves isn’t the only thing that’s new. The way I have to get to school is different now. Much different. Thanks to my dad wanting to live in a scenic area which happened to be in the middle of the woods away from the small town, I have to walk through the woods each day to get to the school bus that drives me to a high school that doesn’t even have a hundred students in it. Unlike my other high school that had hundreds of friendlier students, my new school has students that have one or two friends and exclude everyone else. It’s hard to make friends there, especially since I have darker skin than most of the students there. If there’s one thing that I learned from moving to a small town, it’s that a lot of people in small towns are blatantly racist.
                Luckily, not everyone excluded me. It took me a couple tries to make friends and quite a lot of failures, but I finally made a friend in my new high school. It was harder to make a friend than I expected it to be and I don’t feel like doing it ever again.
                My cellphone suddenly beeps, telling me that it’s time to leave the house. I pull myself out of my thoughts and I walk towards the front door of my house.
                Today I’m going shopping with my new friend. I’m surprised that she practically begged me to go shopping with her yesterday, but I’m also glad that she chose me to tag along with her. She boosted my ego, making me feel more confident than before.
                Alright, I think as I open the front door, I’m going out with a friend today! Do you know what that means, Piper? It means don’t be stupid for once.
                I step outside and into the warm weather. The rainy weather has passed and now the sun is brightly shining down on the earth. The walk through the woods will be more enjoyable with this weather.
                I close the front door behind me and I lock it. I begin to travel down the dirt trail that leads to the outside of the woods. I haven’t walked off of the trail ever since Ezra scolded me about stepping on the plants. I’m beginning to wish that I had stepped off of the trail now. Maybe " just maybe " Ezra would appear again if I stepped on the plants again. If he appeared then I could be certain that our encounter wasn’t only a dream.
                I stare at the green grass on the outside of the dirt trail. The temptation to try to make Ezra appear is something I can’t get rid of. It’s hard to admit it, but I want to meet him again. I want to know if everything was just fiction or if it was real. I want to know how he can control tree roots. I want to know why he is in Dove Creek of all places. I want to know more about him.
                I step on the grass. The temptation to do it was far too great for me to suppress.
                Nothing happens.
                Stupid, I think as I lift my foot away from the crushed grass. It was obvious that nothing would have happened. I was foolish to believe that the mystical encounter with Ezra actually took place. It’s obvious now that it was only a dream that I fantasized to keep myself away from boredom.
                I continue walking down the trail. After walking down the path for a good ten minutes, I finally reach the broken bus bench that my friend and I agreed to meet at. The back of the bench has fallen off onto the cracked sidewalk and the seat looks as if it would break underneath someone.
                I wait for a moment, impatiently looking at the time on my phone every few seconds, until I notice my friend running down the hill towards me. Her baby blue dress with a floral print elegantly flows behind her. Her bleach blonde hair dances in the wind. Her flats match the same color of her dress. Her outfit and face covered with makeup makes her look like a model from a magazine.
                “Hey, Piper!” she energetically shouts, waving to me, as she runs towards me. Once she reaches me, she gives me a big grin and digs through her white satchel. “You won’t believe what I found when I was cleaning my room today!” She pulls a container of dark red lipstick from her satchel and she holds it out for me to take.
                “Lipstick?” I ask, confused by her giddiness over the lipstick.
                “Pretty lipstick,” she corrects with a laugh, “I thought it would look good on you. You should wear it when you go to homecoming with your boyfriend!”
                “Hannah, you know I don’t have a boyfriend,” I say as I take the lipstick from her. I look at the dark red lipstick. The color is pretty, but I’ll never use it. Unlike Hannah, I don’t like makeup. Still, her gift is enough to make my lips curve into a gentle smile. I’m happy that she gave it to me.
                “Doesn’t mean you don’t have a date.” She gives me a wink as if she wants to know about some secret date that I have that doesn’t exist.
                “I don’t have a date either.”
                “I don’t either. That’s why today you and I are going to search for dates!” Her silly grin turns into an unwavering frown. I’m somewhat surprised to see her so determined about getting a date for homecoming. I’m used to people going in groups to homecoming without caring if they had a date or not. It’s the first time I’ve met someone who cares about going to homecoming with a date.
                I’m definitely not prepared to try to score dates. I thought this would be a fun shopping trip.
                “I’m not going to homecoming, but I’ll help you find a date.” I’m not one for social events, especially if it involves people from school that I hate.
                Surprise overcomes her face. “No! What? Piper, you have to go!” She shakes my shoulders, making my head shake along with my shoulders, as if that would convince to go to homecoming. “This is your high school experience, Piper, and you just moved to this school! You have to go!”
                I place my hands on her pale hands until she stops shaking my shoulders. “I’ll think about it.”
                Her eyes brighten with happiness. She throws her hands into the air and hollers in rejoice. I feel bad when I see her so happy since what I said was a lie. I’m not going to homecoming. I only wanted her to stop shaking my shoulders.
                “Ooh, I can’t wait! I wonder if they have any plus sized dresses,” she wonders aloud, looking down at her thick body, “I’ll need one. They better be cute!”
                I listen to her ramble about what dress she wants to wear to homecoming. Each time she speaks about the dress she wants, the color changes or the length changes. I can tell she can’t make up her mind on which type of dress she wants.
                Eventually the bus arrives, silencing her blabbering. “Come on, Piper! Let’s go!” She pulls me onto the bus after her. The door close after me and the two of us take our seats on the empty bus. She looks around the bus and then whispers, “We’re the only ones here.”
