Flowers and Inaudible Appreciation

I had been talking to John on the phone for just a few minutes. My family had just got done watching The Boondock Saints, and John was about halfway through Amelie, which I had let him borrow.

"It's only a few more months until our one year anniversary," I said. I hadn't actually thought about the comment. It was actually more than five months, which wouldn't exactly count as a few to most people. I'm not sure why I had said it, either.

"What do you want me to get you?" he asked.

I smiled. "I want you to get me flowers," I told him. "My favorite kind."

We were both quiet for a moment. Then he spoke. "Well, are you going to tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"What your favorite kind of flowers are?"

I thought for a minute.

"Are you?" he pressed.

"I'm trying to calculate the amount of time between now and February, because that's how much time you have to figure it out!" I nearly started laughing. I'm not quite sure why, but I thought this was humorous.

He sighed. "...Carnations?"

"No, you aren't allowed to do that," I said.

He sighed again.

I smiled gently. I silently thanked John for putting up with me. I wasn't sure if it was an easy or difficult thing to do, but I thanked him. Perhaps sometimes it's easy, and sometimes it's harder. That would make sense. That's the way it was with him...

...but most of the time it was easy.

We kept talking, and I forgot about the flowers. I wondered if he would. Then I realized that silent gratitude doesn't do anyone much good.

Senselessly

I was at Tyler's house, and we were about to go to my house.

I had been flipping through his CD case, and at one point I had taken out a booklet to the NOFX album, "Wolves in Wolves' Clothing."

"Hey, you put that back right or I'll beat you senselessly," Tyler said.

"Senselessly?" I asked. I thought about it.

"Well, that makes sense."

Happiness, Houses, Not Cutting Grass, And So Forth

John was about to go home. We were talking, just talking.

"Where are we gonna live?" I asked him quietly. "Once high school's over?"

"Maybe the house in Hancock," he answered. His mom was talking about moving to Greece, I think, so her house was a possibility.

"What about Alaska?" I asked. We had been talking about living there.

"I've been having second thoughts about that," he said.

"How come?"

"I don't know. I want to be somewhere I would be able to get the band together and start touring and stuff. It might be better if we stayed closer to home."

"I don't know, though," he continiued. "About Hancock."

I looked at him. "Why not?"

"I don't want to cut the grass." There was a lot of grass at his mother's house.

"Then don't."

He laughed. "Yeah, we'll just let it keep growing until it's six feet tall."

"I don't understand anything about growing grass... people grow it, and then they cut it... they cut it down... what a silly thing to do..."

I hadn't even thought about asking John if any colleges were around his mom's house. I want to go to college and get some sort of degree in writing.

I will, though. And John will get the band together. And we'll have a house.

And maybe my writing career won't work out, and maybe John's band won't take off, and maybe we'll be super poor. But I can look at something like that and still envision myself as being happy. Because I'll have him. We just need to plan for those things, but we have plenty of time. We'll be able to work out back up plans.

And, for now, we'll be someone formerly known as The Mowhawk Boy and someone else called Diary of a Ghost. And I'm happy with that.

Not Breathing

John and I were in an argument.

We had gone to the football game later that night, and I had talked to him about my jealousy. He wasn't sure what I wanted him to do, and he didn't exactly understand what my jealousy was about. I couldn't blame him; neither did I. We had left the game to go home, but the car had broken down. We were waiting for Uncle Andy, Tyler's dad, to come and pick us up.

At one point, John and I were standing next to the car, and were about to break up. He started crying, and I stood behind him. I was crying as well.

Either one of us were going to do something, or we weren't going to be in love with each other anymore. Well, I was going to be in love with him no matter what, I knew. I always would.

And yet there we stood...

He continiued to cry. I did, too.

It was so ironic, because the day before had been our six-month anniversary. It had been such a wonderful day. He had told me he was getting me something, so I stayed up half the night drawing. I took 17 sheets of paper (we started going out on the 17th of February) and drew 68 little black hearts on every one (6 is his favorite number, and 8 was mine). The number 17 had always been special because 7-1=6 and 7+1=8. It didn't seem like much to draw a bunch of hearts on a piece of paper, but it meant something to us. He ended up giving me an opal ring and a picture that Holly had drawn, depicting John and I. It was so beautiful; I almost cried.

In that moment, as I watched John standing there, crying, I let go of my jealousy. Whatever it was, it was not as important as having him with me.

I told him I was sorry and I loved him, and we ended our argument.

A minute later, Tyler, John, and I were standing in the grass next to the sidewalk.

"You know what I love?" John said. "I love not breathing for a long time, and then breathing again."

Tyler and I agreed. It was a good feeling, being able to breathe.

Green Spiders

I sat on the bus, and as we passed by John, still on the sidewalk waiting for his bus, I looked out of the window. He was talking to Ariel, the girl I sat by in second block.

Ariel was a really nice person, and she had a good taste in music. She and her sister, Lauren, both were easy people to get along with.

