Robin, Boy Virgin: Original Series

On Tuesday I woke up and felt confused, but good nonetheless. While I am in love with Cora, my best buddy, and the 'in love' feeling is unrequited and hopeless, I still got to spend time with Cora. And since we're best buddies, I feel like I have a special place in her life.

Well, like, not sparkly and precious special, just, you know, I'm closer to her than the average Joe in the hallway. Excuse me, the average Brandon in the hallway. Ha! Take that and suck on it, loser! Thinking about Brandon getting the shaft in favour of mine and Cora's friendship... ah, that made me feel super.

I got out of bed, dressed, and went downstairs. Glenn and Linda were sitting in the kitchen, doing their crossword together. It's not quite as calm as one would picture: like, I'm sure you're imagining something kind of cute and low key. No, Glenn and Linda are still totally love sick about each other so there's giggling and kissing going on. Barf.

"Morning Robin," Linda said, smiling at me.

"Hey kiddo," Glenn said more casually, not looking up from the crossword.

"Morning," I said, walking over to the fruit bowl and grabbing a banana. They both looked at me and do you know why? It's because I didn't sound totally depressed.

"You're in a chipper mood...?" Glenn overstated. I can't do anything in this house! If I'm depressed I get concerned questions and if I'm happy I get suspicious questions.

"I'm on uppers," I said, peeling the banana. Linda started giggling, her womanly vocal chords making the giggles calm and throaty sounding. Glenn just tutted at me, not meaning it. Linda got a brownie point for finding my sarcasm funny.

"I'll catch you guys on the flip side," I said, walking out of the kitchen. Glenn ALWAYS says that when he's in a happy mood. It made Linda keep giggling.

"Keep it real! Have a good day at school!" Glenn called after me.

I ate my banana on the way to school. November was being quite co-operative. It was another sunny day. A little on the cloudy side, but the weak winter sun was still shining persistently. At school, I was walking through the parking lot, and I watched the Charger pull into its parking spot.

Cora climbed out of the car, taking off her sunglasses. Be still my goddamn beating heart! I don't need to be reminded how much I love her every single freaking time I see her. I know it, already!

"Hey BW!" Cora called to me. I waved and waited for her to join me on the sidewalk to school. She came over and linked her arm through mine (Oh, Cora. You're just clueless about what you do to me aren't you?)

"How's it goin?" She asked me, lifting her ubiquitous travel mug of tea to her mouth.

"Not bad, actually," I said. Her cheeks were puffed up with tea, making me giggle for a second, and then she swallowed.

"Good, good," She said, putting her sunglasses back on. Man, I must have looked like a geeky booking agent escorting a gorgeous rock star around.

"How are you?" I asked, since it's the social convention. And cuz I actually care about how she's doing.

"I'm doing good. I feel much freer now that I've given ol' douche puppy the ax," She said, chuckling and swishing her travel mug around. Oh, sweet music to my ears.

In Music Comp, since it was first thing in the morning, we turned out the lights and lay around on the ground in the dark. I got to select the songs and we were listening to Pink Floyd's "Is There Anybody Out There". Yeah, I was in Heaven.

"Once, Harold and me were hanging out at his house, lying on his carpet, listening to this song cuz he wanted to meditate, right? But then Harold suddenly, like, sneezed his brains out and got snot all over his glasses," I shared. Cora burst out laughing and clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her giggles. But her laughing made me laugh too.

"Yeah, it was pretty funny. Cuz he tried to block it with his arm, right? So the sneeze, like, backfired on him," I giggled.

"Ewww," Cora giggled beautifully into my ear. I grinned. We calmed down and were silent for a moment.

"You wanna hang out after school? Since it's so nice out we could go wreak havoc at a playground or something," Cora said.

"Sure," I accepted. I wouldn't care if she wanted to go to a freaking Hilary Duff concert, I would have said yes. Although, thankfully, I don't think she would ever want to go to a Hilary Duff concert.

Suddenly, the door to our practice room opened and fluorescent light flooded in. Cora and I sat up quickly, whipping our heads around at the intruder.

Mr. Giraldi raised one, thick, light brown eyebrow at us.

"... I don't know what's going on in here, but come out. I need to talk to the class about the exam," He told us, his voice suspicious. Cora and I stood up and went out into the main band room. We went and stood with the other students.

"Alright, so I'm sure you're aware that the end of the semester will be upon us in just a month or so. So I'm telling you about the final now. You're going to present what you've been working on, one of your projects at the end of term. I assume that you've all been working on music production and not just goofing off," He said, looking at the emo kids. Mr. Giraldi knows I am a type A music geek who takes music seriously. He didn't give me a dirty look.

"So you can either present on the Macs in the practice rooms or on the new software in the big practice room. Or you can record live music if you want. I leave it up to you," He said.

"Can we do it in partners?" One emo kid asked monotonously.

"Sure. On your own or in partners is fine," Mr. Giraldi allowed easily and then dismissed us. Cora and I looked at each other as we walked back to the practice room.

"Partner?" Cora checked, holding out her hand. My mind immediately pretended that she was asking me to be her partner in the love/sexual sense.

"Partner," I accepted to everything she could possibly suggest we partner up for, and shook her hand.