My new school friend looks like he's been through a mangler but he knows how to tell the bullies to get lost. I've never seen someone who looks so pathetic have the stones to stand up Lee Jones. He was a legend. It was like watching Bambi pull out his own rifle and shoot the hunter where it counted.
My new school friend is a jerk, but he's so damn funny. He can find anyone's weak spot, even the teachers' and shine a spotlight on it. I'd like to take the higher ground but I'm too busy doubling up with the rest of the class. It isn't right, it isn't fair, but at the end of the day its all I recall - his jokes and how we all laughed. He knows how to pick his targets too, no popular kids, no-one with the stones for revenge, just societies stragglers and odd balls...
My new school friend smells like peaches. I get this urge to sit closer to her just to take in the aroma but it's not polite. Her hair is almost black, only showing hints of deepest brown when she passes by the window. Her eyes are pale, blue, but so watery you'd almost expect to see them on someone albino. Her laugh is so infectious the teacher punishes her for even a giggle rather than have the whole class snickering into their algebra. Her voice is deeper than girls usually have, not boyish, but a semi-octave lower than is usual. I think I love her a little too much, but so much as to call it a crush. It's just that when she's near I feel her gravitational pull and I can't help but spin into orbit.
I have a new school friend called Boris. He's about as attractive as roadkill and with as much personality. I need more friends like him, next to him I'm Brad Pitt and Einstein all in one beautiful mixture.
There's this new girl in French class, Amile, I think. She speaks like she hears her own voice ten times louder than everyone else does, timid, like "une petite souris." I think that's what makes her mouth seem too small, like over the years her shyness has made it that way. I watch her when she approaches people, her head held downward as if she fears an attack. I wonder what it would be like to live in her head, fearful of the world like she is. I look around me and see friends, most of them selfish narcissists saving up for selfie-sticks, but friends nonetheless. That said, she'll be my new friend before the week is out. I've made it my mission to build up her self esteem.
Quincy lived in his head. I know we all do to a degree, but it was most pronounced with him. It was like his body was no more than a vessel to take him to interesting things to read and knowledgeable people to talk to. He didn't want to exercise or be "cool." Emotions were something alien to him, he barely understood his own let alone anyone else's. I once saw Nancy start to cry next to him and he patted her head gently like she was a dog, his face as scared as I would be confronting a knife-wielding maniac. He could never follow a conversation either, whatever I said he'd reply with a sort of educational statement about whatever he was working on. It wasn't that he didn't care, just that he wasn't born with the faculties to understand how to relate to people. Once I didn't talk to him for a month and he just showed up at my door with a kitten, figuring he'd done something wrong but he didn't know what. That's when I realized I was part of his life, not just part of the scenery...
Last April Sarah was there every time I turned around or flicked on my social media. Everything I said had been funny, intelligent, witty. She had courted my opinions and never challenged my assertions. She was the echo my ego wanted but didn't need- like eating cake every day. My head swelled. I ditched my less fashionable friends and in not too long she was coming over for homework help. I re-did her science assignments and correct her punctuation, brought her work up a whole grade or more. We hung out at the mall, I recall her buying me frozen yoghurt while we laughed about the fat the untrendy. Once we had sat the exams she never returned a call or a text, she blocked me on social media and took up with her old crew again. There is nothing vying for my attention now but the wind in the trees and the steady heat of summer that is building by the day.
I never saw Leah lonely, not that she wasn't ever alone. When she was by herself she wasn't looking for company, like she was so much more comfortable in her own skin than the rest of us. She'd talk to anyone and everyone who approached her, she didn't care if they were in the "in crowd" or not. With all the crazy cliques going on at school she was something of an "independent" rather than a reject. She had intelligent things to say and an attitude that was somehow more mature than the rest of us. She knew who to trust and who to be casual with; but mostly she seemed to have decided that school was for work. It was for getting her grades and if she made friends along the way that was great, but not essential. It wasn't until we left school I found out she had a kid already, apparently she'd fallen for the worst boy in school, handsome, but he lied more fluently than a mafia boss.
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