But, despite that, I felt a little bitter as I watched them talking. The bus drove out of the parking lot and toward my neighborhood, and I sat in my seat, alone.

The truth, I admitted to myself, was that I was jealous of anyone John spoke to or hung out with other than me.

Before I had met John, I had never really had a boyfriend that I cared about very much. So I could have boyfriends that would hug other girls and spend more time talking to one of their guy friends than me and it wouldn't bother me at all. But now I had John, and I just didn't know how to deal with my jealousy.

As I continiued to think about it, I got frustrated and felt tears welling up in my eyes. There was a love song that kept playing in my head that I had heard during Drama (we had gotten to the meaningful song project), and it added to my depression and made me feel worse. I hated crying at school, so when I felt pressured to stop it made me want to cry more.

I closed my eyes and tried to gain control of myself. I had to stop that song from playing. I thought about the words to "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and focused on them.

The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout
Down came the rain and washed the spider out
Up came the sun and dried up all the rain
And the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again

I breathed a little bit, and began feeling better. Now, let's see if you can do this without crying, I thought. It wasn't that I didn't trust John, either. I would trust him with my life, easily. I knew he wasn't going to do anything with one of his girl friends. I suppose I just wanted his attention.

But that didn't make much sense; he gave me his attention any time I needed it. He never ignored me or blew me off to go spend time with anyone else.I mean, he would tell me that he was going to call Ariel or Holly (one of his other friends who is the sweetest freaking girl I know) after we were finished talking on the phone, but it wasn't like that was blowing me off. That was just talking to other people.

Why was it that I couldn't be comfortable with John having relationships with people? Especially people I knew and liked a lot?

I felt close to crying again. I thought of the song.

The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout
Down came the sun and dried the spider out
Up came the rain and dried the... oh, wait... those aren't the right words...

I mean, even his relationship with Tyler made me feel upset. Sometimes I just felt like John was closer to Tyler than he was to me. It just bothered me, it made me jealous. I don't know what I wanted John to do, I couldn't possibly expect him to cease all communication with other people besides me.

Come on, think of the words, the right words.

The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout
Down came the rain and dried the spider out
Up came the sun and dried up all the rain
And the itsy bitsy spider went down...

No, I did it wrong again. The love song kept playing, and I kept thinking about John, and I was finding it very difficult not to cry.

"Do you have acne?"

A little girl, Indie, was talking to me now. She was a sweet girl, usually...

"Yes," I said quietly.

"It doesn't show." And she turned around and continiued whatever she had been doing previously.

Tears welled up in my eyes again. I felt an infinite amount of gratitude toward her. Why, at that very moment, had she decided to speak to me? Hardly anyone on the bus ever spoke to me. I didn't understand. Was it karma? Did I even have good karma?

The bus was pulling up to my house. I stood up and walked down the aisle towards the front.

I swallowed my need to cry, at least for that moment.

The Flying Boy

A younger boy sat two seats in front of me on the bus. He was playing with some other boys, laughing and pushing them out of the seat, but every few minutes he would turn towards the window and look out of it with a serious expression on his face.

Perhaps he's thinking about jumping out of the window, I thought. He seemed to be considering it intensely. In between his playing with the other kids, his attention was completely focused on that window.

He saw me watching him and smiled at me. I smiled back.

I hope he knows how to fly, I thought. Then he won't get hurt or anything.

And he can keep on flying until he gets far, far away, to whatever he wants to get to.

I inwardly wished him luck and looked out of my own window at the sunrise.

Initiative

The Other John seemed kind of sad. I don't know why, but he just was acting gloomy.

I sat down at the lunch table one day with a plot in mind.

"Hey, John," I said, tossing him one of my folders full of loose-leaf paper, a black pen, and a red pen. "Draw me something."

I had noticed that The Other John hadn't been drawing lately. I hadn't seen one of his pictures since last year. So I figured I would give him a reason to.

He looked at it. "Did you steal this from somebody?"

"Yep."

"I've got to hide this. Somebody's going to kill me if they see me with this."

He took the folder and pens. He did begin to draw again in the next week, but he didn't use the folder. I'm not sure if he even used the pens. But at least he was drawing, and he didn't seem quite so gloomy anymore.

Get To Know

John and I were in Drama, and Mrs. Bennett was talking to the class. She was telling us to pair up with somebody that we didn't know to do the Get-To-Know-Someone-And-Make-A-Poster-About-Them project.

I sighed. "Wow, look at all of the people rushing to pair up with me," I mumbled to John.

He smiled at me. "Don't worry about it," he said, and got up from his desk. He walked to the corner of the room, leaving me to fend for myself.

I had been considering asking a few people when I heard John say my name. I turned around and saw him standing next to a girl with dyed orange hair and a boy with a mustache. I recognized them as being John's cousin and her boyfriend.

"Christal want you to be her partner," he said.

