Tame Chapter 1

After school Dan drove me home talking about his first encounter with Heather that had occurred earlier today. He sounded extremely excited as he spoke, however I wasn’t really listening to him. My thoughts were louder than the sound of his voice, muffling any of the words that he was saying.

I wasn’t sure how I had done it, but I had managed to go the remainder of the day without shedding a single tear. The problem with this was that I was unable to make eye contact with anyone because I feared that one glance at anyone would allow them to know everything that I was trying to conceal in my heart.

Dan appeared oblivious to my unusual silence and lack of eye contact, mainly due to the fact that he was still excited about how he had worked up the courage to talk to Heather. I wanted to listen to him, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Mr. Richwood.

I had been trying to suppress any thoughts about him because I knew that thinking about him would cause me to re-evaluate the awful truth about his relationship with Miss Daniels. This would then lead me to cry.

Throughout the school day I had been devoting my attention toward my work, but now as we sat in the car the thoughts I had so desperately tried so to suppress were beginning to emerge in my mind.

I felt like a fool. Every moment I had shared with Mr. Richwood suddenly felt wrong and made me feel foolish to think that he could ever be interested in me. My mind began to repay every special moment that I had shared with my Art teacher that had presented me with an ineffable happiness. These thoughts were quickly diminished by the realization that they were nothing and that to Mr. Richwood, Miss Daniels was everything.

I could help myself as a tear escaped from my eyes and rolled down my cheek. Dan didn’t notice because he was far too focused on the single road that led toward his home in Northern Avenue. He was talking a great deal about Heather.

I didn’t want him to see me cry. I tried to wipe my face, but the tears I had held inside of me all day could no longer be restrained behind my eyes. I felt like there had been a dam inside of my eyes that had broken as I began to sob heavily.

Dan turned his attention to me and a look of concern crossed his face.

“Amanda…are you okay?”

I couldn’t answer him. I wanted to lie and tell him that I was fine, but the truth was that I wasn’t okay. I began to sob even harder. I covered my eyes with my hands to catch the many tears that were now leaking from my eyes.

I managed to peek through the cracks of my hand to see that Dan was pulling the car over to the side of the road. He switched the gear to park and then turned to address me.

“Amanda,” he said in a low, concerned tone. “What’s wrong?”

In response to his question I began to cry louder. I felt Dan’s hands peel my own hands from my face. He turned my head to face him and cupped my face in his hands, forcing me to stare into his genuine worried eyes.

“What’s wrong Amanda?” he asked soothingly. “Are you okay? You can tell me. Why are you crying?”

I found my voice and said something that I wasn’t expecting myself to say.

“I…I want to go home,” I said between sobs. “Please, just take me home.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes…I can’t talk to you like this. Please, take me home.”

Dan looked hesitant to let me escape from his presence without a clear explanation for my sadness, but agreed to take me home. He started the car up and turned it in reverse in the opposite direction to drive me home.

There was an uneasy silence lingering in the car that was filled every now and then with an occasional weeping sound from me. He glanced over at me every now and then, but didn’t say a word. I think he realized that talking to me about whatever it was that was upsetting me wasn’t a good idea right now.

When he reached my house, despite the way I felt I managed to thank him before making my way inside the house.

_______________

It was Saturday afternoon and I was still lying in bed staring up at the ceiling.

Yesterday, I had spent the entire time after school lying in my bed crying, until eventually I ran out of tears. I didn’t eat anything because my sadness was appetizing enough. It didn’t physically fill me up, but instead made me emotionally far too exhausted to climb out of bed and fix myself something to eat.

I had heard my mother come home in the middle of night, but I didn’t get out of bed to greet her because I knew that one look at me and she would know that something was wrong. I couldn’t possibly explain to her the troubles that I was having so I pretended to be sleep until I heard her enter her own bedroom to begin her own sleep cycle.

I had spent most of the night thinking about Miss Daniels and the newly rising hatred I had developed for her. I didn’t understand how I didn’t notice that they were dating from the start. It would explain how Mr. Richwood knew about my Art Club troubles. I was under the impression that Miss Daniels had told him about it on one of their dates.

My thoughts took me to places I never thought that they could journey. I imagined a future where Miss Daniels and Mr. Richwood were married with a bunch of kids, laughing together, and enjoying their life together.

The entire thought made me sick to my stomach. I knew that marriage and children was all an exaggerated insinuation I had made based off my feelings of jealousy when the only that was going on between them was that they were dating, but I could help it.

