Cheers to "Friends"

[10] Interrogations, blonde jokes, and… the silent treatment?

It’s been a week since Kane and I got caught sneaking into school fifteen minutes late. And it’s been exactly seven days where I have not spoken a word to him either. There have been times that I have caught him staring at me and me him. There have also been other times where he would find an opportunity to say ‘Hi’ or poke me but I would shut him out by just walking away or telling him off for even laying finger on me. You would think he would have taken the hint by now that I wasn’t planning on talking to him. But even now - a whole flipping week - he was still trying to talk to me. Didn’t he get it? He was even here standing in my door way, picking me up for our detention! The detention that he brought upon me! The nerve.

Kane awkwardly stuffed his hand in his hoodie pocket. “Detention?” he asked in a meager tone.

I got up from my chair silently. Chemistry Book? Check, I slammed the thing shut inside my bag. Biology File? Check, I stuffed that in as well. History notes? Yep, I lifted the papers off of my shelves about to roll them up and stuff the sheets in the side but decided against it as the notes took too much off of my precious time to just crumple them up like that. As soon as I finished deciding what to bring with me I stalked out of my room with Kane following silently behind me.

I could tell that he felt bad. I was sure that most of the times that he tried to talk to me was out of the reason that he wanted to make up. As flattering as it was, talking to him again was a hard thing to do. I guess it was a pride thing. It was probably due to the fact that it was my first time ever giving someone the silent treatment. It was usually the other way around, coming to think about it. And thinking deeper why was I getting so angry at such a stupid thing? It wasn’t like it was really his fault for making us late. Maybe this whole pride thing was coming up to my head.

Kane opened the door to the room and chivalrously signaled for me to go in first. The room was big but only had three people in it: a random teacher, Kane, and me. I guess me and Kane were the only troublemakers. The desks were all connected to each other in a U-shape. Not being too fussy I just sat at the beginning of the line. It was weird because even though Kane was still in talking terms with me, I was afraid that he was finally going to give up on me. I was afraid he was going to sit away from me. A public slap in the face – for me. He didn’t do that though. Boy did this guy not give up! I was happy for it though. He silently sat next to me and exhaled a loud breath. I guess for me to notice.

I opened up the bag and started doing my homework. That was until a sheet of paper was flicked against my biology file and right onto my Biology Homework. I stole a glance to see Kane scribbling furiously away at his English Homework. He looked pensively at the Othello book with his pencil in his mouth and swapped his vision with his essay. I discreetly opened up the note.

Forgive me. I’m failing History because I can’t talk to you.

Oh, so now he’s making me feel bad because of his mistakes now! I clenched and unclenched my jaw to relieve the anger pent up in me. I wedged the note in my file not bothering to write a note back to him. A bored sigh let out of me and in my peripheral vision I could see a smirk on his face. I could also see the teacher glaring at Kane. I smiled a little at this as well. Seconds later I heard a rip and a light touch on my forearm. It must have been him and another stupid note.

Did I just see a smile?

I stole a glance at Kane, he caught me though. Then the stupid boy he was, he just smiled a crooked smile. It was hard not to smile back. I pursed my lips and rolled my eyes as I turned away. Just in case if I started smiling unwillingly, I didn’t want him to see me. I got back onto my work until I saw another note laying in front of me. It was surprising how the teacher never seemed to notice that we were exchanging notes. Well, it was more of a one way road when it came to exchanging notes.

Oh come on. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to put us in detention. Honest.

I was having enough of this. I need to stop talking to him. Or he needed to stop talking to me. The teacher was getting suspicious. I could see it in his eyes. He kept on stealing glances as Kane was staring at me. He was even about to stand up and walk our way. Kane eyed my fingers as he slowly watched me –frantically- rip up his note. Eventually, his eyes rose onto mine and I could see the utter shock and sadness in his eyes. Great, I felt bad now. I could feel something getting caught in my throat. I turned back to my work – I couldn’t look at him. It made me hurt. He didn’t deserve me being angry at him. Hell, he was always nice to me. Why am I being such a bitch all of a sudden? Was it because he let me? Well, whatever way I couldn’t do this to him. I was planning on looking back at him and smiling as a kind of truce. But when I mustered the courage to look at him he wasn’t looking at me, he was engulfed in his work. I sighed. I wouldn’t blamed him if he never spoke to me again. The teacher circled around us as he studied mine and Kane’s homework. This whole forgiving thing has to be done after this detention. This man was watching us like a hawk.

The teacher sat back down in his chair whilst still glowering at us both. His broody looking face twitched as he squinted his eyes together. He kind of reminded me of a man with nothing but slits for his eyes. All he did was stare at us he stroked his imaginary fuzz on his chin. Five minutes passed and the teacher realized that Kane had finally given up on me. So he resumed his own work. This consisted of Sudoku in the newspaper that he brought with him. I was really amused to find the teacher grumbling as he broke his pencil. Cussing under his breath the teacher scrambled through all the drawers until he found a sharpener. He looked at it carefully and turned it around within his thumbs as he admired his apparent godsend. After sharpening it he placed his pencil on the paper again putting a little too much pressure on the pencil and once again – it broke. He swore louder this time and re-sharpened the pencil. Once again the pencil broke. This kept on happening and until the fourth time he shrieked “Bloody pencil!” and I tried with all my might to stifle a laugh. The teacher wasn’t paying much attention to me so he didn’t see how distracted I was. But Kane could see the distraction and in my peripheral vision I could see he was looking at me.

