It's Not You. It's Me. And No! He is Not My Boyfriend!

“HEY GIRLIE!” Melissa greeted me with the chipper voice only a loud and obnoxious high school girl could muster for our second period class. “Where’s your boy toy?”

“Now come on here!” I huffed with offense. “I liked the Twilight books and all, but I didn’t buy the actions figures. Even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t be bringing them into school with me. I’m not really into caring about what other people think, but even I know that would be complete social suicide.”

“I mean your boyfriend!”

I looked towards the heavens in deep thought for bit, as if I had no clue what she was talking about.

“OH OH OH!” I faked the moment of realization. “You mean Carter! Pft,” I shrugged with a scoff, “Why would he be here? He doesn’t have this class. I believe he has English this period to be exact.”

“He does,” Melissa agreed, receiving a slightly disturbed look from me. I knew she was the class sleuth and all, but it’s never a good sign when your friends know your boyfriend’s class schedule better than you do. “But I meant that he wasn’t in AP Chemistry this morning.”

“Ew. He would take AP Chemistry.”

“You didn’t know that?”

“What?” Mac’s voice joined the conversation as he took his customary seat next to me. “Ellis didn’t know we had a gymnasium.”

“HAH!” I narrowed my eyes with sarcasm. “Funny.”

“NO! Worse! She didn’t know her boyfriend was in AP Chem! But seriously, where is he?”

I shrugged before replying, “Hell if I know. I didn’t even know he took AP Chem. Clearly, I’m not the expert on all things Carter.”

A vibrating sound emitted from by back pack. I was getting a rare and coveted in school text message. Something I rarely got, considering I had about four friends and I usually had no reason to talk to them during class. I loved them and all, but I could only talk to them so much. I didn’t need the constant contact of in class texting. I always kind of wondered about the kids who did it consistently. Who did they talk to that they were able to keep up conversations all day? It seemed a bit pointless to me. If one wasn’t going to pay attention in class, why not do something more productive like sleep?

“Where’s Mr. Shueler?” I scanned the room for our militant history teacher, sticking a hand into my bag to riffle for my cell.

“I think he said something about going to the bathroom,” Melissa informed, her sonic ears picking up useful information for once.

“Perfect!” I flipped open my phone to the blinking glory of a text message alert. I might be taking it a little far to say it was like Christmas for me, but it was. I opened the message with excitement only, once scanning the contents of it, to replace that excitement with a groan of disappointment.

Yo B. Can you get my books for me. I e-mailed my teachers and I got my homework. I’m sick...no thanks to you!”

“AW MAN!”

“What?” Melissa leaned over her desk trying to catch a glimpse of my text.

“I have to get Carter’s books for him. He’s sick by the way. Mystery Solved.”

“That sucks!” Melissa flipped a non-caring wrist. Being sick wasn’t a good story, so she was not longer interested in Carter’s whereabouts.

“Are you going to Jenny’s party on Friday?” she skipped to the next pressing subject.

“Yeah.”

“There’s a party on Friday?” Mac re-entered our conversation.

“Yeah, a Halloween party!” Melissa nodded with excitement.

“How do you guys know about all these parties?”

“HELLO?” Melissa yelled, gesturing to herself with an expression as if to say “don’t you know who you’re talking to?”

Mac nodded his head in realization, getting the connotation of the gesture.

“Right. Right. Silly me.”

“What are you going as?” Melissa turned her attention back towards me.

I rolled my eyes. I always seemed to forget that a Halloween parties meant that girls had to dress up as the sluttiest thing possible save from being naked. It was kind of debased when one thought about it, as the guys usually didn’t dress up at all. It was more of an excuse-for-girls-to-wear-vagina-showing-skirts-and-get-away-it party.

“The Virgin Mary,” I smirked proud of my smart-aleck reply timed perfectly so that Melissa couldn’t respond as Mr. Shueler entered ready to start the class.

***

I balanced a hefty load of text books in my hands, shifting the weight of them so I could ring the Jenkins's doorbell. I slightly cursed Carter, my hands tingling with pain of sustained holding of heavy objects, for liking school so much. I knew why he was so muscular. One had to be fit in order to carry around the college level books he bombarded himself with.

“Ellis!” Mrs. Jenkins’s shining face greeted me moments after I rang the horribly annoying door bell. It was one of those one’s that chimed out a song of sorts. The kind of thing only sickeningly sweet suburban homes have. “This is so kind of you!”

“Thanks Mrs. Jenkins!”

“HI!” Kyle, poked out from behind his mother’s leg as she ushered me into her home.

“Hey Kyle!” I greeted him as jovially as one could when they were carrying their weight in books.

“MOM!” Carter’s voice groaned in agony from the second floor of his home. “I’M THIRSTY!”

“One second!” she called back while rolling her eyes. “You’d think he’s suffering from the plague,” she said to me.

“Well you know men,” I joked politely. “They get a cold and they think they’re dying.”

“I AM DYING!” Carter obviously had heard our witty banter.

“MEN!” Kyle threw his hands on his hips, joining in on our remarks.

Both Mrs. Landoor and I shared a chuckle and a coo over the apparent and squeez-him-until-his-head-pops-off cuteness of Carter’s younger sibling.

“He’s upstairs if you hadn’t noticed. Ellis is here!” she called up to her son, “So I better not come upstairs to find that bedroom door closed!” she scolded threateningly as I made my way up the stairs.

“I am almost an adult woman! You can’t tell me what do to do anymore!”

“If you want to make it to your eighteenth birthday you’ll obey my rules!”

“Pft! Mothers,” I walked into Carter’s room to him muttering under his breath. “Think they own the world because they bare the fruits of labor.”

