Hold on Tonight and Mesmerize Me

“Well, well, what do we have here?” Eugh. Why must they always start with such cliché lines? I swear I could get that line out of most movies and books.

The girl who just spoke up – Kelly, an ordinary name for someone so shallow - , stepped forward as she flipped her hair over her shoulder. Thank god I wasn’t behind her… I could smell her heavy perfume from 5 meters away.

“From you guys totally not being like super-happy now, I’m guessing you’re missing the party at the pond this Saturday.” No sweetie, we’re acting like this because you’ve come within 10 meters of us and are trying to make contact with us. But Steph stepped in before I could say a word.

“Actually, as it happens, Antony personally invited us to the pond over a week ago,” she fluttered her eyelashes. Wait. WHAT? “He said that it’ll be worth our time away from our own lovely parties if we came to this one.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up a sec. The one everyone heard of, but knew nothing about? Sure there were a few rumors but how many of them were true?
He was invited to just about every party there is here, the hosts hoping that they can weasel out some of his well hidden identity. Of course people have talked to him, but he generates a dark persona that stands out even to the most imperceptive of us. There is no way that he invited us. He never asks. People beg.

Kelly blinked. Once, twice and then a third time. She opened her mouth then closed it to strut off, fuming angrily as she went, scaring all the 1st formers who had the ill fortune to be in her way.

Stephani bit her bottom lip to keep from vocalizing her silent laughter which was currently causing the locker she was leaning against to shake dangerously. I shot her a mock evil glare and mouthed “Later”. Boy did she have a bit of explaining to do.

She slammed her locker shut and did a ballerina twirl just for the fun of it motioning for me to do the same. Smirking I slammed my locker shut while doing a twirl then as it closed I grabbed her hand and started tangoing with her up the corridor to the parking lot.

As we exited the building I stopped the dancing to locate her bike & my car. Damn my extreme short term memory. But at least I remember important things and a few days afterwards I would remember what I should have known at the time.

She rolled her eyes mockingly and swept me a bow, gesturing to the west wing to our right. There our chariots waited, gleaming in the afternoon sun.

My brilliant blue Honda Accord stood in all its unimpressive glory, an average car that I had spiced up with about $100 worth of spray paint and some awesome stencils I’d made out of spare cardboard. In spite of the model, it looked a pretty sweet ride.

But even my car was nothing next to the stream-lined Kawasaki motorbike that her best-friend had spent so much money, time and effort on in both buying the original, then altering it to the point where it made rides from Hollywood spy movies look like a clumsy, amateur lump of metal. She was damn proud of it and guarded it with an electric field – yes, she literally uses electricity to make sure no one messes with her bike, the switch she somehow added to her ignition keys as part of the mechanism.

Don’t ask me how she did it. I’m pretty clueless when it comes to bikes, but if someone needs to know who lives in a pineapple under the sea, I’m your girl.

“WHO LIVES IN A PINEAPPLE UNDER THE SEA? SPONGE-BOB SQUARE PANTS!” Steph yelled at the top of her voice. Speak of the Devil…

She cracked up at her own retardedness and doubled over, tearing up. I snickered at her psychic abilities and let her lean on me to get her breath back as we strode over to our own ways home. I stepped into the confines of my car as she put a leg over her bike.

“My ride is better than yours… nana-nah-nah-nana!” My friend is so mature isn’t she? I gave her a side-on look through my slightly tinted window and grinned.

“Call me when you get home?” My grin widened into that of a Cheshire cat. She was so screwed if she didn’t tell me outside of school either. It was hard enough to hold out in front of my classmates.

She gave me a wink before slipping on her matching helmet. “’Course I’m calling, usual time ‘k?”

I revved my engine in reply, to which she answered with an impressive rumble from her. Why do two wheels always sound better then four?

She took off and did a wheelie around the bend going out of our school, whooping in excitement. I shook my head and followed her, pressing my pedal to the floor once I’d gotten out of the maze of corners surrounding our school.

Driving was one of the only things I could do to get my mind off of things, ‘things’ being why Steph decided to use Anthony’s name to gate-crash a party.