                Before I can tell her that that’s obvious, she begins talking about what dress she wants again until the bus comes to a stop at one of the stops in the town. “Piper, hurry!” She pulls me out of the bus behind her and the doors close again. The bus drives away, leaving the two us at the bus stop near a bookstore.
                “What should we do first? Dresses or boys?” she asks giddily.
                I think about it for a moment, but I can’t decide. Both options seem unentertaining. “You pick,” I say, carelessly shrugging.
                “Boys then!” She grabs my arm and tugs me along down the street with her.
                I’m happy to see her so excited, but also a bit worried. I hope she’ll choose someone to date wisely. I don’t want her going to homecoming with a creep.
                She suddenly stops walking and I almost run into her. I silently thank my reflexes for stopping myself before I could run into her like an idiot.
                “Look,” she says, pointing at a boy leaning against a battered payphone box. The boy has a grumpy frown that suits his pale face and gloomy eyes. He doesn’t look like a keeper.
                “What?” I ask, hoping that she won’t try to score a date to the homecoming dance with him.
                “He’s gorgeous,” she whispers, her dark blue eyes sparkling as if she’s seeing an angel instead of a boy who looks ready to punch someone in the throat, “I have to ask him out.”
                “Uh…” I look around for another boy that looks slightly less threatening and my eyes land on a boy with sweet, brown eyes. “What about him?” I ask, pointing to the brown-eyed boy.
                She shakes her head. “I’m going to ask out that guy,” she says, her eyes still trained on the gloomy boy.
                Before I can persuade her to leave him alone, she walks towards the boy. I don’t follow her. I can tell she wants to be alone with the boy.
                She begins to talk to him. Her energetic smile tells me that she’s enthusiastically saying something. I watch the boy look off into space. He’s obviously not listening to her, but she doesn’t realize it. I glare at him from the sidelines. He should at least act polite to her.
                Eventually Hannah stops talking. The boy tells her something before leaving her alone next to the payphone. The smile disappears from her face. I can already tell that she’s not going to homecoming with him.
                I walk to her and she gives me a small smile. “Well, that didn’t work, but there’s plenty of boys still around. Let’s keep asking!”
                I can tell she’s disappointed that the boy who she asked out declined her offer, but I’m glad that she’s not heartbroken about it and prepared to try again. I’ll keep helping her until she does score a date. You can do this, Piper, I think, Let’s get Hannah a date!
                “Yeah, let’s do that.”
                After a few hours of searching for boys to ask out along with dress shopping, Hannah begins to lose hope. She sits down on a bus bench with her gold homecoming dress in her hands. “This is hopeless,” she whines, “I asked out so many boys, but I still don’t have a date!”
                I sit down next to her. I feel bad that she still doesn’t have a date to the homecoming dance. She really wants to go with a boy, but no boy has agreed to go with her yet. “There’s still other guys to ask out. Keep trying,” I encouragingly say, hoping to raise her spirits.
                “I guess so,” she sighs, not sounding enthusiastic about it like she did before when she first started searching for dates.
                Her gloomy expression tells me that she wants to be alone for a while. “I’ll go get us some drinks,” I say, rising from the bench.
                “Okay. Thanks,” she sullenly says.
                I walk into a grocery store that’s nearby. After buying two bottles of Coke, I exit the store to see a boy sitting on the bus bench with Hannah. The boy has deathly pale skin and dark circles under his eyes that makes him look sickly. His thin, black hair makes me wonder if he is sick with some deadly disease.
                The boy rises to his feet and begins to walk away from Hannah. She waves him goodbye and he gives her a kind smile before walking away. I quickly walk to Hannah, excited to hear what she has to say about the boy. It seems like she has a date to homecoming from the look on her face.
                “You won’t believe it, Piper!” she beams when I reach her, “I have a date to homecoming! His name is Emmett and he’s funny and cute and so loveable!”
                I feel happy to know that she has a date. She finally has what she wanted. “That’s awesome, Hannah,” I say, holding out the bottle of Coke for her to take, “I’m glad you finally have a date.”
                “Me, too,” she cheerily says, taking the Coke from me, “Now we just need to find you a date!”
                I shake my head as I open my bottle of Coke. “No, I don’t want one. I don’t think I’m going to homecoming.”
                “Aw, really? I still think you should go, Piper!”
                “No, I’m not really into homecoming stuff.” To get her off of the subject of homecoming, I ask Hannah, “So, this boy you’re taking to homecoming, what’s he like?”
                Her eyes sparkle with happiness and she begins to babble about how amazing her date is. I listen to her as I drink the sweet pop from the glass bottle. After I finish drinking my Coke, I interrupt, “I’m going to go throw this way. I’ll be back in a moment.”
                “Okay,” she says, giving me a quick nod of acknowledgement.
                I walk down the street in search for a trashcan to throw away the empty coke bottle. I finally find a dumpster in an alley against the wall of a diner. I’m about to turn into the alley when I hear a loud slurping noise coming from the backstreet.
                What’s making that noise? I wonder. I curiously peek around the corner to see Hannah’s date, Emmett, gnawing on a rat. My stomach twists into a knot at the sight of the boy having his teeth dug into a big, furry rat. I feel like vomiting at the revolting sight.
                He removes his teeth from the body of the dead rat to reveal that his teeth are abnormal. All of his teeth are fangs. None of his teeth are like those of a human’s.
                He opens his mouth and he shoves the rat into his mouth. He swallows the rate whole. I stare at the boy in bewilderment and repulsion.
                What the hell just happened?