I rolled my eyes with a slight chuckle. I also had to force myself to focus on Carter’s boring navy blue bedspread. He sat up in his bed shirtless reveling his very nicely sculpted chest, causing me to began to ponder what he slept in. I felt it best for me to stop the thoughts as my mind quickly hopped from plaid pajama pants to naked, which would’ve definitely caused me to possibly throw myself at him. Something I really did not want to do considering his current state. I didn’t want to get whatever lake disease he had caught.

“Here are you books,” I dropped the pile on the bed next to him with a sigh of relief and then massaging of my arm muscles.

“No hello, how are? I’m only dying over here!”

“Last time I checked, most people survived the flu.”

“Well won’t you feel horrible if I die?”

“Get back to me when it happens,” I plopped myself down on the vacant spot on Carter’s full bed.

He puckered his lips for a kiss, his eye closed in anticipation.

“Don’t even think about it. I don’t want to get sick!” I pushed his ever encroaching face away from mine.

“Oh sure!” Carter thew his hands up with sarcasm. “First! You try to kill me by making me swim in freezing water! Then! You don’t even grace me with a kiss even though it’s all your fault I’m sick in the first place.”

“I brought you the books! What more do you want?”

“A kiss. I thought that was clear.”

“Not happening.”

“Fine!” Carter harrumphed crossing his arms over his chest. “At least stay and do your homework with me.”

“Deal. I have to go out the my car and grab my books though. I’ll be back in a second.”

Bag in hand, I entered Carter’s room ready to get my day’s homework done. Carter had already spread his work about his bed, deeply immersed in a physics book. Upon my entering the room he looked up with a doofy grin on his face, and while rubbing his stomach said,

“Mmm. Physics.”

“It’s what’s for breakfast,” I dead panned, clearing a spot for myself at Carter’s desk. “You have papers here from ninth grade! When’s the last time you cleaned this thing?”

“Sometime before ninth grade obviously. Besides, don’t you know that messiness is a clear sign of a genius.”

“Or a slob.”

“I’m going to go with the former.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go with the latter.”

We lapsed into silence, each of us concentrating on our various homework. Our pens scratching in gentle humming over the general noise of living in a house with a stay-at-home mom and a three-year-old brother. I was struggling to read a story for my AP Spanish class. One would think after three years of honors Spanish one could speak the language fluently, but whomever thought that was dead wrong. From what I gathered there was a boy and his family who were migrant farmers, traveling from town to town so the boy could never finish a school year. There was also something important about his father finding a blue tie, but I couldn’t figure out the significance of it.

“Do you know what Amistad means?” I broke our scholarly silence. I had given up on trying to figure out the word on my own, but was too lazy to reach for the Spanish-English dictionary tucked away within my back pack.

“Je parle Français.”

“Ah,” I flipped a wrist at him. “What good are you? Wait. You take French?”

“You just keep making that case that you’re part ostrich.”

“Well, if it makes you feel better, Melissa probably knows you take French. I think she knows your whole schedule. She knew that you had English when we have history.”

“No. That makes me feel considerably worse. Now I can never hide.”

“Whatever,” we lapsed into silent work again.

“Hey!” I once again broke our studious silence. “Are you going to Jenny’s party on Friday.”

“Nah. I can’t. Family function. The mom mobile will have a fit if I skip out.”

“The mom mobile? Your mini van will be mad if you don’t go to a family function.”

“Well, when I say that I mean that I might get run over by the mini van if I try to get out of it. Are you going?”

“Yeah I think so. I don’t know what I should go as.”

“A nun.”

“Really?” I tapped the edge of my pen against my lip as I brainstormed possible costume ideas. “I was thinking wood nymph.”

“I think that’s a terrible idea.”

“You do?”

“You should really just go as a nun.”

My phone buzzed in my back pack, forcing me from the conversation. I damn well knew why Carter didn’t want me to go as a wood nymph, but I wanted him to admit it. Boys hating admitting jealousy or possessiveness. It gave us girls the upper hand. Not like I didn’t have the upper hand already.

I pulled my cell phone from my bag and flipped opened the cover.

Will you be home for dinner tonight?

The text came from my mother. She had finally get the gist of texting and found anyway possible to use it.

Yeah. At Carter’s right now. Be home soon. I quickly typed back before slipping my cell back into my back pack.

“What’s wrong with a wood nymph? I have it all worked out. I have a green tutu from my sister’s last dance recital, and then I’m going to buy fake Ivy to make my shirt,” if the norm was to be reveling then I could at least do it artfully.

“No! You are NOT wearing that!” he reprimanded me, shaking his head furiously.

I was actually taken aback by his out right forbearance. Since when did he have the right to boss me around? One boob grab and they think they own you.

“Excuse me?” I cocked my head to the side, one eyebrow raised. “I really don’t think it’s your place to tell me what I can and can’t wear.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not letting you wear that! Especially if I won’t be there.”

“Well, I wasn’t really asking for your permission.”

Carter heaved a big sigh. Sure, I felt a little bad for starting an argument when he was sick, but I also kind of didn’t care at the same time.

“It’s just that there will be boys at this party.”

“Like most high school parties.”

“I don’t want guys ogling your half naked body. Especially if I won’t be there to protect you.”

“You mean you don’t want guys to see my half naked body if you’re not there to show off that I’m your girlfriend, and then bare you teeth to any guy that looks more than twice.”

Carter lips tugged into a devilishly cute crooked smile.

“Maybe.”

“Well don’t worry about it!” I began to pack up my books. Dinner was calling me, and I could never ignore a call from dinner. “Mac will be there to protect me,” I gave Carter a quick peck on the forehead, making the mental note to scrub my lips once I reached home, and flounced out of the room.

“Oh yeah!” Carter called sarcastically from the bedroom. “That makes me feel a lot better!”