Shy Girls Eat Words

The cold of the stair railings was numbing my butt. I jumped off them and looked at my watch. It read 3:45. I sighed heavily, preparing to just give up and go home. If Arizona wasn’t willing to take my help seriously, he wasn’t going to get it at all.

I ran a hand through my hair hesitantly. I was arguing with myself. Five minutes, I thought. If he doesn’t show up in five minutes, I’ll go home and get started on the Baker Keyhole myself. For Arizona’s sake, I hoped he got there because a Baker Keyhole essay is a bit of a pain in the ass especially since the teacher also wanted a three-prong thesis statement.

I heard the door slam causing my head to whip around. Arizona made his way out casually. He turned toward me.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

I’ve been ready for the past thirty minutes. “Yes.”

I couldn’t help but notice his hair was rather disheveled and his face flushed. I was never one to be accusatory or jump to conclusions. Still, if you ask me, it looked like he was doing a little “messing around” before he came to get me. Nevertheless, I let it go.

“Just follow me down the road, okay?” he said.

I nodded. We both got into our cars.

I followed him down the road. We got into an area near my neighborhood. When he turned into my neighborhood, I got incredibly nervous. If his house was right next to mine, I would freak out. How could I go my whole life without knowing I lived next door to Arizona Greene? Besides, I heard he had wild parties. I think I would have noticed.

He soon turned in the opposite direction of my house. I practically sighed in relief. I followed him farther down the road until we got to the very end. His house was humongous. It was significantly bigger than mine.

He pulled into the round-about driveway. I followed and parked behind him, getting out and pulling my book bag out of the back. He led me inside and up to his room.

The majority of his house was white, but his room was black. It was all black; black bed, black carpet, black walls, black curtains. I was kind of frightened. Never had I been faced with so much of this dark, ominous color.

It was a very big room. It pretty much looked like a dark abysmal hole. His things were placed neatly on shelves. The bed was made. It was a very organized room.

He slung his bag on the floor and flopped onto the ground. I stood awkwardly in the doorway, not quite knowing where to go. He looked at me and rolled his eyes.

“You can sit wherever you want,” he informed me.

I nodded and opted for the floor. I first pulled out the English book. My quiet voice emitted the only thing I could think to say. “What do you want to start with?”

“Well, what do I need to learn, teach?” he asked.

I pulled my planner out and read over my neat writing. “This week’s test will be on complements. Do you know what those are?”

“Yeah, of course, I get them everyday.” The sad part about that statement, he looked dead serious.

“No, I mean direct and indirect objects, things like that.”

“What the hell is an indirect object? Are you making that up?”

I sighed. “We have a lot of work to do.”

“Why is your voice so quiet?” he asked curiously.

I ignored his question. “Okay, so label the parts of this sentence. ‘Sarah read the book.’”

“Sarah is the subject. Read is the verb…um…” he stalled. His face contorted into confusion as he tried to figure out the rest. “Well, book is a noun and I haven’t got a clue what ‘the’ is.”

“’The’ is an adjective, but that’s not im-“

“How is ‘the’ an adjective?” he interrupted.

“It’s an article,” I sighed. “It describes which book it is. It’s the book.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Yes, it does. If you have a book and you’re trying to tell someone which one it is, the person would ask ‘Which book?’ And you would say, ‘The book,’” I explained.

“So, like, I’m the guy at school?” he asked arrogantly.

“If that helps you remember it, sure,” I said.

He smiled narcissistically. “So, what about these object things?”

“Direct objects. The sentence ‘Sarah has the book.’ You were right, book is considered a noun, but in that sentence, it’s a direct object,” I explained.

“And that is…?”

“Direct objects take the action of the verb. So, in that sentence it’s telling what Sara read. In this case, it is the book. Another example would be, ‘John jumped hurdles.’ John is the subject and jumped is the verb, thus hurdles would be the direct object.”

He chuckled. “Thus?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘thus.’” His laugh was melodic. It was kind of songlike.

“So?” I was fighting back smiling. His laugh was contagious along with being beautiful.

His eyes held amusement. “Who says thus?”

“Can we just get back to tutoring?”

“You never told me why your voice is so quiet.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m aware you’re trying to make this as interesting as possible by trying to be friendly with me, but I would appreciate if you just let me tutor you and be done with it.”

“But if I just let you teach me, that’s boring,” he whined.

“Arizona, I agreed to tutor you, but I can just as easily deny it,” I said meanly.

He went wide-eyed. “Wow, that’s cold, Ocean.”

I looked at the book again. “Indirect objects.”

