Straighten Your Ties / Book 1

I've got a secret,
It's on the tip of my tongue,
It's on the back of my lungs,
And I've got to keep it,
I know something you don't know.
-Bring Me The Horizon – Chelsea Smile

I woke up incredibly tired on the first day back from holidays. It’s odd waking up in a different place than your old room and then going to school, for some reason. I guess I was still adapting to this new environment. The red walls were bright in the pinch of sunlight that was coming through the windows that morning. I groggily rose out of bed and stretched. At least it’s not a Monday. Schools never seemed to go back on Mondays after holidays. There was always a ped day in between to make us go back on Tuesday. I knew this day was coming soon, and I couldn’t ignore it much longer. I knew I’d have to face April in homeroom. I didn’t care at this point. If that’s what would have to happen, then so be it. I hoped that she would have other matters to take care of and that she wouldn’t come into school that day. Yet, I knew that she’d come eventually. I didn’t bother trying to play sick and stay home.

My parents knew me too well, and it just wasn’t worth it. The teachers always piled on a bunch of stuff on the first day back, giving reasons like, “The term finishes in a few weeks, we need to get this done!” or “My report cards are due soon, and I need a mark in this area.” All bullshit since they could’ve just given the assignments a week later and they didn’t really need a mark in that area. But what could we do? We were powerless to the institution. I would miss too much. My parents were also very anal about how they paid for this school. They still weren’t to keen to the fact that they’d be wasting ninety-one dollars if I missed a day, so of course, I went to school as much as I could so they wouldn’t be wasting their money. Other parents didn’t really care, but I guess they had been paying for their sons’ schooling since birth… or six years after birth at least. It was nothing to them.

I stumbled to the bathroom after breakfast and looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was a mess. My acne had started getting worse. And I looked like I was about to puke. But I felt fine other than the jitters that were encased in my stomach. That was nothing. While I could fake being sick, I merely brushed my teeth and headed back to my room to fetch my uniform. I didn’t like looking in the mirror back then. It only reminded me of how ugly I was, and how maybe Becca had been with me just because my parents were rich or something. It reminded me of how prom was only years away, which only seemed like tomorrow at times and that I might not have a date to it. I didn’t have any girl friends. I knew some girls, but it wasn’t like I hung out with any at all. I didn’t even hang out. I had spent the last few days of my holidays just typing on my keyboard looking for absolutely nothing on the web. I wasn’t hanging out material.

I tightened my tie, but left it looser than usual. I undid my top button as well. My neck had gotten thicker or something, because the collar of the shirt nearly choked me to death. Maybe I was just a little too tense. I needed something to calm me down. After today, I’d be fine though. I was sure.

I walked up to the usual door that I had entered every day for the past months and punched in the security code, going in an x-pattern on the keypad: 15937. The light on keypad only flashed red. I groaned and tried the code again. Red. I looked through the glass and saw Greg at his locker, organizing his things for the day. I knocked on the glass. He looked over to me and walked to the door. He pushed it open for me. “The code isn’t working. I don’t know if they reset it or something. I was here early and was stuck out in the cold for ten minutes before the maintenance guys came and pushed it open for me.”

“That sucks. What’s up man?” The halls were semi-busy as I could hear a lot of noise coming from around the bend where the other set of lockers were.
“Same old.” He said. “Not happy to be back.”
“Me neither.” For different reasons, I supposed. I opened my locker and threw my bag inside. “Holidays always seem to fucking fly by.”

“Especially this year dude…” He went back to his locker organizing. “Did you finish the reading?” Mr. Caldwell had given us a lengthy book to read over the break. I had a lot of time on my hands, so I actually had. It was another stupid book about some family in Shakespearian time. I hated it as I usually hated anything to do with Shakespeare.
“Yeah, I really had nothing else better to do. You?” I took my usual green bulky binder out of my bag and hung it by its handle on my locker’s hook.
“Sadly…” He rolled his eyes without moving them away from what he was doing in his locker. “My mom forced me. I wasn’t allowed out of my room until I finished it when I got back from your place after New Years’.”