My giggles ended when the teacher decided to just sit in the seat instead. I guess he was fed up of trying to do his Sudoku when his pencil was constantly breaking. I shook my head and got back to my work. Fifteen minutes passed and I heard humming. I recognized the tune, it seemed to be the infamous hit “I’m too sexy…”. The humming got louder until I could hear the actual lyrics being sung. I turned around to see Kane singing full fledged, into his pen. The emotion rolled off of him and radiated to his surroundings. I couldn’t help but smile. Even laugh a little as he closed his eyes and emotionally mouthed out the words. The sound of his voice resonated but it wasn’t heard by the teacher. Not until he increased his volume. As if the man was being haunted by ghosts he snapped his head around looking for the source of the music.

“Be Quiet!” he barked at us. And instantaneously Kane stopped and I bit my lips hard enough so as to not laugh any longer.

You could tell the teacher was getting bored. To pass the time the teacher was shaking his leg and chewing on his pen. You could even tell that the stupid teacher was getting annoyed by his ways. Eventually he got fed up of himself and stalked to the door.

“I’m going to get my self a clicky pencil. If I hear so much as a word from you two. You get an extra thirty minutes.” He threatened. He closed the door behind him and I resumed my work. But at the corner of my eye I could see that Kane was doing the exact opposite. He was looking at me and to be bluntly honest it was hard working with someone staring at your face and you noticing. I was about to turn to him and say ‘stop it’ but just as I was opening up, he beat me to it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he finally said.

I sighed. This was my chance to just give up on this whole holding a grudge thing, don’t blow it Tara. I look back at my homework. I couldn’t say ‘I forgive you’ I wasn’t ready for that. And for some reason I could see that he understood that as he started telling blonde jokes.

“You know Rod told me this really funny joke today. Do you want to hear?” I didn’t reply. So he continued. “A young ventriloquist is touring the clubs and one night he's doing a show in a small town. With his dummy on his knee, he starts going through his usual dumb blonde jokes when a blonde in the 4th row stands on her chair and starts shouting: "I've heard enough of your stupid blonde jokes. What makes you think you can stereotype women that way? What does the color of a person's hair have to do with her worth as a human being? It's guys like you who keep women like me from being respected at work and in the community and from reaching our full potential as a person. Because you and your kind continue to perpetuate discrimination against not only blondes, but women in general, and all in the name of humor!" The embarrassed ventriloquist begins to apologize, and the blonde yells, ‘You stay out of this, mister! I'm talking to that little shit on your knee.’” I bit my lip. I had to admit, I was not one for blonde jokes, but this was rather funny. Yet I still didn’t say anything.

“You know I was looking up facts about Hitler on the internet and did you know that Hitler was one kinky man?! He used to ask his girls to pee on him and take a shit on him as well!”

I couldn’t help myself. Bizarre facts about Hitler was my specialty. “Yep, but that’s not even the most coolest one. He invented the idea of the blow up doll so his soldiers wouldn’t bang foreign women.”

“Is this your way of forgiving me.” He smiled a little wider.

I huffed air out of my chest to start talking again. “Look, I just got carried away with this whole ‘let’s be pissed off with Kane’ thing. You’ve already apologized for all the things you’ve done wrong. When really, we know that they weren’t all your fault. It’s my turn to say ‘sorry’. I’m sorry that I carried this off ‘til now. You didn’t deserve this – especially seeing that you’re really nice. It’s wrong to be a bitch. Man! I’m acting like Sara. She always just gives you the silent treatment at the most random of ties and when she finally starts talking to you and you ask her why she wasn’t talking to you, she just say ‘because I feel like it’. It’s just not fair –“

“Wait, wait, wait. You’re nothing like her ok? Yes, you might have given me the silent treatment, but it was for a reason. It wasn’t for the sake of causing drama, ok? So don’t compare yourself to her.” That spur of the moment speech seemed to shut me up.

“I’m sorry.” I repeated. I raised my hand in the peace sign. “Forgive me?” He raised his hand as well, looking very confused. I laughed and rolled my eyes whilst my peace hand lurched toward his peace hand until they touched and hugged each other.

“Is that your deranged way of a forgiveness shake?” he asked.

“Nope, it’s my deranged way of any shake.” I corrected. “ Did you know that Hitler has only one testicle?”

Kane looked incredulously at me, “Tara, everyone knows that. But I bet you didn’t know that Hitler’s first love was with a Jewish girl. He was very emo about it as well when it didn’t work out. He wanted to kill himself. Hell, he wanted to kill the damn girl!”

“Well, Historian Dawson. I think you might have found where all the sudden hate of Jews from Hitler spurred from.”

“Tara, he was like… ten.”

“Well, you never know. He might be very mature for his age. Or he might have read Romeo and Juliet and just decided to skip the whole proclaiming of love in a tomb and just kill her off so they could be together in the after world.”

He smirked at me, “You’re a demented child, you know that right?”

The door busted open and we saw the teacher once again looking suspiciously at us. I couldn’t help but smile at the say he looked at us. It was like we killed a man and was put in one of those little rooms in the police station being scrutinized by a police officer with a lamp light. Eventually he sat down. I turn to look at Kane. He was still looking at me raising his eyebrows. A sign to show he was waiting for a reply. I cocked my head to the side and just nodded at him.