Sequel: Cancer ›
Vegas Boys
Chapter 11
After the penis incident in Drama, any kind of sympathy or compassion for Brendon Urie that I had previously possessed was long gone.
I stomped all the way back home, my jaw set in defiance and my gaze fixed straight ahead as I purposefully ignored him; he danced around me all the way, grinning and smirking and generally being an ass as he tried to coax me into talking to him. I wouldn't be swayed.
"Come on," said Brendon, halfway serious, for once. "You can't seriously be mad at me."
"Sure I can. Watch me," I replied curtly. It was the first thing I'd said to him since he'd gone chasing after me as soon as school let out, but I still refused to look at him.
He groaned. "It was a joke!"
I stopped in my tracks and took a step towards him; something shifted in his face--there was a vulnerability there that I'd never seen in him before--but then I ignored it and blundered on sarcastically, "Ha. Ha. Ha." And then I stalked off again.
I don't know what had him standing there in the middle of the sidewalk, motionless, but I was good ten or twelve feet away from him before he snapped out of some kind of daze he'd been caught in and ran after me again. "It's really not that big a deal," he insisted quietly--to my surprise, he sounded a little remorseful.
"You embarrassed me on my first day in a new school," I said dryly. "Now everyone probably thinks I'm--"
"Well, apparently, the cheerleaders think you're great," Brendon interrupted sourly.
I stopped walking again, surprised at the sudden hardness in his voice. I searched his face, but his expression was unreadable.
"Well, I don't know why they like me," I said softly, defensively.
Brendon scoffed, and the bitterness was still there. "Oh, please, Kelsey. Do you even own a mirror?"
I glared at him for a moment and then walked away again.
A second later he'd caught up to me again, and now he was sounding upbeat and amused, back to normal Brendon behavior. "Why do you always get so offended when I try to compliment you?" he wondered.
"I'm not offended." (My short tone hardly proved my point, though.)
"You're not happy," he pointed out.
I didn't bother to respond to that. I could see my house now. Another minute or two, and then I could finally escape him.
"Most girls love to hear about how attractive they are," Brendon went on when I said nothing.
"I'm not like most girls."
I kind of surprised myself with that statement, but Brendon didn't look so taken off guard. "This is true," he conceded.
He shot me a look that made my insides squirm, for some reason. It reminded me of the look I'd seen my mom give Chris when he made her breakfast or offered to wash the dishes, only much more intense and not so pleasant--the difference between simply admiring and wanting.
And the worst part was that I kind of liked it.
"Are you coming home with me?" asked Brendon wryly.
Horrified, I realized that I had been so lost in these dangerous thoughts that I had walked right past my own house and was now crossing Brendon's driveway alongside him.
"You wish," I laughed nervously, sounding meaner than I had intended to, but I wanted to make myself perfectly clear.
But he saw right through me, smirking in self-satisfaction as he watched me turn and hurry back up the front walk towards my own house. My cheeks were heating up again and I heaved a sigh of relief as I shut the front door behind me, relaxing with the knowledge that he couldn't see me falling to pieces over him anymore.
-----
My second day at my new high school wasn't much different than my first, except that everything was much less surprising now that I knew what to expect. Brendon was still forcing his presence on me during the walk to and from school, the cheerleaders were still taking steps to make me a part of their group, and everyone else was still scrambling to be my friend for some unfathomable reason I still couldn't come up with.
But I decided, as I put off doing homework later that night, that I was just going to have to get used to the way things were. I was going to have to accept the fact that Brendon and the cheerleaders and all the other kids aspiring to obtain my seal of approval were never going to leave me alone. I should learn to like all the attention--as Brendon had pointed out the day before, anyone else would. I wasn't used to it and thus didn't know how to react...but maybe I could learn to like being in the center of everyone's attention.
I just wished I knew how I had ended up there.
-----
By fifth period--Drama--on Friday, all of us students were completely uncontrollable.
"Okay," announced Mrs. Christenson so loudly that it only amplified the nasal quality of her voice, "for our next activity--" the class finally quieted, and she continued in a normal tone of voice--"I'm going to put you all into pairs."
The noise level rose up sharply again as everyone started shouting across the room for partners, and Mrs. Christenson glared at us so crossly that I half expected her to stomp her foot or something. "You all need to be quiet," she snapped. "I'm not going to talk over you. I'll wait..."
We hushed, listening expectantly for further instructions.
"For this assignment, you and your partner will be performing a two-person prose piece of your choice. Once you pick the piece you wish to perform, you need to ask my permission, and then you and your partner should meet at least once or twice after school to practice. Performances will be in about three weeks; I will give you a rubric to go by, but this assignment will be mostly graded on effort."
She paused briefly, looking around at her students--none of which looked very happy at all to be doing this assignment--to make sure they understood. Seeing that everyone looked about as bummed out as they should, she cleared her throat and went on.
"I'm not letting you pick your own partners, as you've all proven to me today that you are not mature enough to be self-directed." She paused to glare at us for a moment. "So, I'm going to come around, and each of you are going to draw for your partners." She retrieved an ugly green basket off of her desk, shaking it lightly to mix up the little slips of paper folded carefully into squares within.
