The Story of Us

Once upon a time, on the night of the international dinner at her small, private school…

All the classes were gathered together in the cafeteria with the customary food from the country they picked. The tables were cleared out and pushed against the wall, and the only tables remaining were for the food. There was China, Australia, Spain, Italy, Egypt and a lot of other nationalities, but most people were gathered around the American table where they had KFC and hotdogs. Go figure.

The first graders’ ran around with chopsticks and little Chinese hats, while I stood outside my classroom door wearing a Mexican poncho and sombrero, willing someone to come into our classroom where we had all the Spanish speaking countries. So far the we hadn’t been too popular with the crowd.

I sighed as I walked back into the classroom and stood next to my project on Mexico. My boyfriend Nick stood next to his project on El Salvador. I took my hat off and placed it on his head.

“This hat makes my head itch,” I explained.

Nick smiled and grabbed the guitar I had brought because it had Spanish designs on it. He started to play a Spanish song and I laughed.

“And what are you playing?” I asked. Nick shrugged.

“I have no idea.”

I turned away from Nick as someone walked into the room. He looked around at the other displays, then left. I frowned.

“No one cares about my project.”

“Mine too,” Nick agreed.

“This is boring, let’s go look at the other rooms,” I suggested, taking Nick’s arm and pulling him out of the room. We walked around to all the rooms in the west wing of the school, then walked down the narrow hallways, and past the bathrooms to the east wing of the school.

We walked down another narrow hallway and walked through the door to the left at the end. On the left side was the country China, the classroom on the right side was Australia, but no one was in there, so we took China.

Inside the room it was just about as dead as the Spanish countries room. I looked to the left and saw a girl about my age-17-sitting at the teacher’s desk, texting somebody on her phone. She had long brown hair that went halfway down her back, and she was wearing a pink Hollister shirt. I turned away to see Nick staring at her, a smile on his face. His eyes met mine and he quickly looked away.

“Hey, this is China, so where is Godzilla?” he asked excitedly. I looked at him strangely. He was usually so mellow and calm, why was he acting like this, unless…unless he was trying to impress someone. I grabbed his arm.

“Ok, let’s go-now,” I said quickly.

“No, I wanna look at this stuff in here,” he said as he continued to look at the decorations in the room. I know what you wanna look at, I thought in my head. I walked out of the room and stood in the hallway and Nick followed a few seconds later and we began to walk back to the west wing.

“I saw that,” I told him coldly. He looked at me quizzically.

“Saw what?”

“Saw you staring at her.” Nick stopped and looked at me strangely.

“I wasn’t looking at her, Marlene.”

“Whatever,” I said with a roll of my eyes. I looked back at him. “Do you think she’s pretty?” Nick shrugged.

“Yeah, sure.” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“That’s all I needed to know,” I said as I turned on my heel and walked away.

“Marlene-”

“We’re through!” I cut him off. Did he not realize how it made me feel when he stared at other girls?

“But why?” he asked, a hurt look on his face.

“Because, I’m tired of you staring at other girls,” I stated. I rushed away from Nick and back to my project. I stood there for a little bit, but only about one person came through, and I was too upset to even say anything about my board. Nick was my first boyfriend, my first love, but I was his second girlfriend, and I wouldn’t have had a problem with that except for the fact that he was still in love with his ex when we started dating.

That was a few months ago, and while he swore he was over her now, I was still wary of him. I’d been burned in the past, and the last thing I needed was a broken heart. I always had a constant suspicion of him checking out other girls or leaving me, and it didn’t help that everyone in my school made up rumors of him cheating on me or telling me that if his ex ever came back he would leave me for her. On the inside I was broken, and I was still trying to heal. I’d gone 17 years without any guy paying me a bit of interest, so why did Nick like me so much? Deep down I felt like no one ever liked me before because I was nothing special, so what did Nick see in me? What stopped him from wanting another girl? What if he felt I wasn’t enough for him?

After a while I left my board to go search for Nick. I should try and fix this at least. I found in the next room. Nick was sitting on a desk pushed against the wall, studying a giant paperboard pyramid in the middle of the room. A boy was standing next to him, talking to him about some videogame. Nick was nodding and mumbling a ‘yeah’ when it was called for, but he looked bored to death.

“And then in Black Ops, you have to…” As soon as I heard the mention of Black Ops, I tuned out. I’d never played any videogame that required a Xbox. The boy boring Nick to death looked about his age, 15, maybe a little younger. He had brown hair that was a little but longer than Nick’s but not by much. He had rosy cheeks and lips so full of color it looked unnatural with bright green eyes added into the mix. I walked over to Nick and stood beside him, waiting for him to be finished talking.

I waited a few minutes, figuring the boy would stop talking soon and leave, but he continued talking for about ten minutes before I interrupted.

“Uh, Nick, I need to talk to you.” Nick nodded and I looked back at the boy, but he was still talking. I pulled at Nick’s sleeve and he followed me into the next room. When we got there Nick let out a sigh.

“Man, that boy could talk forever!” he laughed. When I didn’t laugh in response his expression became serious again. “What?”

“I-” I tried to begin, but Nick cut me off.

“Don’t even say anything if you aren’t here to work it out,” he said simply. I glared at him, mad that he had cut me off.

“I do want to work it out!” I said angrily. Nick remained silent.

“I don’t like you looking at other girls because-” I started, but Nick interrupted me again.

“I wasn’t checking her out. I just looked over and noticed her and though ‘eh, she’s kinda pretty’, but not like you. On a scale of one to ten she’s about a five, but you’re…you’re a 5,000. She’s not nearly as pretty as you, and I would never cheat on you.” As mad as I was before, it was hard to stay mad at him when he said stuff like this. I looked up and saw sincerity in his eyes.

“Really?” I asked uncertainly.

“Really,” he confirmed. I smiled as I stepped forward and hugged him.

That night I patched things up with Nick, I also unknowingly met Bryce’s little brother Jamie. I couldn’t really tell them apart at the time, even though they were 4 years apart, Bryce being 18 and Jamie being 13, but I also saw Bryce at the dinner too.

That was the first time, and the second time recognition sparked in my mind when I saw his face. It was during the spiritual oasis week at my school. Being a Christian school, they decided to block out the first half of our classes at school and instead bring us into the sanctuary and bring in a guest speaker to speak to us, then we had 30 minutes of ‘worship’.

To them worship consisted of dancing around, speaking in tongues, and falling down and having people catch them. I sat down in the last row in the back. This was all too strange for me. The church I went to was never so…charismatic.

I sat in the back and waited for Nick to join me, who was standing in the middle of the floor, head bowed, probably praying. At least he wasn’t wailing and yelling in gibberish no one could understand.

I turned to look at the double doors on the right side of the back wall that lead out to the main hallway. I wished I could just leave and get away. Near the door stood a plump woman with blonde highlighted hair. Behind her was a boy that looked slightly familiar, holding a baby. I wondered if it was his baby, he looked too young to be a father. The woman walked forward and went over to a girl laying on the floor, praying and talked to her. I turned back around in my seat as Nick came and sat by me.



That was the second time I saw Bryce, and a few other times after that because his mom came often since three of her younger children went to the school. When school ended that year, I wouldn’t see him until the beginning of the school year in the fall, and that was when my life would change.