Tonight We Drink To Youth

After the choking episode things didn’t get any better between Isa and I. Her avoidance of me got even worse, as if the initial awkwardness wasn't bad enough. If I would as much as look in her general direction she would tense and go towards someone she’s more comfortable around.

It’s not even just Matt and Clare now, she would go near everybody. Even she and Oli were talking on a regular basis. She just hated me.

“Who killed your dog?” Curtis joked as he sat down on the pavement next to me, referring to my unusually bad mood lately.

The car park in the back of the hostel was the only thing keeping me sane, literally. It was deserted, boring, and the only place that I could actually think without being distracted. Inside I would always have to be on edge about where I was looking or what I was saying out loud just so that Isa would be more comfortable around everybody, though the only person that she actually wasn’t comfortable around was me.

Her shyness was still present when she would talk to them, Matt especially. I’ve never been jealous of him at all until now. We were always on the same page before Isa came around; playing a show and having some fun with our friends afterwards were the highlights of our days, the subject of girls was the one thing that we left to Oli exclusively.
But now it was the complete opposite, Oli was acting like a normal human with feelings as far as Clare was concerned, always asking if she needed anything or wanted to join him in watching whatever was on the television. Curtis and Lee would joke with both girls like they were old friends and Matt, well you know about him. He and Isa have done nothing but listen to music together and laugh. I even caught them with their heads together taking a picture for her MySpace page. He hated shit like that three days ago.

“I wish I had a dog,” I groaned. “That would probably involve me having an actual permanent address.”

I’m aware that I’m being whiney about the whole ordeal. Matt was allowed to have whatever friends he wanted, although it was bizarre. The only thing throwing my mind set off was the unexplainable attraction I had to Isa Eastham and the fact that I was the only person in the whole room that she would avoid like the plague.

“Don’t be like that, its great here. We can do whatever we want, go wherever we want to go, and there’s not parents or annoying assholes we went to school with anywhere near us,” He laughed. “Well except for the annoying assholes that I like to call my band, but that’s unavoidable at this point I suppose.”

It always amazed me how happy Curtis could be even in the worst of situations. We hardly had any money left and no definite place to sleep at night but he always insisted that we would be fine. He was half deaf and had worse vision than all of us combined but he still had a smile on his face every day.
”We’ve been through worse times than this,” he told us a few weeks ago when things were getting tight with the finances. ”If it gets that bad then we can get odd jobs or something. I’ve always wanted to call numbers for a bingo game.”

And call numbers he did. Tuesdays and Fridays he would go down the road to spin the balls around in the little round cage, pull one out, call the number, and wait for the old women to bitch when someone would yell “Bingo!” The rest of us just helped out around the hostel whenever the owners needed it and hoped that they would keep our rate low.

I laughed at his comment about the band but didn’t say anything. There was nothing really to say, I agreed with him completely. Instead I rested my back against the brick walls of the building and looked to the cloudy sky.

“Seriously, what’s been bothering you? You haven’t been the typical Matt, you’ve been…quiet.”

Silence.

“Is It Isa?” He asked after realizing that I wasn’t going to answer him. “I bet that’s it, I should have known.”

Her name caught my attention, as always, and I finally looked at him. His eyes held concern but a small smile was forming on his lips, probably from the instant reaction I had to just hearing him say that name. I didn’t want to make it obvious that I had a thing for her; this was like being eighteen all over again…not my best years.

“I don’t understand why she hates me,” I admitted with a shrug. Revealing that I went as far as searching the book she was reading seemed a bit extensive, even for one of my best friends. Acting like I didn’t really care seemed like the route that would make it least likely for Curtis to judge me. “I didn’t do anything to her, I don’t think.”

“Talk to Kean then,” He told me as he stood to go back inside. “They’re close, she tells him things. But I do know that she does not hate you”

The door slammed behind him just as he finished.