Continuum (11 page)

I inherited the gift of pushing people away from my father.  I curse myself internally and stop walking.  Standing in the middle of an empty sidewalk, I turn around to face Ethan.  He crosses the distance between us until he’s standing right in front of me.  He gazes earnestly down at me, “What have I done to offend you?”

With the backdrop of the crisp fall sky, his eyes are breathtakingly blue.  My thoughts scramble in my brain and my heart is racing in my chest, “Ethan, it’s not you.  I'm not good with people, okay?  It's just that I'm used to keeping to myself.”  

“I just want to get to know you better,” he says, his fingers playing with the zipper of his leather jacket.

“I am not like the other girls,” I blurt out.  How I have longed for a normal life.  Especially at this moment.

His eyes crinkle when he smiles, “That’s why I like you.”  Ethan tilts his head, his expression inquisitive.  

“You don’t understand.  I could never be like the other girls at Everest.”

“I knew that already.”

“Don’t you know what they say about me?  That I’m weird.  I’m a freak.  I’m a bitch.  It’s all true.  You really should stay away from me.”

He rolls his eyes, “And I know what they say about me.  That I’m shallow, wannabe jock.  That I’m a social climber.  It’s just all the same high school BS.”

“‘Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.’”

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, “Where’s that quote from?”

“
Othello. 
The subject of my Shakespeare project.”

“You really are different than any girl at Everest.  Do you always go around quoting Shakespeare?” he says, an amused expression on his face.

“I just read--” I start to reply.

“Yeah, yeah.  You just read a lot,” he says dismissively.

“What they say about me isn’t completely without merit, Ethan.  I don’t know how to be your friend,” I confess in a moment of honesty.

“Can we at least try to be friends?”

“I bet Mackenzie would be ecstatic if you walked her home.  Well, except she does live on the other side of town.  And she drives... But I'm sure she'd really enjoy a spin on that bike of yours,”  I am rambling.  The thought of them together makes my chest constrict.

He shrugs nonchalantly, “I know.  But I didn’t ask her, I asked you.”

A sigh escapes my lips, “Really, Ethan, you should go.  You deserve some normal friends.  I have a tendency to put my foot in my mouth.  It's a very undesirable quality to have in a friend.”

A smirk forms across his perfect lips as Ethan raises an eyebrow, “Who says I'm looking to just make a friend?”

I reply in a small voice, “I really have to get home.”  I turn around and start walking away when Ethan's clay speckled hand grabs mine.  I gather my determination as I turn around but then our eyes meet.  He is radiating sincerity and I stand frozen on the sidewalk.  “I really do want to try, Fallon.  You... fascinate me.”  

A car horn sounds off to the distance and I come crashing back down to the real world.  “I'm sorry.  I... I just can't,” I pull my hand back and break the strange connection I feel to this boy I barely know.  As I walk away, he doesn’t try to follow me and I don’t dare look back.  I can still feel his stare burning through me as I leave him standing alone on the sidewalk.  

When I turn down my block and I am certain Ethan can no longer see me, I break into a run.  The thudding of my boots against the pavement fill my ears as I make my way down the first block, then the second, before finally arriving at my doorstep.  Or maybe the thudding is the sound of my heart making its presence known, a sound that has been long missing in my chest.

I am gasping for air as the front door clicks shut behind me.  Tossing my things on the floor, I slowly sink down next to the closet, drawing my knees against my chest.  I focus on taking deep breathes, the painful ache in my chest not a result of my impromptu run.  I was playing a dangerous game with Ethan.  

It would be best to shut him out completely.  It would be for the best that he thought I was coldhearted.  Or strange.  Or whatever it was that kept everyone else away.  Too bad I didn’t want him to stay away.  Too bad I was incapable of thinking straight when it came to him.  It is probably for the best he hates me now.  The thought makes me feel raw.

Slowly, I gather myself enough to get up from the floor.  I kick off my boots and hang up my jacket before taking my book bag to to my room.  Emptying my books onto my desk, I flip open my notebook and carefully tear out my rendering of the Gothic cathedral.  Sliding open the top drawer, I take out a thumbtack.  I tack my newest drawing on top of a sketch of Old Laxenburg Castle.