“So that’s why you weren’t on MSN!” Epiphany.
“No shit. Wait… YES. Major shit. That book sucked donkey dick.” He wasn’t one to like literature unless you counted song lyrics.
“Big surprise…” All books sucked. The ones the school gave us, I mean. I had liked Of Mice And Men last year, but that had been about it. All the other ones were really just pointless wastes of trees. I could enjoy books, so long as the story was gripping all the way through and didn’t indulge into anything like Shakespeare. Then, I was fine. Otherwise, I was clawing for an escape.

Seth came in a few moments later. I reached out my hand for his. He obliged and we slapped and clasped them together. “Good break?” I asked.
“Meh… California was alright.” My parents had been too busy to do much this break. Christmas almost didn’t happen nearly every year now, even if I gave them my list in October, they’d only get around to all their shopping hours before the stores closed. A vacation was out of the question, even though it was the only time us three kids were off school together other than the summer.

“Went there a few summers ago.” I nodded, “Disney?”
“For a day.”
“Dude… I could do at least five days there, easily.”
“Doesn’t it get boring?” Greg asked.
“Nah…” I had been to Disney World too many times to count, and I had only been once to Disneyland. I couldn’t get tired of either in my mind. “I hope you went to Yosemite.”
“Nope. Never heard of that place.”

“Curse you… Get out of my sights.” I joked and pointed towards his locker. He walked off smiling. I wasn’t exactly in the mood for smiling. I could. And did. I didn’t want to. I was feeling lucky that April hadn’t walked down the hallway today or anything. Incredibly lucky. Luck and chance are all that I could rely on at the moment. I placed a certain amount of hope in those two things. They didn’t really exist, but it was nice to believe. It was reassuring, and a backing that could get you through some days. To rely on it was a different matter. If you based your whole life and everything you do on luck and chance, you’d just end up getting fucked when you think about it. There’s always a certain amount of chance in the world that you might get killed. To play by chance’s rules only meant that you’d get mauled sooner than later. It’s what you get for relying on something that is never constant, and most people take that risk with everything, be it friends or the lottery. You could never play it safe. I never did. I just did my best.

I made my way to homeroom afraid of what would occur as soon as I saw April. I wondered if my body would immediately jump on her like a wild animal uncontrollably, or if she would chop my head off. Or worse: pull me to the side and talk. Then I'd have to explain the situation to Greg. The idea was not making anything easier whatsoever.

I lurched through the doorway into the ultra-violet hell of homeroom, with my head down, as if ashamed of some widely known secretly I hadn’t told anyone but had somehow gotten spread.

Yet everyone around didn’t notice. It was business as usual. Back at school and not ready to learn. The typical Seguin attitude. Fair enough. All good. But at the front of the class was the only person in the world who was putting my mind at unease. Pathetically, she also had the only vagina in the room. She was on her laptop, minding whatever business that was lightly reflected in her spectacles that hung on her ears and over her eyes. She wasn’t concerned with much, but looked a little grim. One could only guess why, and I actually mean that. I had no idea what had been going through her head over the past few weeks. I honestly wasn’t sure if she brushed it off, thought it over, worried about it, told someone about it, or perhaps was maybe concerning herself with matters that didn’t concern me. Concern. I concerned too much. A tad too much to be honest. To be truthful, way too much. I picked my head up, her’s not matching my swift movements, remaining glued to the computer screen, and headed to my seat with Greg walking in front of me. I sat, and stared forward into the wall and whiteboard before me. Enticing. April’s head still didn’t swivel to stare at either of us. Apparently Greg didn’t wish to talk to her either. He was running through the notes he had made on the holiday readings. I was in need of them, but I couldn’t pull myself from the wall in front of me. It was all so white and clear and clean. It amazed me. Very slightly. I wished to be the wall, and wished to just be there all day unnoticed and lifeless. Sure, I’d miss the simple pleasures of life that I enjoyed nowadays, but fuck it. I wouldn’t be encountering anymore fucked up problems like the one that sat two o’clock of me.

