Chasing the Future

What I worry about most, while to most would be considered strange and irrelevant, was what stories I would tell my grandchildren. Being a teenager, still sipping from the fountain of youth, usually none of this should concern me in the slightest.

My mind should be brimming with adolescent problems like my grades, boys and how I looked in a pair of jeans like every other teenage girl. I just was never good at following the norm, I supposed, but it was one of those things that I could just never find the cure for. One of those thoughts that would always lurk in the back of my brain, it was.

For as long as I could remember, my grandparents would wave me into the living room whenever they came to visit. Once everyone had said their greetings and were settled in, busying themselves with other affairs, my grandparents would tell me these stories. My grandma especially, she loved to vicariously live through her teenage memories and I loved watching her entire face light up when she did.

To me it was as if each word erased her age by the years and suddenly there was the simple teenage girl in front of me again, telling it as if it were yesterday. They weren’t just any stories either, the incredible things my grandparents went through were fascinating- a lot more than I could say for myself, at least.

I loved hearing about how my grandma once dated a mafia member, or how she was a nanny for these spoiled, demonic children and all the other shenanigans she got up to when she was younger, no doubt she was a wild one, much unlike myself.

Then my grandpa would tell me about how he fell for my grandma and their stories together, how their love blossomed over the ages, how he managed to finally catch her eye after so long of pining from afar. He always told those ones the best, I think, with their hands fitted together as they sat on the couch, myself on the ground with a pillow underneath, their glancing back and forth with each other. Almost as if they were sharing their life secrets with me.

It was my favourite part of them coming to visit because even though they might tell the same stories one, two, three times or more, it was as if I were hearing it for the first over and over. Sometimes they broke out new ones- as I got older, my ears a lot less innocent, but I had a special place in my heart for the tales I’d heard as a child.

I could remember the creamy walls of the living room, sunlight pouring in from the window to the left and crawling across our skins, as if the sun was always brighter those days. All those memories seemed to be tinged a golden-yellow hue whenever I thought back.

My parents never told me these sorts of things, in fact I knew almost next to nothing about their teenage lives. I’d asked them a couple times here and there but they’d give me a look and brush it off, telling me to finish my dinner, and so I did. I figured it was a grandparent thing, passing on the tales of their youth; it was special like that, that bond.

Even though this was years away and I should’ve only been concerned with living in the present, supposed to be living the stories instead of thinking which ones to tell, it still bothered me sometimes. When something monumental happened, I had to stop and think- would this be a story to tell my grandchildren?

I didn't think I’d ever tell them about Austin, I thought to myself, while he glided effortlessly into the chair next to mine. I never knew how he did it; I always made a symphony of scraping chairs, a flurry of papers, and my binder meeting the hard top desk. Austin was different that way, like a mouse he could just pitter-patter on the lightest of footsteps until he was there, right beside me, stealing my breath away with how sudden.

I barely even noticed it sometimes; looking up to see his dark brown eyes and feeling a sense of shock overcome me by the new presence, much too sudden for my liking. He laughed, every time, and told me he was magic.

“Boo,” he whispered in a teasing fashion.

“Your wizardry is no match for me today,” I told him, quite happy with my response. I thought it was clever that morning when I prepared myself for what I was going to say to him.

I never liked to be unprepared.

He grinned cheekily, and I gave him a slight quirk of the lips in response. No, I don’t think I’d ever mention Austin, not yet at least.

When Melissa bounded through the door, I could already feel myself slightly recoil from the booming voice she managed to broadcast across the classroom. It was a wonder how such a small little girl could produce something of that volume, almost as if a blow-horn was permanently lodged in her throat, everyone constantly reminding her to tone it down a bit. She never did though, maybe even got louder.

It was amusing to hear Nora imitate her, even though I liked the girl, I found it funny nonetheless. Even Noah sometimes took a crack at her whenever I brought Melissa up in feeble conversation, finding anything to excuse the awkward silences that threatened. I found myself talking about almost anything.

More than a few things though, I kept lodged in my throat.

“Ana, when did you start having sex with Noah? And when did you decide not to tell anyone?” she asked with an accusing finger pointed my way, gaining more than half the class’ attention in the process.

I immediately felt my cheeks burning a deep cherry red, my eyes widened and my head immediately shook 'no' fervently. I could feel their eyes slicing into my skin with curiosity and it took everything in my bones not to make a mad dash for the door. My throat was parched. My stomach was knotted. My head felt like I had just spent too much time on those spinning tea cups.

“Um, what?” I sputtered out, confused.

“Do you ever think before you speak, or…?” Austin asked beside me, and I couldn't tell if he was joking, but Melissa didn’t seem to care much, her attention avidly focused on me.

I wanted to crawl into a little comfortable cocoon and hide forever, swathe myself in a comfortable fortress, bury myself into a shell and live the rest of my life without their eyes burning across my flesh. I almost wish I could’ve hid in my own body like Rasputin, head sheltered safe in the pit of my stomach with an ostrich mentality: if I couldn’t see it, it wasn't happening. It was the wishful thinking that always got to me.

But I couldn’t, and had to endure it all the same.

“Oh come on, I totally heard from Whitney that she saw you guys hanging out, alone,” she emphasized the last word and I felt my gaze suddenly find entertainment in the tiled floor.