***

Halloween: an excuse to dress up like someone your not. A reason to change, even if it’s just for a day. The chance to beg and receive just by saying a magical hyphenated word, trick-or-treat.

It was that day. The one day a year where it was painfully evident that I was the only teenager in the world who had no friends. Oh well, there was an interesting documentary on that night about ghost hunting.

I sat with my computer in my lap, working on an essay. I wasn’t getting very far due to the trick-or-treaters. What did I expect? Every house in this neighborhood including mine gave out full-size candy bars. That is like the ultimate jackpot for kids. If you got a full-size candy bar, you were one lucky child.

I was engulfed into my documentary. The ghost hunters were going into the deepest, darkest depths of an ancient Scottish castle. I gripped my bowl of cheese puffs tightly. The man was approaching the dungeon door. His sweating palm was gripped around the handle. He shot back a nervous glance at the camera which was in night vision. Eerie music was floating in the background noise and faded out as he began to twist the knob. He slowly moved the door…

Ding.

I jumped a little before getting up and walking swiftly to the front door. I picked up a bowl of candy bars sitting on the side table. My parents had put money in my bank account to buy the plethora of treats we were expecting to give out. It was a little ridiculous. I flicked on the light switch and opened the door. The porch was void of anyone.

I called out, “Hello?”

There was no answer. I set the bowl of candy down and walked out on my porch. It was an eerie night, just the kind of night people think Halloween should be on. The air had a mist in it and made a dim fog around the street lights. The rest of the space was black.

There weren’t many people walking around at this particular time. I lived in the back of the neighborhood so a lot of times people didn’t get to me until a lot later.

I shivered. The cold air whipped around my bare arms. It whooshed lazily through my loose ponytail and continued on through the trees. It was quiet. I was getting creeped out and decided it would be a good idea to go back inside. It must have been some kids playing ding-dong-ditch.

Suddenly, I felt a pair of hands grab me. I screamed as if my life depended on it. The hands were gripped firmly around my waist. They squeezed tightly.

Then a pair of arms wrapped around me. Another scream emitted my mouth. The arms were muscular and masculine. I could tell it was a guy.

I was about to begin swinging my fists, in the hopes of nailing one of my attackers in the eye, when I heard deep, teenage male cackles mixed with my own heavy breathing. The grip from my waist was released.

“Oh my God! You were the best reaction yet!” a boy I recognized as Davis Malone laughed.
Arizona Greene was the other boy. He looked at me in a strange way. He almost looked apologetic. His beautifully silvery eyes shimmered in the mist and dim light.

I finally found my breath, but I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? You guys just scared the hell out of me? I’ll probably never be able to sleep tonight? I would if I had any guts at all, but I don’t. So I stayed quiet.

Arizona searched my face. I didn’t quite know what he was hoping to find, but it made me nervous. My eyes found the ground as my signature blush slipped onto my cheeks.

“Let’s go, Davis,” Arizona said.

“Dude what about the candy?” Davis asked.

“She probably won’t give it to us now.”

“Please, she’s a mute. She wouldn’t say anything to us even if we didn’t scare her,” Davis said carelessly. “Isn’t that right little nerd?” he asked me.

“Dude, leave her alone,” Arizona defended.

“Why?”

“’Cause we already scared the shit out of her.”

“Pft…whatever, man. I’m going to the next house. Catch up when you’re going to stop being such a pussy.” Davis jumped off the porch with his canvas bag over his shoulder. He jetted down the driveway and into the misty darkness.

The quiet settled in again. I was still examining my bare toes. I had never noticed how pale I was. My toes looked like they had been painted white. It was sort of creepy under my dark porch lights.

“Are you okay?” Arizona asked me.

My eyes shot up towards him. “Fine,” I muttered.

“I didn’t know you lived here. Nice house.” He examined my unnecessarily large home.

“Just get back to your friend,” I said.

He looked at me unsurely and jumped off the porch. I watched him walk down the driveway, his canvas bag swayed in a ghostly way. He disappeared around the street.

I went back inside my house and flipped to the Disney Channel as Harry Potter came on.
I didn’t understand Arizona. I didn’t get how he could look so apologetic after openly making me fear for my life. He was one of the strangest behaving males I had ever known. Of course he’s not the only strange boy out there.

I say the entire boy species is a bit peculiar. They tend to be discreet with emotions. A lot of times, they do not need approval on their looks. They like to show masculinity and femininity is a taboo for them.

Then again, what did I know? I had come in contact with very few males in my life. In fact, I had only known one on a deeply personal level, but I didn’t like to think about him very much. It was not something I wanted to remember.

As I began to fight the thoughts of this boy, the door bell rang again. I got up to give the awaiting trick-or-treaters candy.