The Real ***tangle

I’d imagine that if I saw Graham everyday instead of only three days a week, my mind would have been going even crazier. But as it was, I was becoming slightly paranoid about him. I was cautious of what he said to me, how he looked at me and even his reactions to things I said. At first I thought I was over analyzing it all as I often do, but I couldn’t be too sure.

But of course, I have to go and make things worse for myself, even if just in my head.

Being a writer like I am, I tend to take real life events and say to myself, “With a little tweaking, that would make a great story!” and proceed to write a story about something that would never come true. That’s what I thought I was doing with this situation.

I got home from the party Sunday and started thinking. “What if Graham and I started having an affair of sorts behind Sarah’s back? It would never happen, but that would make a terrific story.” So that was how ‘Fucktangle’ came to be started.

***

Monday being the first day of school, we didn’t go out to march during our band period. Instead, we stayed in and discussed game day procedures and sorted out paperwork and such. I kept getting the feeling that I was being watched and nearly every time I surveyed the room, I saw Graham shifting his head the opposite direction. I thought I was just being paranoid; he wasn’t the one that was watching me, surely.

I tried coming back for lunch that day, but I completely missed the first lunch period. By the time I got to the school, it was the beginning of the second lunch period already. Seeing as how I made cookies to bring in on Monday and only B-lunch got them, I said that I’d come back Wednesday with cookies for A-lunch.

By Wednesday, ‘Fucktangle’ was coming along quite well and I already had it planned that Sarah was going to find out that Graham cheated on her and flip out. I hadn’t written it yet – I didn’t even know how she would find out yet – but I knew it would happen soon in the story.

Wednesday I showed up about a minute into A-lunch and sat down next to Thomas. “You can take Herbs’ seat today. And Graham will probably sit there,” he said, motioning to the seat next to me. Kill me now. “Herbs doesn’t need a place to sit. He can sit on the floor or something,” he joked, smirking.

At first not a lot happened, but one the lunch line died down and out table filled up, things got a little more interesting. I was mainly talking to Thomas an Emily, so I didn’t pick up on the entire conversation. All I managed to hear was Etienne, our French freshman cymbals player, say to Graham something to the effect of, “That’s why you and Sarah broke up, isn’t it?” and Graham laugh the question off.

I was so taken aback. Did they actually break up or was Etienne being sarcastic? I didn’t want to say anything for fear that they did break up and I was the reason for it. So I tried ignoring the weird feeling I was getting in my stomach and go on with lunch.

That didn’t happen.

The breakup was mentioned close to five times within the next few minutes, but I dismissed it as the boys running with Etienne’s joke. A couple minutes after the last mention, it was brought up again, and Graham must have finally gotten fed up with hearing about it.

“No guys. None of that is why we broke up,” he almost snapped.

‘Shit. Fuck. Oh my damn. They broke up! What the hell?’

I tried not making it noticeable, but I turned away from Graham so he wouldn’t see my shocked face. I shoved another bite of my pasta in my mouth to keep it busy so that nobody else saw my shock either. I didn’t want anyone to suspect anything, but I think someone did anyways. Thomas looked at me and smirked right then, probably because he knew I didn’t know about them breaking up. I gave him a glare that told him to shut his face before I hurt him and he quickly looked away.

The conversation of Graham’s love life continued for a while, and when he got up to go to the bathroom I turned to Emily.

“When did they break up?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

“Last night, I think,” she shrugged. “I heard he did it over a text message.”

Now I took that as ‘he broke up with her because of a text,’ but I later thought that maybe it was supposed to be, ‘he broke up with her via text’.

Either way, he broke up with her and I couldn’t help but have a nagging feeling that I had caused it.

***

After school that day, we had a band rehearsal, which I was almost late for since I’d fallen asleep reading for English class. I walked onto the practice field, trying not to drag ass, with a bit of a scowl on my face. Everyone was already in their positions to start warming up, and when Thomas saw me walking onto the field he yelled out, “Woo! Jessi Black everyone!” and clapped. It was kind of a band tradition to do that to anyone that walked in late. Someone would always cheer for the person and start clapping.

