I've Got Myself to Blame for This

Monday morning we found ourselves back in the bright, busy, loud hallway.

“Why do they give us new lockers every year?” I squinted at Steph, as we made our way down the hallway. We had a few minutes before our first classes, which, unfortunately are not together.

“Because there are new students every year, and they have to be in alphabetical order!” Steph laughed, and I rolled my eyes, “That’s stupid.”

“This is my class,” Steph turned towards the open door.

“My class is before your class,” I told her squinting.

“I know,” She smiled, “We passed it a couple minutes ago.”

“Stephanie,” I groaned turning and hurrying back down the hall.

“See you at lunch!” She called after me. My first three classes were super boring, and why do I have to have the worst classes all in a row, when I’m barely even awake. When lunch finally comes around, I don’t even bother going to my locker. I just make it into the lunchroom and drop my books onto the same table that we’ve been sitting at for the past two years. Mon comes over with one of her guys and sits down. I give her and Gabe a small smile as Steph comes over.

“I think the food may be even worse this year,” She groans sitting her tray down. I smirk pulling my own lunch out of my bag.

“Guys,” Monica says quickly, leaning forward, “That’s him!” She points excitedly, and Stephanie hits her hand, “Stop pointing.”

“Who?” I squinted at her, glancing to my left.

“That guy from my cousins school that I was telling you about, remember?” When I didn’t respond she huffed, “Blade.”

“Oh,” I nodded, “Where?”

“Over there,” She whispered, and she nodded her head in the direction, “The creepy one sitting alone.”

I raised an eyebrow glancing around before I spotted him.

I’m still not positive why people call him ‘Blade’. It could be because of the pocket knife that he’s sitting there, flipping the blade out then in, and then out then back in again. Over and over. Or, it could be how when he looked up, right at me, it felt like his eyes were piercing me. Like a blade. I contemplated this for a few seconds, before I realized that I was still staring, rather obviously, and he was returning it. I looked away quickly, and Monica laughed, “He’s creepy enough.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, laughing weakly.

///

Stephanie, Monica, and I all have a silent agreement. That agreement being that Steph and I don’t ask Monica about the bruises on her arms, when she comes to school with a limp and a black eye we act like everything’s normal, Mon and I don’t ask Stephanie why she always hurries to the bathroom after she eats, or why she’s always wearing long sleeves or big bracelets, when her sleeves slide up we don’t mention the deep cuts lining her arms, and they don’t ask me about any shit going on in my life or with my grandma.

All of this understood, it’s only normal that when Monica isn’t at school until half way through lunch the next day, we don’t even act like we notice that she was late, and we definitely don’t notice the scarf tied tightly around her neck. We merely continue our conversation like she was always there, and when she mutters something about not being able to go home tonight, Stephanie just talks about our plans to go see a late movie tonight and skip school tomorrow, like that was the plan all along. It’s a nice arrangement.

We went to see another movie, and this one was slightly more tolerable than the other one, but still boring as fuck, and why on earth do we enjoy torturing ourselves like this? We always see the movies that get the worst reviews, or the ones with the most twisted plots, hoping that maybe they will be oddly good, and though there are a rare few that are, most of them are shitty as the critics wrote.

Stephanie was, once again, glued to the screen, and I don’t get what’s with her and movies, but whatever. Monica had left the theater about twenty minutes ago, and I sighed. She was supposed to bring us more sodas, and popcorn. And Steph’s gummy worms of course.

“I’m gonna go check on Mon.” I told Stephanie, who nodded slightly, before I got up and exited the theater.

I didn’t have to look very hard as I found her leaning over the concession stand counter, flirting heavily with the guy I’d met the other week.

“Monica,” I spoke, “Did you get the popcorn?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, motioning beside her on the counter, “J, this is Brendon,” She said reaching forward to put her hand on his chest, “He’s a senior at our school.” She was rubbing his chest as she explained this, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, “His shift is over in half an hour, so I thought we could go get ice cream.”

“Great,” I nodded, “I’m going to go back to Stephanie though.”

I grabbed the stuff from the counter before heading back into the theater.

I handed Steph the gummy bears along with her drink, and the movie ended about twenty minutes later.

“Where’s Monica?” She squinted.

“She met someone,” I told her smirked, “So, we’re going out for ice cream with him after this.”

“Oh, joy,” Stephanie muttered.