Cheers to "Friends"

The car ride to the city held awkward silence. Don’t get me wrong though; I did have my moments of trying to break the silence such as saying, “nice car” or “look at that!”, but Kane seemed to stay silent. I guess it was probably was because he preferred to concentrate rather than run the car off the cliff and kill us both.

Kane’s car was a beat up silver Honda Civic. Books and CD’s were strewn across the back seat of the car, tons of key chains hung on the rear-view mirror, the car seemed to have a smell of May flowers with an underlying stench of pizza. Yet no matter how messy or weird smelling the car was, I still felt comfortable in it. Man! I could’ve slept in here forever (Though if I were to sleep in here I wouldn’t mind it to be a tad bit bigger)!

Twenty minutes in the car and we were already in town, trying to park in the car park. We soon found a vacant spot and as soon as he was done, he turned off the ignition and slowly turned to me.

“So, I’ll see you around?” I questioned.

“Huh? I thought we were both going shopping.” He replied back with utter confusion.

“I thought you were just going to like… drop me off.” I also said baffled. You see I knew he said that he would come with me before but I wasn’t entirely sure whether he was actually going to go around with me or if he was just saying that to be nice.

“What? You don’t want me here?” He said with fake shock smacked on his face.

“No! I’d love you to come but I warn you it will be boring.”

“Don’t worry about me; I bring fun wherever I go.” I laughed a little at the remark; as we both stepped out of the car and in unison, slammed the door.

As soon as I turned around my eyes caught site of “Cult” and with that I grabbed both Kane’s hands, grasping his car keys out of his left hand whilst half dragging him down the stairs making sure I locked the Honda for him.

After rushing out of the car park and across the street “Cult” was right in front of us and I forgot all about how tired I was. I ran into the store like a child who just found the confectionary, closely followed behind by Kane. I went on to each section looking at the t-shirts, pants, and dresses one-by one. Soon we were at the shoes section and I found that both Kane and I were enraptured in trying them on. We both tried on countless pairs of shoes, until we both caught ourselves wearing the same;

“Hey! Don’t copy my style!” Kane mocked. We were both wearing “Ramones” inspired shoes by Vans.

“Hey! You should be happy that I like your style.” I said smugly crossing my arms. I turned around to see a blue piece of clothing catch my eye. I couldn’t help myself, and half-hopped half-ran to that rack. The dresses ranged from deep purple to yellow with white hearts embroidered around the neck line.

“Why don’t you go try it on?” Kane asked whilst I was ogling the dress on the hanger, shining it up in the light and placing it against my body and so on.

“That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.” I smiled. I took off the slip-ons from my feet and raced to the changing room.

I unclipped the lock and headed out room as gracefully I could make out, I didn’t want to look ditzy in a dress like this. Did I now? My eyes were trained on the floor the whole time until I saw the familiar beat up red converse high-tops that had belonged to Kane. I trained my eyes up the person’s leg until I eventually met Kane’s face. He seemed to be half-dazzled and half-shocked and I for one reveled in those emotions he gave me.

“….So I take it the silence is a good thing?” I asked unsure of the way I looked.

I could tell from his throat that he was swallowing something, “Yeah.” He breathed out.

“Do you think I should get it?” I asked, genuinely thinking whether I should buy it or not.

“Yeah, I don’t see why not.” Kane seemed to have re-gained some of his composure and for some reason I gave way to a big smile. I don’t know why, but he just had that affect on me when he said that. Maybe it was the way he said it. I don’t know.

“Ok, well I’m going to go get changed then.”

Before I left to go back to the room where I changed in, I headed to the mirror to check out the dress on me. I wasn’t the type to boast but I thought I looked pretty good in it. The dress had fit me perfectly flaunting all the right places; the electric blue color seemed to bring out a lighter brown in my eyes.

I got back in the changing room and changed quickly out of the dress. As soon as I got out we soon went to the till, paid for the dress; soon after leaving the store.

We were both run down from going to countless CD stores, gadget stores, shoe shops, music stores, and clothing stores. The funny thing about it was, was that I only purchased the blue dress and a couple of new CD’s and that’s it. Though please note, that some stores was Kane’s idea so he managed to buy himself some speakers, a DVD, and a guitar pick. It seemed that Kane seemed to have gotten more stuff than I did, and I was the one who wanted to go out in the first place.

We managed to find ourselves a seat on the fountain in the middle of the square observing our purchases. Whilst we were both looking at our things, I caught sight of a stall that was selling several types of foods and drinks. An idea rushed to mind, and I quickly hopped off of the base of the fountain uttering for Kane to “take care of my things”, and ran to the stall. I soon returned with a slush puppy in each hand.