I told myself that it was immature and even childish to hate Miss Daniels simply because she was dating the man that I loved, but none of that mattered to me. I couldn’t help the way I felt about her. I felt betrayed and this made me dislike Miss Daniels even though she really hadn’t done anything wrong.

After my thoughts of Mr. Richwood and Miss Daniels subsided I began to think of Dan. I felt guilty about running out on him so abruptly yesterday and not even listening to him tell me about Heather. He was really excited when we were in the car yesterday, but I was too depressed to even listen to him. I decided that I would give him a call.

________________

I climbed out of bed a little after noon and made my way downstairs to eat some breakfast. I opened the refrigerator only to find that there wasn’t a lot of food inside. Mom needed to go shopping soon for more food.

I grabbed some milk and the box of Captain Crunch to eat for breakfast. Once I filled the bowl to rim, I took a few bites and then grabbed the cordless phone off the wall to call Dan. He had given me his cell phone number when we had first started his Heather lessons.

I called his cell phone only to be told by a recording of his voice that I would have to call back later since he was busy. I waited five minutes and then called again only to be told the same thing. I was going to have to wait for him to call me back.

I finished my cereal and then was unsure of what to do. I usually spent Saturday’s working on homework, drawing, watching TV, or simply going for a walk in the neighborhood, but today I didn’t feel like doing any of those things.

I thought for a moment and then decided to spend the day cleaning up the house hoping the busy work would keep my mind off Mr. Richwood.

My house was extremely small and the only rooms in the house were my bedroom, my mother’s bedroom, the single bathroom the house had, the kitchen, and the family room. We didn’t have a basement or an attic. Since the house was so small I knew that cleaning it was going to be simple.

Half of the time my mother wasn’t home and I spent a majority of the time in my bedroom, therefore most of the rooms were pretty clean with the exception of a few spiders that choose corners in the house as their home and the layers of dust that began to form over areas that had not been touched by the presence of a human.

I choose to save my room for last. I went through each room either vacuuming or sweeping the floor. I cleaned all the windows and mirrors. I didn’t take long to clean each room. My mother’s bedroom had several piles of dirty clothes that needed to be washed. I shoved them in the washing machine and continued cleaning each room.

An hour after I began to clean, I was inside of the last room in the house which was my bedroom. I threw out any old school papers that were graded and whose presence was no longer needed. I then organized my clothing in my closet along with the abundant art supplies I had sitting on top of my desk.

I came across several old sketches I had drawn and began to flip through them recalling the reasons why I had drawn them. It was fun to clean up my house because it kept my mind off Mr. Richwood.

As soon as I had finished my room, I heard the phone downstairs in the kitchen ringing. I raced downstairs aware that the person calling was either my mother or Dan. When I picked up the phone I felt a mixture of relief and apprehension that the person on the other end of the line was Dan.

“Hey, Amanda,” he said. “Sorry I didn’t answer your call. I was out in the woods and forgot to grab my phone.”

“That’s okay,” I asked curiously. “Why were you out in the woods?”

“Oh, I had to bury Kimberly’s Ipod. I’m sick and tired of her blasting that music so loud. I couldn’t take it anymore so when she went out with some friends earlier, I snuck in her room, found it, and took it out in the woods to bury it in a place she’ll never find it.”

I found myself laughing at an imagine of Dan in the woods with a shovel, looking suspicious as if he was burying a body, then taking out a small bag with Kimberly’s IPod inside, and dropping it into the shallow hole he had dug for it.

“What are you going to do if she finds out what you did?”

“Run for my life,” he said so this so seriously that it made me laugh.

“Um, I’m sorry about yesterday. I know that was kind of awkward.”

“Don’t worry about it being awkward,” Dan asked with compassion lingering in his tone. “It was just weird seeing you sad. I never saw you that way. Do you want to talk about why you were crying?”

A small part of me would have loved to confess everything that was upsetting me to Dan, but I knew that I couldn’t do that because I had promised Mr. Richwood that I would keep his relationship with Miss Daniels a secret.

As much as I would have liked to, I couldn’t tell Dan a single thing or else it would violate the vow I had made to Mr. Richwood.

“No, but thank you so much for your concern. It was just something personal that I really don’t want to talk about.”

“Okay, if you say so…,” Dan quickly added. “But if someone is picking on you make sure you tell me and I’ll take care of them for you.”

I found myself laughing again. Dan could be so sweet sometimes.

“Thanks,” I then changed the subject. “So I never did hear how everything went with Heather. Do you want to tell me?”

“Of course,” said Dan in an enthusiastic tone. “Here’s what happened. It was like in the middle of lunch time, so I walked up to her at her table where she was sitting. It was just her and Ann Windslow at the table.”

