Beneath The Moon

Holly’s room was, for lack of a better word, awesome. It was a mess, for starters. There were clothes lying about everywhere, including a couple bras and random underwear. Her dresser, which was immediately to the left of me, had a mirror balanced on it that was covered in random comments written in expo marker. It was also covered in a mountain of make-up products. A Barbie was perched on top of a shelf. Its eyes were heavily covered in black pen, her eyebrow pierced with a earring stud, her hair a tangled yet seemingly planned-out mess, and her dress black, velvet, and showing large amounts of her thigh. The closet to the left of me was open, and contained nothing but black, red, gray, and dark purple clothing. There were posters everywhere. I’m not sure that I actually saw a piece of untouched wall. The posters featured various bands, celebrities, and photography. She had dozens of bouquets of black roses pinned to one side of her wall. It was like she was growing her own dead, wilted garden. There were also pictures that she had taken herself.

Many were artistic sort of photographs, but the majority of them were of crowds of people.
Probably noticing that I was staring at the crowds of people, Holly opened her mouth. “The crowds of people are from various concerts I’ve been to. It seems that freaks like me hide out until it’s time to go to a concert. So I take pictures of the crowds. I like to study people.”

“You’re not a freak,” I mumbled loud enough for her to hear me.
“Whatever, shithead,” she said cynically. “We’re going to school soon, so I’m gonna take a quick shower and get ready. That okay?” I nodded, and she took off to the bathroom adjacent to her room, grabbing a towel from her bed along the way and shutting the bathroom door [well, as much as it could shut; the knob couldn’t click into place so the door was left open a good inch or two].

Seeing as the only other thing to do was snoop around her room, I decided to sit on the window seat instead. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Ow, I thought. My pants were tight and constricting, and I only really wore them for vanity, not comfort. Plus, when guys wear skin-tight pants, it automatically draws attention to the homophobes and pisses them off. That’s what my purpose in life is. I smiled to myself thinking of that. I chewed on my thumb. My nails were painted black, and I’d have to re-do those sometime soon. That was just one more thing on my list of things that pissed people off. Thinking about it now, America is really a very sexist country. Women are expected to wear dresses, care way too much about make-up and hair, and be shopaholics. Men are expected to watch the game on Monday night, play sports, and spit. When was the last time you actually saw the typical American man/woman profile?

Interrupting my thoughts suddenly was the lack of the sound of the shower. I sighed, and Holly suddenly appeared with a towel wrapped around her body. I breathed deeply, bit my lip, and looked down at the floor to keep myself from saying or doing anything stupid. But she did look gorgeous; hair wet, make-up running, nothing but a towel on. I tried to repress any of those thoughts, but she looked over at me and I couldn’t help but look back up and glare into those beautiful eyes.

“I’m going to get dressed; could you help me out and gather all that shit on the floor into my bag?” she asked. My mind screamed, Of course I’ll help! I’ll do whatever you want me to! but I merely nodded and scrambled to the floor. She headed back to the bathroom with a pile of clothes in her arms while I loaded papers into her bag. Momentarily I looked over at the bathroom door, but it was cracked farther open this time. Through the crack I saw Holly just beginning to slip on her bra. Shit, I wasn’t supposed to see that, I thought. I bit my tongue and finished filling up the bag, maybe focusing a little too hard on the task at hand.

“Ready to go?” Holly asked, flipping her hair once and ruffling it so it would dry faster.
“Who’s ever ready for school?” I responded.

“True,” was her reply. She took the bag from me and we headed off to school, and I couldn’t help but picturing her again, in the bathroom, putting her bra on.

Once at school, we stopped by the snack store before heading to pre-calculus.
“Two coffees, regular,” Holly demanded. The guy behind the counter went to work on filling our cups up as Holly turned to me. “You like coffee, right?”

“Yea, I’m kind of addicted to it,” I said. She smiled without showing her teeth.
“Good, because I’m addicted too. And even if you didn’t like it, I paid for it so I would have goddamn well have forced it down your fucking throat,” she explained. I laughed. “Violent in the mornings, aren’t we?” I asked.

“Eh,” she groaned, handing the guy her money and grabbing our coffee. We both downed our cups in a matter of minutes. We had gotten absolutely no sleep last night, and the only things that kept us going that day was caffeine and the knowledge that we shared all of our classes together.