I nodded happily. Apparently he was pairing up with William, her boyfriend. She came to John's desk and sat down with her binder and a pencil.

She asked me to ask her a couple of things, and we started talking, first about favorite things, typical questions for a Get-To-Know-You project, but eventually we moved on to things like John and William and how we had met. She told me her middle name was Monique, and she liked it better than Christal, so I told her I would call her that. She was a really cool person. I suppose, although I don't like saying this, we "hit it off" or whatever, which hardly ever happens to me. Afterwards, we went to go join John and William, who seemed to be getting along as good as we were. All in all, I'd say it was a very successful project.

John and I permanently moved in front of Monique and William's desks. We talk more than we ought to. I think we've become a clique.

Reunion (And The Rest Of My First Day Of High School)

I had a good summer, I thought, walking through the doors to the all-to-farmiliar high school gym. It was farmiliar because P.E. in middle school was usually in the gym, so although it was my first day of high school, I had been to this part of the high school before.

Tyler and I found a spot on the bleachers on the left side of the gym. We had already found Aaron and The Prophet. I don't know if I've mentioned The Prophet yet, so I'll mention him now. He was a kid who we met last year who looked like Harry Potter, and for a while we called him Harry Potter. Eventually we got tired of having to say Harry Potter every time we spoke to him. Also, his real name is Issiah, and everybody knows that Issiah was a prophet. So we renamed him.

We spotted John on the other side of the gym and Tyler ran over to him and tackled him a little bit. He was wearing his navy blue suit and the silver tie I had given him for his birthday. He looked really nice. He sat down in between Tyler and I and we began looking for The Other John.

Nicole came up to me and gave me a hug when she came in. She had gone to sit with Jukii. Nicole was Jukii's Japanese-obsessed counter-part. Just to clarify, neither of them were Asian. They had known each other for a long time, though, and Jukii called Nicole her little sister, even though they weren't biologically. They tried to get us to sit with them on the other bleachers, but John didn't want to, I think partially because Jukii had threatened to kill him once.

The bell rang, dimissing us to our home room classes. I didn't know where mine was, so I simply followed everyone out of the gym. When we got to the main hallway, we finally found The Other John. We all greeted him, and Tyler tackled him a little bit, too. Somebody told me that my home room was actually back in the gym, so I said goodbye to everyone and went back.

My homeroom teacher wasn't very interesting. He was a coach, and although he wasn't much of a character, he did seem like a nice person. My first block teacher, whose name escapes me right now, started off the class by telling everyone how terrible she was and how we ought to "Be afaraid, be very afaraid," but her speech was cut short by one of her students laughing at her, in reply to which she slammed her hand on a nearby desk and said, "Jake, you're ruining my image!" and joined him in his laughter. My second block teacher, Mrs. McCall, was a rather dull seeming woman, but my seat in her class was rather nice. I was sitting in front of a wall, behind a kid who may or may not have been crazy and had his left ear pierced, to the left of a quiet girl who had a Ramones book sack, and to the right of a kind of sweet girl who told everyone that she had a baby. I think she might have been lying, but she was nice to me, and I can't say I had much against her other than that. My third block teacher, Mrs. Eckelberry, was a really neurotic-seeming woman. She had constantly wide eyes, and just had a sort of nervous air about her. When she called roll, she would say the name of a student, and then look up from her paper and her eyes would dart all over the room, and her face would almost quiver a little. She was different, but I do like variety.

In the middle of third block, we went to lunch. Jukii was in my class, and had decided to adopt me. I had planned on sitting with her, but when we arrived in the cafeteria, John, Tyler, The Prophet, The Other John, and Aaron all showed up. We got in line to get our food and sat down. Just like old times.

When the bell rang, we all went to the rest of third block. Once that was over, I walked to the very end of the first hall to go to my and John's first class together: Introduction to Theatre Arts.

The teacher, Mrs. Bennett, was a kind old lady with short, gray hair. She had a very pretty smile. She told us about the projects that we would be doing in the future. She said that we needed to bring a memory item, a children's book that is significant to us, and a CD with a song on it that has sentimental value. She also told us that Monday we would begin our first project, in which we would interview a person that we hardly knew, make a poster about them, and present it to the class.

When the bell rang, dismissing us to the busses, John and I walked together.

"I'll see you Monday, then," I said when I thought my bus was approaching.

"I'm coming to your house tonight," he reminded me.

So he was! "Oh, you're right," I said. I had forgotten.

I told him I would see him later and boarded my bus.

Logan told me later that night that his friends called me The Bumblebee Girl. He said it was because of the jacket that I wore, which had black and brown stripes. I loved that jacket; I had worn it ever since the beginning of the eighth grade. I had been wearing it on the day that I met John, too. It didn't even make any sense for them to call me that, because bees have black and yellow stripes, not black and brown.

I looked on the bright side. It was my first day of high school, and people were already noticing me.