There She Goes

At the beginning of sophomore year, there were... Rumors. All sorts of stories floated about in high school, some good, some bad, some just plain vicious. However, this one only caught her ear because it sounded suspicious.

“I heard he slept with Mallory Caine.” A whisper drifted from a seat ahead of her in her calculus class, where she sat at the back of the class and didn’t do any work.

“How did he manage that?! He’s like, a total string bean.” Someone cackled, and there were giggles before the ancient and impatient teacher turned around to ‘ahem’ loudly.

At first, Natasha didn’t care too much, because she didn’t know who ‘he’ was. But then, in the cafeteria, there were more whispers.

“… John O’Callaghan slept with…” she heard in the line-up for a veggie burger, and she frowned. John slept with someone? No way.

“… Slept with Mallory? That lucky bitch! He’s so delicious…” a whisper, again. Natasha was beginning to wonder if the two were connected, and walked to the gang’s normal table, where John seemed to be deep in thought over his mac ‘n cheese, as Jared punched him in the arm, laughing. “How the fuck did you f-“ He was about to ask, before John silenced him with a glare. “Hey, Natty.” John managed, and Natasha mumbled a ‘hi’ and ate her hotdog, quietly trying to listen to all the whispers.

--

By October, it was all far too obvious that John slept with Mallory. Mallory, Natasha found out, was the school’s cheerleading captain, and with a DD bra size and the tiniest waist since corsets were all the rage, she was ‘smoking.’ Natasha also found out that Mallory liked to conquer boys one after another, using them as social-climbing objects and throwing them out like used tissues after she was done with them. Natasha’s head was about to explode, but she decided to wait until she could talk to John in private to discuss it.

John came over to play X-Box on a Sunday, and Natasha confronted him while they were blowing up zombies on Resident Evil.

“Hey John… Know anything about Mallory Caine?” she asked innocently, and John’s face turned paler than normal as he swung a baseball bat, blowing off several zombie heads. “I think I’ve heard of her, why?” he asked nervously, biting on his lip as Natasha started gunning down several undead humans.

“No reason.” Natasha lied, teeth gritted. “There was some shit going around school that apparently you slept with her.” She pressed the buttons with much enthusiasm, taking out her anger on the controller.

John didn’t reply, and Natasha knew she had him. “Did you?” She asked cautiously, pausing the game and turning around to face him, putting the controller down cautiously as to not throw it against a wall.

“Did I what?” John asked innocently, still holding onto his controller, and Natasha bit her tongue before calmly and quietly asking, “Did you sleep with Mallory Caine?” The hurt was far too evident in her voice to deny, she knew, and she was scared that John had actually gone and made the worst mistake in his life.

John quietly replied, “… Yeah.” He couldn’t deny it. If he did, he was a fool – it was all over school that he, John O’Callaghan, a sophomore, had slept with a senior cheerleading captain – hooked up with her in a closet, no less – and John regretted it now, watching Natasha’s disappointed glances, her arms crossed now.

Natasha was quiet before replying, “Okay.”

“… Okay what?” John asked, looking up at Natasha directly in the eyes now. “What do you mean, okay? Aren’t you going to… Kill me? Slap me across the head? Call me retarded?” He listed, and Natasha shook her head, replying, “I can’t make judgment on your choices. You can do what you want.”

“What the fuck do you mean?” John asked, getting alarmed now. This wasn’t like Natasha. Natty cared about his life. Natty always berated him, when he came back home after getting wasted at a kegger, puking in her parent’s bushes. Natty always made sure he did his homework. This wasn’t his Natty, and frankly, he didn’t know what was going on.

“I said, I don’t care.” Natasha snapped, getting annoyed now. “It’s your life. Fuck it up however you want, I don’t care. You’ve fucked up before.”

“Don’t you get it?!” Finally John yelled back, getting up on his feet now. “I want you to care! I want you to yell at me for fucking shit up. At least then I know you care!”

Natasha stared at him, from where she sat, before slowly getting up on her feet. She got face-to-face with John (which wasn’t too hard – Natasha was tall. Like, a bit taller than John, still.), raised her arm and slapped him across the face.

“I. Don’t. Care. Anymore.” She slowly pronounced, her face expressionless. “If you’re going to continue your bitching, you can fucking leave.” The pitch of her voice rose slowly from a low monotone in the beginning to screaming and shouting at the end of the sentence.

John cupped his already red and swollen cheek, staring at Natasha in shock, before picking up his hoodie off the floor and exiting the room.

--

John was staring up at the ceiling, mentally kicking himself in the nuts. Mallory was great in bed, you couldn’t deny that, but Mallory Caine, with her DD bra size and her tiny waist and short stature, wasn’t Natasha, his best friend since fourth grade... And that was the thing.

John was thinking about Natasha. Her voice played like a record in his head, smooth with a slight edge to it. The touch of her fingers, her long slender legs, the way she laughed when John was being stupid, her perfectly round, almond-shaped eyes the color of honey. Natasha was gorgeous, perfect – and way out of his league. John knew Natasha would never date him. But the night they kissed – back in the 7th grade, playing seven minutes in heaven – that memory refused to leave his tired mind, and he longed for her touch.

He’d fucked her up. He knew that. Something had changed in Natasha. Her warm hazel-yellow eyes had turned cold, her normally expressive face and voice had been traded in for stone statues. He regretted all the stupid decisions now – partying all the time, smoking weed, drunken kissing. He didn’t want any of it anymore, even if it was just for laughs. He wanted Natasha, his best friend back.

Finally, after ten minutes of wistful thinking and wishing, he sighed. He knew that Natasha wouldn’t talk to him for the rest of his life now – and to be honest, John didn’t blame her. He gave away his virginity to a cheap, peroxide blonde slut who wore far too much makeup, and he knew he was going to regret it.

--

For the rest of sophomore year, Natasha didn’t speak to John.

She didn’t look at him, ever.

She pretty much acted like he was the invisible man. She was getting along well with the others at the table – Kennedy, Pat, Garrett, Jared, and Halvo – but the John Ohh was treated like he didn’t exist. John tried talking to her every once in a while, but Natasha never replied with any kind of answer, ever. Eventually, school was over, and Natasha didn’t contact him at all during the summer.

John went to Natasha’s house on his birthday. Natasha answered the door with a cigarette in her mouth, shoving past him and lighting the end of the cig, inhaling smoke.

“… I thought you might want to go out… You know, birthday, tradition, etcetera.” John said, and Natasha paused, taking another drag off her cigarette, before replying, “Let’s go out to the movies.”

So John and Natasha walked all the way to the matinee movie theatre where they played old black and whites for two dollars, and the only ones in there were some college students sleeping and the two of them, sitting in the back. The fire alarms in the theater didn’t work so Natasha smoked cigarette after cigarette, and John found himself missing the old Natasha, the one who would laugh at his stupid jokes and actually talk to him. This new Natty was so… Distant. John found himself hating every minute.

The two went out to a cheap diner where Natasha stopped smoking and the two ate waffles at 8PM, Natasha drenching her waffles in berry syrup and whipped cream and John putting on normal maple syrup on his.

John walked back Natasha to her house, and Natasha gave him a blank nod, saying thank you for the meal and all the pleasantries before entering her house and shutting the door behind herself.

John stared at the door, as Natasha went up the stairs and shut a door behind her – probably her bedroom door, John knew, and John walked back to his house, longing for something that he knew was missing in his chest.