Stay With Them Tonight

ALLIE P.O.V.

I got up quickly from my computer station, and Jason took my hand to keep me from running out of the room. I looked down at it, and then at him. He looked a little surprised when he saw our hands, but focused back on me.

“Hey, the car’s not going anywhere. And you don’t have the keys,” he reminded me, smirking.

“I’m not riding with you.” I stared him down defiantly. He went from amused to curious when I didn’t say anything else.

He let go of my hand. I felt guilty again. He leaned back in his chair, and I sank back into mine, on the edge. I wouldn’t avoid it. If I told myself I would do it tomorrow, I would continue saying that every day for forever, and we would never talk about it.

This wouldn’t be pleasant, for me at least. It should be easy for him. I sighed.

“Okay, you want to talk about it, right?” I spun in my chair.

“No, I’ve just been asking you to talk about it for two days because I fucking felt like it.” He said it sarcastically, but almost to himself. I guess I deserved that, but I still glared at him, my anger flaring up.

“Maybe you did just ‘fucking feel like it,’ Jason! You’re not exactly the most eloquent guy in the world, and half the time I have no clue what you’re thinking! Can you blame me for wanting to avoid this?”

“Yes, because you’re acting like you’re three!” he exclaimed. “Danny acts older than you sometimes.”

I stood up and walked away. I pushed the door open angrily and joined the flow of students. He caught up with me in the hallway, moving ahead of me and stopping, so I would have to stop too. We stood, close enough to talk but not close enough to touch, glaring at each other. People moved on either side of us, and I had the thought that maybe we should move off to the side.

“Do you walk away from everything!?” he broke the silence angrily. Some people turned their heads toward us, but I kept my gaze stubbornly on Jason.

“Yes!” I conceded. “I DO walk away from everything, and guess what!? I don’t give two shits. I’m not going to stand here and talk about this!” I yelled back at him, although I didn’t move to walk away.

This conversation needs to happen, this conversation needs to happen, I chanted in my head, or else I would’ve walked away (again).

By now, there were a few people standing around, pretending not to listen in. I ignored them, feeling self-conscious. I didn’t like making scenes. I looked around, and the people. They quickly looked away, but some met my eyes with irritating interest and nosiness.

Jason was known to play around with girls. He was known to make girls angry. Rarely was he known to have been angry at a girl himself, the exception of course being Ginger. No doubt, I would be the topic of some rumor, and Jason would probably still look like the bad guy. I felt bad- this was as much my fault as his. He was just being his normal self; I was the one who had changed, in the fact that somehow I became attracted to him.

“Allie,” Jason said in a quiet tone that implied it wasn’t the first time he had called my name while I was assessing our growing audience.

“I get it. Everything was a mistake, and we were stupid, okay? I” I stared at a tree outside the window. It felt like there wasn’t enough air in the hallways, and I had walked out in the middle of the after-school rush. My phone buzzed, obnoxiously loud, and I looked down, seeing Tyler had texted me. I opened it. Jason was close enough to see it too, when he glanced down at it.

His gaze froze on the screen, but I didn’t look up at him to see his expression.

Ready? Excited? I’m out front now, we can be there in twenty minutes. The text wasn’t something with hearts or something in it, it didn’t imply anything more than Tyler was picking me up and that I should be excited. We could be going to get food, and I would be excited. Still, something inside of me wanted to hide it from Jason.

I don’t want him to think something’s going on between Tyler and I, I realized. I closed the phone quickly.

“I have to go,” I said, not looking at him. I moved past him, and this time wasn’t stopped. Something inside of me twisted painfully, and I realized I felt like crying.

It would have been worse if he had to tell me all that himself, I thought.

I moved blindly through the people until I got outside, found air. I breathed in deeply and smiled when I saw that Tyler was right at the bottom of the steps, leaning against his car on the passenger side. He grinned when he saw me. I felt a little better, my breath coming easier.

It was over. It sucked, but I knew that Tyler would be the perfect person to make me feel better.

*****

TYLER P.O.V.

“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” Allie said happily when we walked into the zoo. I grinned at her; when she was little, The Wizard of Oz had been her favorite movie. She hummed one of the songs from the movie as we walked along. For some reason I couldn’t place, she seemed a little down, but brightened up more as we came upon the first exhibits.