“We’re just friends,” I mumbled, gulping and feeling the dry sides of my throat rub against each other. The others were listening in subtly, making small conversations but their eyes kept glancing over in my direction. I cursed Melissa for being so loud.

“Just friends?” She leaned in suspiciously close.

“Just friends,” I confirmed.

She didn't seem to believe me at first, but when she took her seat and began rambling about a girl I didn't catch the name of, it seemed I had finally caught a break. They both had stepped into usual routine of barely noticing my existence and I was much more than content with that, because the less talking I had to do the less I was forced to try and not make a fool of myself.

Oddly though, in the middle of the conversation, Melissa stopped midsentence to stare at me. It was almost as if a light bulb had flashed over her head.

"You look a lot like Amelia."

I was taken aback. "Who's Amelia?"

"No one, no one," Austin brushed off, returning back to their conversation about Mr. Pickett, a teacher they both shared and hated. I didn't pay much mind to it though, and moreover became concerned with the English worksheet in front of me that was a lot harder without the teacher moving through it.

It was true though, I had to admit, that I had been seeing a lot more of Noah. We had only hung out after school twice, but whenever we crossed paths in school he'd always grin down and engulf me into a hug, always a little too strong for my tastes, but that's just how Noah was with everything.

Those couple times alone though, were rare. And Nora refused to join us when I had invited her along to maybe spare some awkward moments, but he never let them happen anyways.

It was easy with him, sometimes, when I felt myself relaxing and just letting things go. It was nice not having to think about how I would sound or if what I said was witty enough or anything like that. It was almost like our conversations were waves rolling across the ocean, pulling me in whatever direction it went.

That was the thing about Noah though, one moment I could hardly breathe and the next I could’ve been Buddha himself. But now, with this those thoughts swimming around in my mind, I could hardly even begin to relax. Just Friends. Just Friends.

Just Friends?
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He told me to meet him there, in that park, after school. I remembered reading the words from my phone. Remembering how I had been avidly avoiding him for the past two days. I figured it was only a matter of time before something was going to be said.

I was much more of a later rather than sooner person, though, and had been pushing it off.

When I saw his dark hair and tanned skin, I took a deep breath through my mouth, preparing myself for the worst. Not that I hadn’t already ran over what I wanted to happen more than a million times, hoping to be able to keep up with any curve ball he threw at me.

When our gazes met his face broke into a grin and he waved me over. I walked over. He sat down on the park bench. I sat down beside him.

Sitting next to each other, our thighs were barely brushing against each other, his leg only inches from mine. But not enough to touch. Just barely. Enough for me to notice and for the breath to hitch in my throat.

“So,” he began. “You seem a little more on edge than usual today.”

That was true. All that had been plaguing my mind was Melissa’s words and it was hard not to be a little tense around him with the questions lingering on the tip of my tongue. I remember quickly patting his back with he leaned for a hug and only using short, one worded answers for his questions. I didn't mean to come off cold, but I was more than aware that I had been.

“Maybe,” I admitted.

The awkward silence spilled between us.

It was the sort of awkward that made every heartbeat feel like an eternity had passed, my tongue ran along my teeth as I scampered for anything to say, when all I really wanted to do was make a break for it in the opposition direction like I always did. For a moment I felt my muscles twitch in a familiar fashion but I kept my body planted on the wooden bench. I told myself that I was done with running.

Outside the sky was a The Simpson’s blue, with that almost too pure colour and the right amount of white fluffy clouds that looked like it was stolen straight from the television. There were a couple of giggling freshmen off to the side, huddled in their little group that caught my attention for a moment. A couple passed us, too smitten with each other to notice the dog belonging to the middle aged man and almost ramming their legs into the Border Collie.

My brother used to love dogs, adore them more like it, but my father was allergic so we were never allowed to keep one. That’s why my brother used to beg to go over to my grandpa’s when he first got Thunder. He knew almost every breed there was, it seemed, and it was always amusing how he’d immediately brand the kind whenever we passed one. I had picked up a few over the years.

“I never know what to expect from you,” I finally breathed out.

He stared at me before a grin sprouted across his mouth. “I could say the same for you.”

“I’m really a lot more predictable than you are.”

He scoffed. “Of course you think that, because you know what you’re thinking.”

“What are you thinking then?” I asked, genuinely curious. My fingers toyed with the zipper on my sweater, up and down, up and down. I was never the unpredictable one. Up and down, up and down. Easy to read like a book.

“I’m thinking that I want to know what you’re thinking.”

He did that sometimes, I found. He had this charm that even though he could so easily turn the tables, I hardly ever gave it another thought. It almost seemed natural when he said it. Whenever we disagreed he always won because of that.

“What do you think of me?”

It was the question that had drifted in the recesses of my mind for so long, finally being brought into the sunlight. It had always been there, but I’d managed to stuff it down with small talk and promises that I’d do it tomorrow.

It was finally tomorrow.

He stopped for a moment. I stared at him in anticipation. The group of girls dissolved into laughter that rang through my ears. Noah took his sweet time.

“I think you’re… Anastasia.”

“And what’s that suppose to mean?”

“I’m not sure yet, but it’s good.”

I smiled at him, which he returned, and he didn’t even notice when I slipped the ten dollar bill into his hood.

I think I'd like to tell my grandchildren about Noah.