Stepping back, I adjust the drawing just a fraction to make it parallel with the edge of the wall.  The walls are covered in literally hundreds of drawings.  My drawings are the only things I have always kept the same when everything else in my life changed.  Drawing started out as a hobby but now it’s become my therapy.  The only time my mind stops working and I allow my hands to take over.  Every inch of the walls are covered in drawings of varying sizes, layered several pages thick.  I guess I’ve needed a lot of therapy these last few years.

Sitting down on my bed, I carefully wrap my comforter around my shoulders.  I sit there for a long time, just staring at the walls covered in paper but not really seeing any individual drawing.  Surrounded by all my drawings, I’m in the world of my own creation.  A world that makes sense instead of the world that has spun off its axis.  My mind drifts off to thoughts of Ethan.  I can’t make sense of his desire to befriend me.  I have become so accustomed to shutting people out, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.  

The Johnsons’ dog next door starts barking which means Mr. Johnson is pulling into their driveway.  It must be past seven.  I try to shake off my daze and walk over to the window, pushing aside the curtain.  The full moon is looming in the inky sky, it seems so close tonight.  The pale moonlight washing over me, I close my eyes and for a moment I see Ethan’s blue eyes and the light I feel when he looks at me.  I let go of the curtain and the room is dark again.   

To distract myself from going completely over the edge, I try to get into my nightly routine.  Tackling my homework first, I pull out my Calculus book and balance it on my lap with a notebook and graphing calculator, a pencil in my hands.  No matter how hard I concentrate, I can't seem to focus on the equations.  My mind is continuously wandering and my pencil is mindlessly going over the blank page of the notebook.  When I look down, I'm surprised to see I've drawn a pair of hands.  Ethan's graceful hands.  I carefully shred the page into a hundred pieces.

Ethan

I don’t know if I should follow or stay put as Fallon takes off down the street.  Girls are impossible to understand.  I swear we don’t even speak the same language.  I can’t seem to get Mackenzie to give me any breathing room and Fallon will barely look at me.  Then she runs away whenever I try to talk to her.

My phone vibrates in the pocket of my jeans.  A text from Sam:

SOS!  Going to fail bio.  Again.  Liam and i need ur help with test!!!

This was my first time taking Biology but Sam and Liam were both re-taking the class after failing it last year.  Even though this was both their second time around taking Biology, they leaned heavily on me.  Between football, soccer, track, and the other extra circulars they were in, Biology ranked somewhere between going to the mall with your mom and bringing your kid brother along on your date.  

They were both scraping by with a low C, but there was a major exam scheduled for tomorrow and it was worth a third of the semester grade.  They couldn’t afford to fall below a C or they would risk getting kicked off the football team.

I type my reply:
Where r u guys studying?

My phone buzzes in quick succession, Sam’s rapid fire replies coming through.  

My house.  I can swing by n pick u up at 4ish. 

Picking up pizza from fat tonys.  Need brain food.  

Thx a mil!!  Owe u 1.

It is now nearly five.  Two empty pizza boxes are stacked on one end of Sam’s dining table.  Strewn across the rest of the table are old labs and my notes from the semester so far.  Liam and Sam are looking over my notes with looks of utter despair on their faces.

“Tell me why didn’t we do this in summer school?” Liam says, shuffling through pages without stopping to read them.

“Ha!  And try to learn all this crap in eight weeks?” Sam replies, spreading his arms across the cluttered table.

“Who cares about--” Liam reads off a random page of notes-- “biological classification?  When am I ever going to need to know that?”

“Come on guys.  It’s not so bad.  You can memorize it using a mnemonic device. King Phillip came over for great sex.  Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.”

Sam bursts into laughter, “What?!  Did you make that up just now?”

“No,” I reply, rolling my eyes, “if you guys paid attention to once in a while, you might actually learn something.”

We spend the rest of the evening assembling note cards and drilling each other.  Finally around eight, Sam pushes the biology book away from him, “Ugh, I need to stop for a minute.  My brain is going to break.”

Liam lays his head on the table in agreement, his voice muffled by his arm as he groans out, “No more Biology.”

Standing up and stretching his arms, Sam says casually, “So, Ethan.  You’re taking Mackenzie to Homecoming as your first date.  Have you lost your mind?”  

“We’re going as friends.  It’s just a dance,” I reply in as indifferent a tone as I can muster.

