Kinetics: In Search of Willow (2 page)

I'd forgotten that I'd told him about
Harry. He had been at our school only a year, but already he was
popular, good with football, good with the teachers, good with
classes, and apparently good with Willow.

She'd had nothing but googly eyes for
him since the honors club had gone on a camping trip over spring
break a few weeks before.

"What? Did he sing her
mathematical sonnets in the bleachers or something?"
Nick asked.

"I don't know. I don't really see the
attraction."

"Of course you don't.
You're about as attractive as a doorknob."

I ignored him and continued to scratch
the bits of crusty dust off the window. My fingernail dug deeper
into the gunk.

Before spring break, I had a planned
to tell her, to let her know that I was…well, that I really liked
her. Nick had always said that sometimes it's better to go slow
with things like that. Telling her she was the "love of my life"
might scare her off.

Nick chuckled.
"You gotta admit it, though, girl's got some
class going after that oxymoron."

"Moron is right," I
muttered.

"Since when did you get
straight As in 
all 
the AP classes?"

I finally erupted. "Nick,
I love this girl and she's my best friend,
and 
I don't know what to
do!
" I flung my one free arm out, hitting
the seat in front of me with my fingers.

I got more stares and a few snickers.
I knew I was making a massive fool of myself.

"Tell her. What is she
gonna say? 'No, thanks'?"

"Yes." I said flatly. "I can see that
happening."

And I really could. Willow could be
irritatingly flippant about the most serious things. I could see
her laughing at my confession of love.

"Well, you'll never know
unless you ask."

"I already know," I said.

I didn't know what else I could say to
that, but I knew that telling her right now wasn't an option. She
was practically hip-to-hip with Harry every day. They had three
classes together and a club together, and she spent a lot of time
at his place every few days out of the week to study.

I didn't think a lot of studying was
going on.

I was, at that point, facing
inevitable rejection. I was more willing to let the warm fuzzies
quietly stew than to face Willow and get the "no" that I knew was
waiting for me.

The bus jostled roughly as it turned
into the school parking lot, and I let out a breath of
air.

I was ready to stop talking about
it.

"We're at the school now. I'll catch
you later."

"Don't stress, dude," Nick
said, reassuringly.

Easier said than done.
Willow was taking up more of my head space than I could deal with
at the moment.

Nick said goodbye and hung up, and I
shoved my cellphone into my pocket.

"Trying," I said to no one in
particular.

I walked off the bus into the morning
sunlight and into the last normal day of my life.

***

I found Willow sitting outside our
first class. It was the one class we shared all semester, and it
was usually the best part of my day. She was always early, reading
a book or jotting down notes in her journal. And she always sat in
the same place with her back to one of the big windows in the
hallway.

Today, the sun was out enough to catch
the red strands of hair escaping from her braids. She had a cloud
of light around her head brightening up her already pale skin. It
was beautiful. She was beautiful.

The hallway was buzzing with kids
catching up on last night's television show or talking about video
games. There was even a crowd of girls bickering loudly in a
corner, but all I could see was Willow.

How could I not love her?

She looked up from her book and smiled
at me. "Hey," she said.

I grinned. "Hi."

I plopped down on the bench next to
her, shooing away any betraying feelings and putting on my poker
face. "Whatcha reading?"

She chuckled. "Something incredibly
dry by an author you'll forget the second I tell you."

I frowned playfully, bumped her
shoulder with mine, and leaned over her shoulder to look at the
page she was on. "Try me."

She gave me a pitying
smile. "
Nicomachean
Ethics
, by Aristotle."

"You've read that before," I said,
glancing at the words on the page like I knew what the hell they
meant.

"Yeah. I'm thinking of doing my next
English paper on it." She put her bookmark into the pages and
closed the book.

"Ugh. How do you do it? AP
English?"

She laughed. "You know I like a
challenge. Besides, it's fun."

"I don't know if I'd use that word for
it." I leaned against the window pane and the heat from outside
seeped into my back.

"Of course you wouldn't. And that's
okay." She rested her head against the window and smiled at
me.

I shrugged and smiled back. "What can
I say? With your brains and my brawn we could take over the
world."

"Brawn?" She shook her head and
grinned. "Are you hiding it under your hat?" She lifted my cap and
ruffled my hair. "No brawn here."

I swatted away her hand and tucked the
runaway strands of black hair back under the brim of my
hat.

"Cut your hair, you bum," she said,
tugging teasingly at the back of my hair. "You could compete in the
Rapunzel Olympics and probably win"

"What about you, Little Mermaid
Einstein?" I shot back.

