Rebel Love

Alexandria’s POV

When my alarm went off the next morning, I so did not want to go to school. I couldn’t face Dennis at school today after what I’d one last night. I slowly trudged to my bathroom and turned my straightener on before walking down the stairs. I could tell by the Monster cans on the counter that my Mother had pulled an all-nighter. I walked into her studio to glance at what she was making for a couple minutes. I looked at the picture on the easel, and was shocked at what I saw. It was a portrait of me in my outfit last night. I am awestruck; I don’t know what to say. My Mom turns around and sees me gawking. She blushes and looks embarrassed.

“I’m sorry Lex, I know you don’t like being painted and I should have asked your permission.” She apologizes.

“Mom, you don’t need to apologize, this is amazing. I mean…. Wow.” I am without words.
“I’m glad you’re not mad. I’ll ask next time though.”

“Mom this is great. You need to put this out on the market, and I need to get ready for school.” I hesitated for a minute more looking at the painting. I don’t think of myself as beautiful, but this is a beautiful picture.

I head upstairs to get dressed, not sure what I want to wear today. I rifle through my closet, trying to find something that looked good. I opted for a Pierce the Veil shirt and my bright purple skinnies with my rainbow studded belt to keep them up. I headed into the bathroom to do my hair, after splitting up my hair into three sections. I finally got done with my hair and I put on a layer of eyeliner on my waterline. I headed into my room to get Asking Alexandria jacket and my backpack. I slipped on my shiny silver toms and headed out the door.

The day was still kind of gray, but a bright gray because the sun was trying to break through the clouds. I turned up my iPod and walked in time with my music until I got to the door. I opened the door and ran smack straight into a girl with bright blue hair. Her books and papers went flying everywhere; I scrambled to help her while hiding my bright red face.

“I am so sorry!” I exclaimed

“Hey it’s fine, it was just an accident. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.” She smiled as she said it. “Do I know you?”

“Probably not I just moved here. Do you know Abbi and Alan?”

“Yeah they’re a couple of my best friends, why?” She got a puzzled look on her face.

“They sat with me at lunch yesterday. I was just wondering I need to make new friends” I laughed nervously.

“Well you might be adding two more people to your lunch table today.” She said as he coyly walks away.

As I walk down the hallway I wonder what she means by two. I walk up to my locker, unlock it and grab my Spanish book and rush to Spanish and take a seat next to Alan. I notice that Tony and Victor are at this table, another with another boy who is clearly Mexican from his features. His hair spiked up everywhere and he is smiling really big.

“Guys this is Alexandria I told you she’d be sitting with us.” Alan introduces me.
I supply a small wave.

“Hey, I’m Victor, but you can call me Vic.” Says the smaller Mexican boy with bangs that swoop across his forehead. I notice he has a ring in his right nostril, and his eyes are warm and welcoming. I mutter a greeting to him.

“Hi, I’m Tony.” Supplies the Mexican boy sitting next to Vic, his ears are stretched some and had a dermal under his right eye. He lowers his head in sort of a shy manner as I greet him.

“Hi, I’m Jaime. You look really pretty today.” Supplies the Mexican boy who was smiling outrageously big. I blush at his compliment and greet him as well.

“If you guys are Mexican why are you taking Spanish?” I asked

“English is our first language, and the school can’t discriminate classes because of race. We wanted to expand out Spanish vocabulary” answers Vic.

“Yeah and all of the little assholes have A’s in this class.” Muttered Alan a teasing smile on his mouth.

“That has nothing to do with anything. I had an A at my old school and I have no ounce of Mexican, Puerto Rican, or anything like that in my bloodline.” I challenged.

All of the guys looked at me with shocked expressions. I got the clue that not many people challenged Alan. He looked surprised himself, and opened his mouth searching for a comeback.

“You know what Covington? You’re alright.” He says as a wide smile plays across his mouth.

All of the guys nod in agreement, and then we all get to work on the conjugating verbs worksheet due tomorrow. I glanced up every few minutes to notice Jaime staring at me and he would look away embarrassed each time. The bell finally rang and we all rose at the same time. I dreaded my next class, Algebra 2. I sucked at math, and it was always my worst subject. I always got a C in that class no matter how hard I tried.

“What class do you have next?” I hear someone ask me as they walk up next to me. I notice that it’s Jaime from Spanish. He still has an extremely wide smile plastered across his face.
“Algebra 2, what about you?”

“Same, you wanna sit by each other?” He looks hopeful.

“Sure” I say with a smile on my face. Jaime is so nice I can’t help but smile. We head toward the class, and as the class goes by I notice how good he is at this and I frequently ask him for help.

“Hey, if you ever need help I could tutor you?” Jaime says as we take separate ways to our next classes.

“You really mean that Jaime? That would be amazing let me give you my number.” I quickly put my number in his phone and he puts his in mine. We both hurry off to our next classes; I had just barely made it before the bell rang. My next two classes pass by quickly and before I knew it, it was lunch time. I went through the line and grabbed a bag of Doritos and a Sunny D, and bought before I could judge myself on my dietary options. I took a seat next to Abbi who has somehow made it through the line before me. She was texting someone and had a giant mile on her face. She looked up and looked surprised when she was there.

“Dani will be here any minute.” She informed me.

“Umm, who?” I ask and feel stupid for not knowing.

