Never Let Me Go

The rest of Alex’s morning passed by rather uneventfully. He had to put effort into not bringing his dream back to the forefront of his mind, but it wasn’t too difficult to accomplish. Instead, he focused on the song he’d spent the prior night writing and rewriting to perfection. There were still a few pieces that needed work, some lines even left empty since he wasn’t sure what he was going to write. What better time to think up more lyrics than during class?

Little was accomplished through the hours. Before he even knew it, his fourth period was almost over and only two of the many lines that had been empty were filled in. He was proud that he’d been able to accomplish that much, what with the fact that it had been hard to focus his energy on his writing when his teachers were talking, so he couldn’t find it in himself to get too upset over it.

For that last half hour of his history class, he alternated his attention from the ticking clock on the wall by the door and the images of Walt Disney’s Nazi Propaganda that flashed from the overhead projector onto the whiteboard.

When the bell signaling lunchtime finally rang out, Alex couldn’t have left faster. Even still, surprisingly, the cafeteria was just as packed as ever. People were crowding around, laughing and joking with their friends as they stood about in everyone else’s way.

Sighs, eye rolls, and nearly three minutes later found Alex just barely breeching through the masses. As a force of habit, he immediately began to seek out his friends. He found them, of course, sitting in their usual spot with nachos and pizza galore, but then he was catching sight of dark hair streaked with blond.

Just like that first day, Jack was sitting by himself at one end of a table in the farthest corner of the room. There were other kids on the opposite end, conversing and socializing amongst themselves, but not a single one of them seemed to realize that Jack was even there. If they did notice him, they were going out of their way to ignore him like the plague.

If he was going to be honest, the sight of Jack looking almost like he was used to being ignored, to the point where he showed no emotions revolving around the blatant rejection, had Alex’s heart aching in his chest.

Choosing where to go after that was a complete no-brainer.

Alex could feel his friends’ gazes as he walked past them, could hear them call out his name and make remarks about how he was ‘going the wrong way, idiot!’ but they didn’t matter. What would be the point of spending a half hour listening to them all discuss the same things they had been since middle school? Jack was new, and exciting, and whatever he had to say was actually worth listening to.

He felt like he belonged when he was with Jack, and he could only hope that he made the younger boy feel the same way.

When the table was reached, he shrugged his backpack off of his shoulder and dumped it on the bench across from his friend, plopping down next to it and smiling at the boy who glanced up at him. Jack looked back in confusion for a few moments, the face not clicking in his brain, but then he was sitting straighter in his seat and full-on beaming.

“Hey,” Alex said, clasping his hands together between his knees and leaning forward until his chest touched the edge of the table.

“Hi,” Jack said in return, his grin not faltering as he resumed the position he’d been in before his solitude had been disrupted. Not like he minded, at least.

“How come Zack and Rian don’t sit with you?” Alex asked. He took a quick glance around the room to make sure that he hadn’t just bypassed them standing in a lunch line.

Jack shrugged and turned his head down toward the table. “They don’t have this lunch period. I don’t see them much during the day. We get a lot of our hang-out time after class when we practice. Do you think you’re gonna wanna join us again today? I talked to both of them last night, and they said that they had a good time. We all, um… we like what you have and stuff, y’know?”

Alex nodded his head right away. “Yeah, of course I’ll be there. I had a lot of fun, too. Rian and Zack seem like good guys. Speaking of…” he said, tapering out as he reached to pull his backpack into his lap. The zips were undone, his lyric notebook was pulled out, a handful of pages were flipped through, and then it was being handed to the other teen.

“What’s this?” Jack asked as he began to read the things written on the blue lines.

“I thought it up last night. Been working on it ever since. I haven’t really had the time to think of any good instrumentals to go along with it. Do you think you and the other guys could help me finish it later?”

Alex felt a nervous pang in his gut when he didn’t get an immediate answer, and he had to remind himself that Jack already knew about most of his other songs. What was one more?

“Yeah, sorry, I just… who’s this about?” Jack asked with a glance over the top of the page. “Think about it 'till anticipation makes you shake and we both lose control… Your lips are a hot flame, baby, and our chemistry is kerosene.”

Truthfully, Alex didn’t know. He’d thought the lyrics up after he’d left Jack the day prior, but that didn’t mean that Jack had been the inspiration. That would’ve been stupid… wouldn’t it have been? Of course it would’ve been, he’d only known the boy for two days. A person—a straight person—wouldn’t fall in love with a person of the same gender that they’d only just met.

Then he realized that he’d also spent some time thinking about his ex-girlfriend. That was a much more understandable source of inspiration.

“I was dating this girl a while back. We had to break it off because she moved away. I guess I was just thinking of her a little more than usual last night, y’know?” he said, shrugging his shoulders for that added effect of being casual.

He didn’t notice the way Jack’s face fell with the knowledge, what with how he was still hidden behind the notebook, but he did catch the slight clearing of the younger’s throat before he was speaking up again.

“I like this. Do you think you’ll be able to finish the lyrics before this afternoon?”

“I hope so. It would make the whole ‘singing it’ thing a little easier, and that’d make the rest easier, too. I’m sure we could still work on some of it together, right?”

Jack closed the notebook and slid it back across the table, a reassuring smile on his lips. “You have enough for us to be able to think something up. Even if you don’t, we can do what we did yesterday and play whatever, y’know? We’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Alex smiled back. He liked how reassuring Jack was about stupid things that made him nervous. He liked that Jack didn’t make fun of him for his thoughts and the things he wrote on paper. He liked how Jack looked at him as if they were close friends and had nothing to hide from each other. What he liked the most was how he felt—he didn’t think he had anything to hide from the younger teen. If anything, he wanted to tell Jack everything there was to tell. He wanted to know just as much in turn.

The bell rang out to let the students know that their lunch period was over just as Alex was slipping his notebook back into his bag. Before he could stand, Jack was on his feet next to him.

“I—my class is down in the seven hundred building,” the one on the far side of the campus, “so I guess I’ll see you in—”

“I’ll walk you,” Alex cut in, his bag being tugged onto his shoulder and his limbs scrambling to lift his body from the bench quick enough to not be left behind. “I have study hall this period anyway,” he lied, looking around the room in hopes of not giving himself away.

Jack didn’t bother to make a comment about how he knew that there were no study halls.