Liam’s head comes up from the table, suddenly interested in the conversation at hand, “Dude, I don’t get it.  You’re going to Homecoming with the hottest girl at Everest Heights and you’re acting like you don’t even care??” 

“I had someone else in mind.”  I think of Fallon leaving me on the sidewalk earlier this afternoon.  “But it didn’t work out.”

“WHO?”  They ask in unison.  I swear these two were worse than the girls when it came to gossip.  

I shake my head sternly, “Nope, definitely not going there.”

Liam starts rattling off girls in our class, “Emma, Sophia, Chloe, Redheaded Chloe, Ditzy Heather, Smart Heather, Blonde Liz, Brunette Liz, Brunette Julie, Twin Julie.  Her sister, Emily?”  He pauses to take a breath and then his eyes get wide,  “OH MY GOD.  PLEASE TELL ME IT’S NOT FALLON PIERCE.”

“What?!  I... barely know... I... How could... I mean--” I am stuttering and my face is steadily heating up.  “It’s Fallon Pierce.  I’m sorry, Sam.”

Sam shrugs, “No water off my back.  Like I said before, Fallon and I are only friends.  But now I understand why she was so upset this morning.”

“You saw her this morning?”

“Yeah, I was in the library for my tutoring session.  She ran past me and she was being all weird and un-Fallonlike, so I followed her.  She looked pretty upset.”

“Why was she upset?”

He shrugs, “No idea.  I didn’t ask.  Not that she would tell anyone.  I’ve known Fallon for a long time but I don’t pretend to know the first thing about that girl.  She’s as complicated as she is beautiful.”

Fallon

It has become a challenge to come up with creative ways to avoid Ethan.  In such a small school, it is nearly impossible to avoid anyone.  I have to time my entrance to first period so that I slip into European History with seconds to spare before the first period bell.  Not bothering to even put books away, I bolt out of English class the second the bell sounds, lest I run into Ethan on his way in.  

I even go as far as skipping lunch and enduring seven classes in a row, attending 7th period Psychology unbeknownst to the rotation of substitutes.  I manage to skip nearly two weeks' worth of Psychology classes with Ethan before a savvy substitute realizes I am attending the wrong session.

Today, I can avoid him no longer.  Feeling anxious throughout French class, I bolt out the door the second the bell rings.  I slip out through an unattended side door and follow a familiar path into the woods.  The path is now strewn with colorful fall foliage, damp from this morning's brief rain.  Abruptly, I realize I am not alone.  I spot his bag and jacket before I see him sitting alone inside a grove of trees.  Ethan is turned away from me and he is so focused on the trees, he doesn't hear my approach.  I quietly position myself next to an ancient oak tree, camouflaging myself in the shadow of its massive canopy of branches.  For the first time, I can study Ethan freely.  

The sunlight filtering through the trees dance in his hair, making it golden brown.  A lock of hair falls over into his brilliant blue eyes making him look alluring but all the more unattainable.  Held between his perfect teeth dangles a chewed up, standard number 2 pencil.  His shoulders are hunched over a black leather sketchbook balanced on his lap, sheets of paper spilling out of its overstuffed pages.  

He holds his fingers out in front of him, measuring the distance between the branches before taking the pencil out of his mouth.  It moves swiftly over the page, making the lightest contact with the textured surface of the paper.  His brow is furrowed in concentration as he measures the distance between the trees with his outstretched hand.  Holding up his sketchbook, he tilts his head and exams the silhouette on the page against the backdrop of the silhouette in sky.  Tracing the tops of the trees with his fingers, he makes more swift strokes with his pencil.

In the distance, the bell rings signaling the end of the period.  I hear his quiet sigh as he carefully closes his sketchbook.  His gaze stays fixed on the contours of the treetops.  Then in one quick, liquid movement, Ethan jumps onto his feet and turns around to gather his bag and jacket.  I press deeper into the shadows of my tree.  As he straightens back up, his expression changes from relaxed to suddenly alert.  

Did he see me lose my footing on the snarl of roots at the base of the tree?  His eyes try to penetrate the darkness.  I don’t dare let out a single breath and every muscle in my body locks down as those blue eyes search the trees.  I am convinced the thunderous pounding in my chest will expose me.