The Way You Make Me Feel

As I walked down the stairs and into the basement I could hear Garrett going on about zombies and how to kill something that's already dead. When I walked in he stopped talking about zombies long enough to greet me.

"Hey John, it's about time you got here. Have you been able to talk to Stacie?" He asked.

"No, in fact I've barely seen her, of couse she wasn't here Tuesday. But yesterday she came into the atrium as if she was going to come have lunch with us but apparently she changed her mind because she turned around and walked out after seeing us. I don't know what's up with her." I answered him. I hadn't told them about her coming home crying after her dinner. I didn't think it was right to tell them when I doubted Stacie wanted anyone to know.

"Well tomorrow you need to go talk to her. We miss her." Pat said picking up his drum sticks.

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The next day at school I stayed out in the parking lot like I always did, but I parked next to where Stacie normally parked that way when she got here I could go talk to her and not have to worry about not being able to catch up with her. She got there early and came to us starting up a conversation with Pat before I had a chance to say anything. She continued to talk to him until the bell rang and I had to practically tear her away from him so that we wouldn't be late for class. She didn't talk all morning other than to say thanks for walking her to her class. I hugged her everytime. When lunch came around she came and sat with me before the guys showed up.

"Thanks for not saying anything to them about Monday night." She said breaking her silence.

"No problem. I don't know anything anyways so." I answered dragging out the o at the end as the others walked up, Garrett rambling on about zombies, again and Kelsi talking animatedly to Kennedy.

Within a few minutes the conversation had been turned to weekend plans and what exactly was going on tomorrow. We had the pool party and our show. When we had that all figured out we moved on to plans for Sunday.

"I am sleeping in and playing Left 4 Dead." Garrett answered as Jared rolled his eyes.

"Well I'm moving back in to my parent's house." Stacie said glumly.

The table fell silent. We all knew she was living with Kelsi for about 3 months, but none of us never asked why, or if she was moving back home. We were shocked by this new development.

"Yup. Well I don't have much of a choice, my mom is pretty much forcing me." She added.

We were all trying to figure out what exactly to say to that when the bell rang.

"Oh John, I just remembered, I have a dentist appoinment today, so can you take Stacie home for me?" Kelsi said as we were getting all our garbage gathered.

"Sure, no problem." I answered before throwing away mine and Stacie's garbage and grabbing both my books and hers.

I walked her to her afternoon classes saying a quick goodbye when dropping her off at her Spanish class at the end of the day. I was going to have to get to class early if I wanted to leave early especially with it being AP Bio. I told Mr. Lassiter of my plan and asked if I could leave early to execute it, luckily he agreed. 10 minutes before class ended he let me go to Mrs. Floundez, our gardening teacher, who I had already spoken to and she gave me the daisies we had picked out. Then I was off to Mrs. Stewart to get the chocolates she had helped me make earlier in class, we had even put them in a "cute" bag. I made it outside Mrs. Dilmore's class just as the bell rang. Stacie was the last person out of the class room and she looked really upset. I started to think that she must be really upset about having to move back home and was about to ask her when the smile that came to her face stopped me dead in my tracks. I had never seen her smile that big.

"John! Oh my gosh!" She screamed looking at me in disbelif.

She took the flowers and chocolate from me and I picked her up into a hug and didn't put her down until she yelled at me for squeezing her too hard.

"John, I can't believe you did this!" She said still in shock.

"Well, I wanted to go all out." I told her.

"All out for what?" She asked.

"Well, we met a week ago today first of all. But the real reason for all this is to ask you to dinner tomorrow night after the show." I said sounding so lame to myself as I said it.

"Are you kidding me? Of course! I'd love to." She answered.

I picked her up into a hug again and spun her around. We walked to the parking lot together and got in my car. The way to Aunt Maddie's was quiet, Ivory coming through the speakers and her looking at the chocolates on the way.

"I made those by the way." I told her as I put the car in park and turned it off, proud of my chocolatier skills.

"You totally just sounded like a 4 year old." She said laughing as she got out of the car.

"Oh yeah!" I said getting out of the car as she opened the back door.

"Yeah you did." She said teasingly. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Oh I'll show you what I'm going to do about it." I said chasing her around the car and into the front yard.

She was fast, but not fast enough to get away from me. I finally caught her when she was trying to get the gate to the backyard open. I picked her up and put her over my shoulder refusing to put her down until she said I was king of all Tempe. I put her down giggling and gave her a hug goodbye saying I'd see her tomorrow. I wasn't sure what it was exactly but I knew that in that moment that everything was going to work out fine.