I turned my head to the sound of a man calling out for people to enter a scavenger hunt, and poked Allie. She looked up from where she was staring at a red golden pheasant, which looked like somebody had gone crazy with a paint brush. I nodded to the man.

“Scavenger hunt! First ten teams of two to win get fabulous prizes! Sign up now! Starts at three!” The man shouted loudly behind a stand which advertized the same event. They did this every so often, and the prize was usually some giant stuffed zoo animal or sometimes a swim with a dolphin.

I looked at the time- ten to three. By the time I went to look at Allie again, she had practically teleported to the man and was already filling out a sheet for us.

It seemed that I was doing a lot of laughing recently.

“I thought you might like to join,” I commented as she wrote down our names. There were up to three people in a team, but I didn’t mind it being just us. In fact, I was happy with it. When the man announcing the hunt asked if we would like a third member, I politely told him no. Allie was still intent on the sheet of paper she was scribbling on.

“Hey Ty, do you remember when we used to do this all the time?” she asked, setting down the pen.

“Of course. You stole my panda,” I teased. We had won a giant stuffed panda, and Allie had batted her eyes at me until I gave it to her, and I hadn’t let her forget it ever since. She grinned.

“I still have her.” She said.

“Her? It was a boy,” I said positively. His name was Spots; I was nine when I named him.

“Was being the operative word,” she laughed.

“What did you do to him!?” I asked, falsely horrified.

“You shall never know,” she rubbed her hands together evilly and broke down into laughter. I shook my head and chuckled. She was crazy.

We waited around, not allowed to look at the hunting list until it was time. When it was, there were five people handing out the lists to people who had entered the contest, and we ran off to find the first thing, “Pony Swings.”

*****

KELLY P.O.V.

I watched from the passenger seat in Ryan’s truck as Allie got into Tyler’s car and they talked for a minute before driving off. Jason walked out a few seconds later, ruffling his hair and going to his car. I looked back at the road. They had turned right.

“Babe,” I said as Ryan started the truck. “Do we have to do anything today?” I asked.

He looked at me curiously. “No.” He scrutinized me. “What? Do want to play stalker, my devious girlfriend?” I grinned, nodding.

“Plllleaaaase, Ry? Look on it as a date. I’m sure that’s what they’re on! We can double date. They just don’t have to know we’re there!” He chuckled at my antics and turned right onto the road.

“I love you!” I yelled as we caught up to them a minute later.

*****

TYLER P.O.V.

We both knew the zoo so well that we mapped out in which order we should go to get the things and ran off on the path to the right, which led to a children’s playground. The idea was that you took a picture with a member of the team with the object or animal on the list.

Allie wasted no time in hopping on one of the tiny pony swings and giving me a peace sign. I chucked and took the picture. She jumped off and skipped (yes, skipped- I adore this girl) over to me, peering around my arm to see the next item we had decided on: “Popcorn Vendor in a Blue Shirt.”

If you weren’t a regular of the park, you probably wouldn’t know that the vendors and all zoo employees are required to wear a certain version of the staff’s shirts, depending on where they were in a day. We definitely knew, and walked back onto the path until we found the popcorn vendor, a woman who had worked for the zoo, in the same place, for years.

She was indeed still wearing her blue shirt, and I would have been baffled to see her in any other color. We didn’t know her by name, but by face, and she vaguely recognized us. Allie pushed me into the frame of my camera (so we didn’t wind up with pictures on different phones) and snapped the shot.

We were halfway down the list when we began to head into a crowd to see the animals in the aquarium. We needed “Cardboard Killer Whale,” which was a huge whale on a standing poster in the aquarium.

Allie started falling behind, being much shorter and easier to lose in the crowd. I took her hand, smiling as I did so. She looked down at our hands and blushed. I turned away and continued wading through the crowd, still holding onto her hand.

When we made it out, I didn’t let go of her hand. We walked to the next animal on our list. I thought it would be okay if we were there, looking for things and holding hands, all night.

It continued like that until we got to our last item, “peacocks.” I had taken a chance and entwined my fingers into Allie’s.

“Wha-wh-” she stuttered, blushing like crazy. I shrugged and smiled, bumping shoulders to calm her down. It seemed to work. I had partially convinced her that I wasn’t doing anything unusual. After all, we were already really close. I wanted to see how she would react with us acting like a couple.

I wanted us to be.