“The girl you ran into this morning. I guess she never gave you her name.” Abbi giggles.

“She seemed really awesome.” I declare.

“There she is now.” says Abbi as she points across the room.

Dani is taking her time in getting here, she’s in no hurry. I notice some things about her now that I didn’t notice this morning. Her hair is bright electric blue, she has her spiderbites done and as her hair flies out as she’s walking I notice an industrial bar in her left ear. She has on the same Pierce the Veil shirt on that I do, but she has paired her with black skinnies and vans. Her hand in linked in someone else’s hand and for the first time since she entered I noticed a towering figure next to her. Dani was pretty short and her boyfriend was easily a foot almost two taller than her. He had black hair and ring in his right nostril, like Vic. Only seeing as to how this boy was in high school I wondered how he had coned his parents into letting him get a full sleeve on his left arm and a chest piece. Dani took the seat next to me and next to her, her boyfriend sat.

“Nice to see you without having to throw my books around.” She teases as she sits down. “This is Robert Carlile, my boyfriend if you couldn’t tell.” She laughs and as she does I notice she has her tongue pierced as well.

Before I can say anything back to Dani, Alan shows up at our table with three very familiar looking Mexican boys. One of which who looks overly excited to be sitting here and takes the seat directly across from me. I avert my eyes to avoid awkward eye contact.

“I noticed you have your tongue pierced, is that a pokeball tongue ring?” I direct my question towards Dani.

“Hell yeah,” She responds, ” Pokémon is the shit. What about you? You got your tongue pierced?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have a badass tongue ring like that.” I stick out my tongue to show her the purple zebra stripped tongue ring I bought last week before moving.

In turn Abbi sticks out her tongue to show us a plain silver one that showed us she was still in the healing process. We had alight conversation about piercings and then the bell rings and sixth period passes by fast. I am faced with the class I have wanted to avoid all day. Maybe if I act sick then the teacher will let me out of class.

I walk into the classroom and notice that he is already in his seat with his head facing down grabbing things out of his back pack. I remember we have a test today as I walk towards my seat. I am grateful this means that the class will be quiet most of the period. The teacher tells us to make walls between each other as he passes out our tests and grabs our study guides. I finish my test fairly quick, and Dennis finishes right after me. He takes down our wall he built with his folders. I made the mistake of looking over and we make eye contact.

He is literally so beautiful he takes my breath away. I want him to be mine so bad, but the fear of being hurt drives me away. I can see the questioning look in his eyes; he’s confused about our encounter yesterday. He looks away and grabs his notebook and tears out a sheet of paper. I look away and grab my notebook and start writing a song. Suddenly there is a tiny folded square of paper in my lap. In cute, sloppy boy letters it reads:

“Can I be so lucky as to walk you home today?”

I write back almost immediately:

“Of course you can.”

I almost immediately slap myself for not thinking it over. We both continue to do our own thing until the bell rings. We both start out the front of the school; the walk home is silent except for the sounds of cars driving past us blasting music. We get to my house and there is a note stuck in the mail slot that reads:

“I’m going to be gone until tomorrow, they decided to take your portrait to a sow tonight and have it auctioned off. It would have been really late by the time it was over so I’m staying here for the night. Love you, there’s money for pizza on the counter. Don’t get the cops called –Mom”

I chuckle at the warning; it was similar to what Dennis’ parents told us last night. I had no choice now but to invite him in. I was sure he read the note, and I didn’t wanna be a dick.

“Would you like to come in?” I ask nervously

“I’d love to” Dennis replies.
I make a shortcut through the kitchen to grab a Mountain Dew from the fridge.

“Help yourself to whatever you’d like.” I wait for him as he grabs a Mountain Dew and head up the staircase, making my way to my room. I got there a little bit before he did, thank god I did I thought as I yanked the bra off my door handle and threw it onto the floor of my closet. I’m such a slob sometimes, I think to myself as I shake my head. I walk over to the Wii I have in my room and grab two Guitar Hero guitars from next to the T.V. and I start the game remembering what we had played yesterday at his house.

He smiled, and seemed surprised but he took the guitar wordlessly.
The conversation between us while we played was light, and consisted of the people I knew at school. He advised me on who to stay away from, and what people were okay to hang out with. We kept up mindless conversations about our parents as we ate pizza. Finally he announced he needed to go home. I walked him to the edge of our sidewalk, and looked up at him.

“Are we really not gonna talk about what happened yesterday?” He seems upset

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I lied

“You know damn well what I’m talking about. You can’t tell me you didn’t feel that connection!” He exclaims.

He’s right I can’t deny it, but I can try and hide it. As he’s speaking he’s getting closer, until he’s practically pressed up next to me. Without warning his hands wrap around my waist, pulling me closer. Without thinking about the consequences, I lean up on my toes and press my lips against his. My arms find their way around his neck pulling him down to my height.

Fireworks are everywhere, I feel so light and bubbly. The kiss lasted for a good minute before I realized what I was doing. I pulled away abruptly, and he looked confused.

“I’m sorry I can’t do this.” I explain.

I turn around and run up to the door before slamming it shut and sliding down the door until my butt meets the floor. I cry for a good twenty minutes before getting and looking out the window. Standing at the end of my driveway with a hurt expression on his face is Dennis Compton.