I threw my things off the field and took my instrument to my spot. As I passed the line of trumpets, I glanced at Graham and he smiled at me, lessening my scowl slightly. But that just reminded me of lunch and I nearly groaned out loud. I looked around the field for Sarah and when I saw her, I couldn’t possibly have felt any worse. She looked like she was having the worst day of her life, which very well could be true. I felt terrible, because I still felt as if it was my fault. She looked towards me but I quickly averted my eyes; I felt way too horrible to look her in the eyes directly.

Practice went pretty much without incidence, except for the fact that my mind kept going back to Sarah. Did she know about the party? Was she mad at me? Did she even know why they broke up? Was that why she was so sad? She’s not going to punch me if she finds out, is she?

I eventually stopped thinking about it and let practice continue on like normal. I did avoid her as best I could, but I didn’t think about it like I did at first. I also didn’t worry myself into oblivion like I could have.

After practice, I went out to my car and saw Cora and Nadine sitting on the stairs waiting for their parents to pick them up. I stopped to talk to them and must have caught Cora at a real opportune time.

“Hey, uh, hold on Mom,” she said into her phone, looking up at me quickly. “Could I wait at your house for like a half an hour? My mom will pick me up then, but she’s taking a bath with now. Is that alright?”

“Yeah, I'm sure that’ll be fine,” I shrugged.

“Okay, great,” she smiled, putting her phone back to her ear. “You can pick me up at Jessie’s when you’re done. Yeah, uh-huh, sounds good. I love you too, bye.”

We waited until Nadine’s dad came and got her before we left, because we didn’t want to leave her there alone.

I was kind of glad Cora was going to come over, because I’d told her earlier that I was going to call her later and that I had something important to tell her. So since she was going to my house, I talked with her about it as I drove home.

“Okay,” I started, looking at her as I turned the key to start the car. “So you know how Graham and Sarah broke up?”

“Yeah, I heard about that. Do you know why?”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. I have a really bad feeling that it was because of me,” I said kind of awkwardly, pulling out of my parking space.

“Seriously?” she gasped, laughing slightly.

“Yeah and I'm kind of freaking out about it,”

“Well why do you think it’s because of you?”

“Because I'm pretty sure he’s been flirting with me all day,”

“So?” she chortled. “Maybe he just likes you. That’s different than you being the reason they broke up.”

“It’s still kind of disconcerting, you know?”

“Well, do you like him?” she asked with a smirk. I didn’t even need to look at her to see it; I could hear it in her voice. I can read her like a book and I always have been able to. I knew she was probably going to do this, and I was right. Leave it to Cora to try and set two people up the day after the one got out of a relationship.

“Eh,” I trailed off a bit. “Yeah I think I do kind of.”

“Then who gives a shit? If you like each other, then date. There shouldn’t be a problem,”

“I'm afraid of Sarah,” I sighed, noticing that I was getting really close to home.

“You should detour so we can keep talking,” Cora laughed, noticing the same thing. “But you don’t need to be afraid of her.”

“Well I'm not really afraid of her; I'm just afraid of hurting her,” I admitted, turning down a road that led back into town. “I mean, I'm also kind of worried she’d want to punch me.”

She laughed and said matter-of-factly, “She’s not going to punch you.”

“No, but she’ll probably hate me,”

“Jessie, I can guarantee you that she isn’t going to hate you,” Cora said softly, looking at me out of the corner of her eyes.

“I'm just worried about it, is all,”

“Yeah, I know, but try not to be. Even if Sarah finds out that he did break up with her for you, she won’t hate you. She may not like you as much as before, but she’s not going to hate you, I promise,”

“I hope she won’t,”

“So you do like Graham then?” she asked, the smirk finding its way back into her voice.

“Yeah, I think so,” I giggled. Right then is when I knew that I did in fact like him. I never giggled unless I talked about a guy I really liked. Or if I was just being sarcastic about something. So that one giggle told me the answer to the question Cora was so interested in. Yes, I really liked Graham and couldn’t help but love that he broke up with Sarah.