Since Lydia and Ashley were usually with them, I inferred that their absence may have been during the time when I was in the hallway talking to Lydia when Ashley showed up.

“I didn’t even ask, I just sat down at their table.” Dan continued. “So they stared at me like I was odd or something. I’ll admit I thought about running right then and there, but I remembered everything that you told me so I stayed seated.”

“That’s good.”

“So I said to Heather, ‘I’ve seen you around school a lot’. Then Heather just looked over at Ann with this snooty look on her face and then she looked at me and said ‘Obviously, this face draws a lot of attention, but I’ve never seen you around.’”

I felt a little bad for Dan as he told me all this. I could just imagine Heather sitting at the cool kids table with this stuck up look on her face acting as if Dan’s presence was annoying. She didn’t even realize how much he loved her and yet here she was so openly rejecting him without any regards toward his feelings.

“While I was sitting at their lunch table, I was sitting turned sideways, trying to act cool.”

“Trying to act cool?” I repeated his statement in an embarrassed way. I covered my face with my hand. “I thought I told you not to ‘act cool’ and to just be yourself.”

“Oh yeah,” he said as if he had just suddenly remembered my advice. “Oh, well, I didn’t listen to you. So I was telling her about how we share a lot of classes together. Then I said ‘It’s annoying how all the teachers do is talk when I would much rather be listening to my favorite group Teen Top.”

I thought it was hilarious how Dan claimed that Teen Top was his favorite group, when in reality he hadn’t even know of the group’s existence until I had pointed them out to him during our lessons that Heather’s favorite music group icon was Teen Top.

I even gave him a list of songs by the group to listen to and learn. It wasn’t easy for him since all Teen Top’s song are in Korean. Dan had to listen to the group’s songs for hours just to learn some of the lyrics so that it would appear that he was a fan of the group. I guess when you’re in love you’ll do anything. He had obviously used the information I had given him to grasp Heather’s attention.

“So as soon as I said that her eyes just lit up and I just knew that she was impressed. She said ‘That’s my favorite group too. Most people won’t even give them a try because their music isn’t in English. I’ve been trying to get Ann hooked on them, but she won’t even give them a try. She says she’ll stick to Justin Bieber and One Direction. What’s your favorite song by them?’ I told her that I liked ‘Miss Right’”.

Again, Dan used the information I had given him about Heather. I was a little impressed that he had used everything I had taught him to talk to Heather. It was true that he was sort of conning his way into a conversation with Heather based off information I had provided him, but it was only so that she would take interest in him and not reject him right away because she felt she was too pretty for any of the guys at our school.

“So she said that was her favorite song too. We started talking about music for a bit and then it branched off into another conversation. Then she gave me her number and told me to give her a call.” Dan sounded extremely excited on the other side of the phone. “It was just awesome and I owe it all to you Amanda. Thank you so much.”

“Sure, it was no problem.”

I was really glad that everything had worked out for Dan. He had simply needed a little help and with my assistance he was now on the verge of dating Heather.

“Oh Amanda,” Dan then randomly asked. “Would you like to stay over at my house tonight?”

This question caught me off guard, not because it was abrupt and random, but because of the actual content of what he was saying which was that he wanted to know if I could spend the night over at his house.

“Why?”

“My father bought a bunch of movies for us to have a family night tonight together and he said if I wanted I could bring you. Whatever you did, you sure won him over at dinner that night. I told him how far away you lived and asked if you could stay the night and he said you could. My mom was reluctant, but eventually gave in.”

I thought about it for a moment. I didn’t want to stay home alone on a Saturday night with nothing in the house except my thoughts. I thought about asking my mother for permission, but was certain she would disagree to letting me stay over at a boy’s house whom she had ever met.

Since tonight was Saturday, I knew that she was going to be working late and she usually wouldn’t get home until three in the morning. She would probably be too tired to even notice that I wasn’t in the house.

Besides, I didn’t want be home alone and hoped that maybe spending time at Dan’s house would take my mind off Mr. Richwood.

“Sure, I’d love to sleep over.”

“Great, I’ll pick you up at seven.”

I hung up the phone feeling a sense of relief that everything was working out for Dan and Heather. I began to wonder for a moment how it was slightly strange how quickly Heather had given in to give Dan her phone number when she was known to make guy’s work hard to get her attention.

I didn’t understand why she would just hand over her number to him simply because they had the same taste in music. Lydia had told me yesterday that Heather treats pursing Mr. Richwood’s heart like it’s a game. I was worried that she might be doing the same thing to Dan, only toying with his heart without understanding that he truly loves her.