She lifted her nose at me and smiled.
She always said that she hated her wild, frizzy, red hair. If her
mother wasn't one hundred percent against it, Willow probably would
have already dyed it brown and cut it short.

"I'd give you a piece of my mind, but
class is about to start and we both know it would take too long."
She rolled her eyes comically at me and tightened her
braid.

"Noted, you pretentious ass." I shoved
her arm.

She stuck out her tongue and laughed.
As we stood up to enter our classroom, one of the bickering girls
in the corner pushed out and ran past us. All I saw was a blonde
head flash by and disappear into the throng of students making
their way to class.

I looked at Willow, but she just
shrugged. Neither of us knew the girl.

We took our seats in our first class,
and the teacher began his instruction.

"Monday, as you all know, is the start
of Career Week. On a piece of paper, I want you guys to tell me
about your plans after high school, be it college or traveling the
world, anything. We'll discuss them when you guys come back on
Monday."

Mr. Grant walked around the room as
papers rustled.

I tapped the piece of paper with my
pencil, but nothing was coming to mind. It's not that I didn't have
plans, but the empty space on the paper was daunting. I knew
anything I wrote wouldn't determine my whole life, but not a lot
interested me besides hanging out with my friends and talking with
Willow.

I wasn't good enough at basketball to
think about pursuing a scholarship or a career. My second best
class was math, but I really didn't want to be a mathematician.
What did they even do? Write equations on a dusty chalkboard and
stare at it for hours? Yeah, not for me.

"Two more minutes, guys," Mr. Grant
said, tapping his watch.

I copped out in the last
second.

Go to college, get a
degree in math, play basketball on scholarship
, I wrote.

I glanced over at Willow, who was
smiling over her notebook. She'd filled an entire page with her
plans.

What was I thinking? Trying to even
get to her level was impossible. I looked down at my meager
sentence and sighed.

***

I walked with Willow out into the
hallway and to our next classes. Mine was another hallway past
hers, so our route worked out well. I hated that since high school
began, Willow had been taking all the advanced and honors classes.
We had few classes together. Meanwhile, she was set to graduate
high school with enough college credits to graduate college in just
two years.

"What did your folks say about taking
classes at the community college?" I asked, bringing up the tail
end of a conversation we'd had on the phone the night
before.

As if high school wasn't enough, she
was gearing up to start taking actual college classes. It wasn't
hard to feel dwarfed.

"They think it's a great idea. I'm
probably going to start next semester." She hugged her books to her
chest and skipped a few feet with a smile.

"Pre-med still?"

"Yup." She sighed wistfully and picked
at a loose strand of hair.

"What's that about?" I asked,
frowning. "Don't you still want to be a doctor?"

For as long as I'd known Willow, she'd
aspired to be a doctor. Sure, we went through the fireman and
policeman stages together as children, but when the doctor stage
hit, she stayed there while I moved on to action star and
astronaut.

She knew the Hippocratic Oath before
she ever memorized her own address.

If anyone was going to be a doctor, it
was going to be her.

"Of course." Her expression
brightened, and she smiled at me. "It's nothing. Had another
thought. Don't worry about it."

"Hey!" another voice interjected
before I could reply to her.

Harry, the nerdy football player, ran
up to Willow and tugged on her braid. I looked away to hide my
scowl. He could have been the poster child for tall, dark and
handsome with his suntanned skin and brown hair that seemed to
always look perfect.

I hated his guts and the way Willow
looked at him with something akin to adoration. Heck, every girl in
school looked at him with adoration, but he only had eyes for
Willow.

Damnit.

"'Sup, Red?" asked Harry. He didn't
really acknowledge me. Not that I expected him to.

"Harry!" Willow grinned up at
him.

I clenched my teeth to keep from
making any remarks I would regret.

"I'll catch you later," I
said.

I moved to leave, but Willow caught my
shirt sleeve.

"Hey," she said. She smiled, but her
eyes were serious. She seemed to sense that something was wrong.
"Still want to meet up after extracurriculars?"

I nodded and waved as I started to
walk away.

I had to leave before I heard any of
their conversation. I didn't want to know how much of a fool I was
for feeling the way I did. She paired well with Harry, the
too-smart, nerdy, football player; not me, the directionless
idiot.

I continued to my next class.
Alone.

CHAPTER 2

"In everyone's life, at
some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by
an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful
for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."

~ Albert Schweitzer. German
philosopher and theologian.

My last extracurricular class of the
day was basketball practice.

Every Tuesday and Friday, the team met
up in the gym to play a few games while our coach tried to teach us
new plays.

"Dude! Pass it!" Pete yelled to me
from the other side of the court.