Speaking of time, it was passing by really slowly right about now. I thought that staring at that mysteriously sexy wall would propel things forward. Turns out that Greg was still looking over his notes and April was still reading something off her screen. She wasn’t even reading the announcements. I supposed they were late, as Ms. Mullins always posted them after homeroom as of late. But usually she had time to prepare the announcements before we all came back from the holidays. Perhaps it was different this time around. I couldn’t be sure. I was babbling on in my mind over nothing. Nothing at all and I couldn’t help myself. My mind was doing everything in its power to avoid the subject of April by being so ADD. I almost didn’t like it. It was like some mind game, a checkerboard of wiring and impulses making all these moves I couldn’t keep track of. I wanted to crawl up into a ball and die because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep my head on straight today, or for the rest of the week.

“Pack up!” Maybe time was actually on my side now. April had said those words what seemed like moments into my drabble in my mind. I was relieved and sighed in light of it. Though, I now found myself getting up from my seat extremely slowly, and getting my binder and laptop case even slower. I was left alone in the room with her. This sadly wasn’t a dream for once. I was facing some sort of love affair in front of my eyes. I looked down, breathing hard. I knew I would have to speak here.

“I messed up, OK?” I said quietly.
She looked up from her glowing ember of a screen for a split-second. I was half-expecting her to turn straight back to her laptop at that moment. And she didn’t. “Mhmmm.” It was something. Better than nothing.
“I had my reasons.”
“Mhmmm.”
I didn’t even need to try a third time to know that this somehow wasn’t up for discussion today. I didn’t know if it would ever be. I could only hope that she was doing this for a better reason, like it was her time of the month or she had broken up with someone. Not me. We never had anything going.
I walked to the doorway, and just before I walked out, I heard her sigh and say, “Don’t blame yourself…”
How could I not though? I acted on some impulse. That worked, but I had put her career and even personal life in jeopardy. Screw the fact that I had done so as well in my own right.
It was over though, hopefully. I didn’t know whether anything would be resolved well, and I still didn’t know how she felt. Perhaps she wasn’t one to express her own emotions all the time. I didn’t blame her, seeing that I hardly knew my official concise and direct view on it all. It was all really confusing in my head. I really couldn’t give you one word to describe it all. But if you’ve read any of the above, you might know it all. I don’t know it myself, so kudos to you if you are that know-it-all.
I jogged up the stairs back to my first class : French. Fuck.

***

I avoided April successfully up until lunch. So far so good. One more period and I’d be done. Then it would start all over again in less than twenty-four hours, but I saw that as just another hurdle. I headed to my locker to drop off my things. Anthony came up from behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. I didn’t turn.
“Yep?” I messed with my combination, missing my second number, meaning I had to turn back past zero a couple times.

“You doing OK?” Anthony had once described himself as a tissue. I told him that this was not true. He was anything but. I considered him a really friendly guy and didn’t think much more of it. He was always concerned about something though. Very worried. He wanted to know people’s problems and so he just always asked. In a way he could make himself a tissue for everyone’s problems. Still loved the guy, though.

I turned around. I had to look up a bit. Anthony’s dad was nearly seven foot, and he was just about six, while I came in at five feet nine inches at the time. “Problems problems problems…” I muttered, banging my head against my locker, which refused to give me the right combo today.

“Library? We can talk.”
“Yeah, sure.” The back room of the library was incredibly homey. It was a nice place to sleep on lunch hour if you succeeded in not being caught there. “Just need to get this locker to work.” I turned the combo another time, and got it. I dropped my bag inside and turned around again. Minerva was standing right behind Anthony, looking at me.

I wondered for a second if Anthony was distracting me. If he knew something, perhaps. It was creepy to seem them both standing there. But Anthony turned around and jumped at the sight of her. “Hi Min!” He said cheerfully.

She smiled coolly and said her hi back, and then turned her attention to me. I probably looked all out of place and confused, still half-expecting some kind of conspiracy here. “Derrick,” she eyed me, “Would you mind coming to my office? I just want to speak with you.”
My heart thudded against my ribcage. Fuck. Me.