Kaleidoscope Eyes

Normally Isabella Yates would have been terrified of John O’Callaghan in his drunken state.

She knew that he had been drinking too much; it was impossible for his eyes to lie. Yet she did not feel the need to lecture him. She felt like she could trust him not to frighten her or take advantage of the current situation. It stuck Isabella at that point that she was entirely too trusting. Any normal girl would have been weary of this situation but in some strange way she felt comfortable and bizarrely safe.

He still hadn’t said anything and in a strange way it was comforting to her. There was no unnecessary chat or word strings that filled the silence. They were both able to accept the quiet that danced between them with the ease of two people who were very content at this point in time.

The sounds of the party were the only thing that tainted what lay between them. The constant thud of music and the screeching of those attending were a reminder of what was going on outside the dark blue comfort of the bus space.

“Not big on the parties then?” He suddenly asked her, setting the bottle of water back down on the ground with a gentle thump.

Isabella ran a hand through her blonde hair, the only sign that gave away that she was starting to feel potentially awkward. When she was in college for the first semester she hated explaining to her dorm mates why she disliked parties so much. She knew that explaining the same thing to someone like the boy she was sitting with could potentially weird him out.

“I get claustrophobic,” she said, the half lie rolling off her tongue almost too easily for her liking. “What’s your excuse for hiding out here?”

The brown haired boy took a deep breath in and released it again almost immediately in the form of a long sigh, that seemed almost agitated.

“The people scare me,” he said honestly. “Everyone is asking me all these questions that are really not relevant to anything and I just don’t want to have to deal with everyone clamouring around me tonight.”

It was a spill of words that she had not expected to hear from him. But it made her smile, especially as she had no idea who he was. Apparently he was quite an in demand person, otherwise he would not have such thoughts plaguing his mind. She watched him as he too ran his hand awkwardly through his hair, maybe he was telling a small lie too.

John O’Callaghan did not like to lie.

He openly condemned people who did and always made his point of how much he really disliked those who did offend by twisting the truth or hiding it completely. But now he was placed in a situation which made it all too clear for him why the act of lying was sometimes committed. He didn’t want to taint his image in the new eyes of a new face. He had no idea who the girl sat opposite him was, but he already knew that he wanted to make a good impression on her, because the truth was that he wasn’t scared of the people around him per say, he was frightened of their opinion.

There were many people on Warped who had less than positive things to say about his band, and there were a lot of people, specifically girls, who wanted to make their opinions very audible and in a very loud way also. He was attempting to flee from the judging eyes, the resentful eyes from other band members who hadn’t been able to bask in the same sudden success as The Maine, and especially he fled from the greedy eyes of girls who specifically worked at Warped to work their way down a list of band member names. John was just not one of those boys, and they were just that kind of girls.

In the strange way that human dynamics work, both Isabella and John knew they weren’t being truthful with each other, but it was almost too much to expect one person to be so open with a stranger. There are those people who say that talking with a stranger about your secrets is the best thing that can ever happen to you, but neither John or Isabella were sure about this. Especially as they would still have to be around each other until the middle of August, the potential awkwardness would almost be painful.

“Are you in a band?” Isabella asked the question before she could stop herself. She already knew the answer to her own question. Of course he was in a band, he had that certain look about him. Maybe it was the way he wore those skinny jeans or the way that his hair fell.

“Yes, yes I am,” John said as he nodded his head. “Just like the majority of those people out there. What about you? How come you’re here, I don’t recognise you.”

“I work in the kitchen,” Isabella said slowly, not sure what kind of an impression she was giving off. “I’m here with the catering company.”

John looked at her with open surprise. He hadn’t expected that, somewhere in the back of his mind he had grudgingly classed her as a merch girl who graced a lucky band with her presence. All the pretty girls were merch girls, but then again most of the merch girls that he knew were very much conceited and contrived, and always knew exactly what they wanted and from whom they wanted it.

“You’re definitely not like the other girls,” John said with a warm smile that seemed to radiate over to her in the dark and warmed her heart.

She was glad that he didn’t class her with all those other girls on tour that all looked the same and all wanted the same thing. She liked that he acknowledge what set her aside from all those girls who earned a living by simply selling t-shirts and by having the right surname.

For a moment they were both silent again, and it wasn’t an awkward silence. It was a silence of two people who were both pleasantly surprised by the other. Isabella was of the firm opinion that John was not like all those other band boys that she had been warned about by her friends, and John knew that Isabella was something refreshingly different from all those other girls that wormed their way around Warped and spread like bacteria in the sunlight.

This situation was going against everything Isabella had set herself up for. She didn’t want to place her herself into a position where she was going to end up falling for someone, especially after what had happened back at home, literally two weeks before she had left to go on tour. She had promised herself that for the time being she was here to move on and work on herself: to finally earn that self acceptance that she had been aching for, for such a long time now. There was a black hole inside of her that needed filling with confidence that had been knocked out of her on so many occasions.

She just wanted to feel better about herself and not have to worry about other people.

But just as this thought crossed her mind she looked over the John. He was looking at her too with a warm light still radiating from his dilated pupils. Maybe him being here was a good thing, maybe it was part of the greater plan. Maybe she wasn’t meant to go through with this on her own. She could share some of the way with another person.

And right in that moment Isaballa knew that she wanted to share the long walk down the unpredictable road with John.