“So which one do you want?” I asked. He shook his head to show that he didn’t want it, so I continued talking.

“Oh, come on! You wasted your time here, the least you can do is except it! Besides I can’t drink two! I’ll get a major brain-freeze.” I slipped in my puppy face as well, in case he wasn’t convinced. For seconds it seemed that both didn’t convince him.

“Well if it’s to save you then bring it!” he joked.

“My knight in shining armor!” I cooed back whilst wrapping my arms around him. He seemed to stiffen a little, and I soon found myself pondering over why he did that. Coming to think about it, it was our first time hugging each other.

“Erm, the drinks are really cold Tara and they’re both on my back.” He answered. Well, that would be why he started getting all prostrated. I let go automatically and laid out the drinks for him to choose.

“So why all the window shopping?” he asked out of the blue. I turned to him and saw his face in profile looking out at all the kids dressed in black, otherwise known as Goths. I always wondered why people hated them. Was it because of their music taste? Or the way that some of them stereotypically acted? My theory for it was that Goths were different and that’s why people didn’t like them. People in general didn’t like someone different from them. Though, please note ladies and gentlemen that this theory was pretty much flawed, since people encourage originality. Personally I’ve always liked them, it might have been the music taste that we had in common.

“You want the whole story?” I asked still staring at the direction he was staring at. He nodded giving me the signal to continue.

“I just needed a diversion. I’m just sick and tired of the way Anna treats me, the way Sara always uses me, and most of all I’m sick of being put down by Sara, Anna, and Gwyneth. It’s like I’m the only one picked on. I mean I know that sounds so self-centered but really, Sara is scared shitless of Anna, and Anna can’t mistreat Sara otherwise she won’t have friends. And Gwyneth? Well Gwyneth takes everything out of context. She tries so hard to be someone else that I actually wonder if she’ll ever be comfortable with herself. It’s like I’m cursed when it comes to friendship! It gets me so annoyed that I find myself thinking about it constantly, and needed a break from it.” I spurted out, ten words per second. I thought I was going to have to repeat it to him more slowly until he wrapped one of his arms around my shoulder.

“That was a mouthful wasn’t it?” He smiled down at me. He took the liberty in squeezing my arm lightly, and continued.

“You know your going to be meeting all types of people that’ll give you crap in the future; look at this moment as an opportunity of dealing with it. Use this saying when dealing with your problems, what’s that saying again... just wait a sec.” He stopped thinking, and started slurping the cup of slush puppy.

“When life throws you lemons, chuck them back and force them to give you mangos.” He continued. I looked up at him like he was a dumb-ass (which at the moment he was).

“That saying is completely wro-”

“I know, I know. That’s my saying.” He tutted. I quirked my eye brow slightly as I was about to make a smart-assed comment.

“So what do you propose I do? Beat them up so hard that they start all becoming like mindless drones?”

“Exactly!” He replied sarcastically. He could sense I wasn’t impressed so he replied “Ok, if you want actual advice from me, I think you should just leave them. If they cause you to be this depressed to resort to retail therapy maybe you need some new friends. This school has over seven hundred kids and I’m sure there is someone in Millfield who can treat you better than they do.”

“You know when you act serious you actually seem to know what you’re talking about.” I teased. He smiled down at me again. His eyes started glinting as something shone off of it; and I was instantly mesmerized.

“I hope you know I meant every single word.” He huffed, half aggravated that I appeared not to listen to him.

“Yeah, I know.” I suddenly realized the time and continued, “It’s nearly seven o’clock, I think it’s time that we go.”

He concurred and we both picked up our bags, and headed towards the car park laughing about the human gold moon-walking statue that had danced around Kane like he was the sun god.

Soon enough our conversation that had filled the car stopped as we approached the house that I resided at. Awkward silence once again filled the car until I broke it.

“So, I’ll be seeing you around? And if not, next Saturday right?” I questioned my hopes aloud. He nodded meagerly. I took this as my cue to open the car door and leave.

My right leg stepped out into the darkness and the other leg followed. I took out my bags from the back seat of his car and just as I was about to move my hands to get out of the car completely; Kane quickly grasped onto my left hand. I looked up at him questionably.

“There’s going to be this party at one of my mate’s house on the 18th and I was wondering if you could come along, with me?” he asked hopefully.

“Yeah. Sure.” I tried retaining this huge grin that I could feel creeping up my face with a queer looking smile on it instead.

“Cool, I’ll see you around then.” he smiled back. In that moment his dark colored hair flopped over his eye, and I was spellbound again. It was funny how those little things fascinated me so much.

I slammed the door and waved at him as he returned the gesture and drove back to the house 200 yards away from mine. I caught myself smiling at the direction where there was darkness with two yellow tail lights slowly moving away from me.