She finally came around to my desk and I reached into the basket, fishing out a piece of paper near the bottom. I unfolded mine: in big black letters was the number twelve.
When she had finished circulating around the room and everyone had drawn, she half-shouted over the din that had inevitably ensued, "Now, find the person with the same number you have! And no cheating--no trading papers..."
She stopped talking as we quickly drowned her out, jumping up out of our seats to traverse around the room to check and see if we were partnered up with any of our friends. For several minutes, the place was a complete madhouse, and I couldn't find my partner to save my life.
By the time Mrs. Christenson had called us down and ordered us to go back to our seats, I still hadn't found my partner. Frowning, I looked around the room to see if there was anyone who wasn't mouthing something at their partner across the room: I couldn't find anyone.
"Is there anyone who didn't get a partner?" asked Mrs. Christenson.
I raised my hand and my stomach lurched as I noticed Brendon raising his as well. We looked around at each other, slightly alarmed.
This can't be happening, I thought to myself in desperation. I can't be paired up with him. All the bad karma in the world couldn't possibly...
Mrs. Christenson rubbed her withered lips together, a nervous habit. "What number did you get, Mr. Urie?"
"Twenty-seven," replied Brendon confidently, without so much as glancing at his shred of paper.
I had to stop myself from letting out a sigh of relief. So I wasn't paired up with him. Thank God.
"And what number did you get, Ms. Matthews?"
"Um..." I glanced at my slip of paper again, just to be sure that I wasn't in for a huge letdown. "Twelve."
But Brendon and I were the only ones in the room with our hands raised
"Hmmm," murmured Mrs. Christenson. She bustled over to her desk and flipped through her attendance book, stopping at today's page and rubbing her lips together again. "Well, no one's absent, so...I must've made too many," she determined, shutting the agenda book again and glancing up at me and Brendon again. "The two of you are partners."
I stomped all the way back home, my jaw set in defiance and my gaze fixed straight ahead as I purposefully ignored him; he danced around me all the way, grinning and smirking and generally being an ass as he tried to coax me into talking to him. I wouldn't be swayed.
"Come on," said Brendon, halfway serious, for once. "You can't seriously be mad at me."
"Sure I can. Watch me," I replied curtly. It was the first thing I'd said to him since he'd gone chasing after me as soon as school let out, but I still refused to look at him.
He groaned. "It was a joke!"
I stopped in my tracks and took a step towards him; something shifted in his face--there was a vulnerability there that I'd never seen in him before--but then I ignored it and blundered on sarcastically, "Ha. Ha. Ha." And then I stalked off again.
I don't know what had him standing there in the middle of the sidewalk, motionless, but I was good ten or twelve feet away from him before he snapped out of some kind of daze he'd been caught in and ran after me again. "It's really not that big a deal," he insisted quietly--to my surprise, he sounded a little remorseful.
"You embarrassed me on my first day in a new school," I said dryly. "Now everyone probably thinks I'm--"
"Well, apparently, the cheerleaders think you're great," Brendon interrupted sourly.
I stopped walking again, surprised at the sudden hardness in his voice. I searched his face, but his expression was unreadable.
"Well, I don't know why they like me," I said softly, defensively.
Brendon scoffed, and the bitterness was still there. "Oh, please, Kelsey. Do you even own a mirror?"
I glared at him for a moment and then walked away again.
A second later he'd caught up to me again, and now he was sounding upbeat and amused, back to normal Brendon behavior. "Why do you always get so offended when I try to compliment you?" he wondered.
"I'm not offended." (My short tone hardly proved my point, though.)
"You're not happy," he pointed out.
I didn't bother to respond to that. I could see my house now. Another minute or two, and then I could finally escape him.
"Most girls love to hear about how attractive they are," Brendon went on when I said nothing.
"I'm not like most girls."
I kind of surprised myself with that statement, but Brendon didn't look so taken off guard. "This is true," he conceded.
He shot me a look that made my insides squirm, for some reason. It reminded me of the look I'd seen my mom give Chris when he made her breakfast or offered to wash the dishes, only much more intense and not so pleasant--the difference between simply admiring and wanting.
And the worst part was that I kind of liked it.
"Are you coming home with me?" asked Brendon wryly.
Horrified, I realized that I had been so lost in these dangerous thoughts that I had walked right past my own house and was now crossing Brendon's driveway alongside him.
"You wish," I laughed nervously, sounding meaner than I had intended to, but I wanted to make myself perfectly clear.
But he saw right through me, smirking in self-satisfaction as he watched me turn and hurry back up the front walk towards my own house. My cheeks were heating up again and I heaved a sigh of relief as I shut the front door behind me, relaxing with the knowledge that he couldn't see me falling to pieces over him anymore.
-----
My second day at my new high school wasn't much different than my first, except that everything was much less surprising now that I knew what to expect. Brendon was still forcing his presence on me during the walk to and from school, the cheerleaders were still taking steps to make me a part of their group, and everyone else was still scrambling to be my friend for some unfathomable reason I still couldn't come up with.
But I decided, as I put off doing homework later that night, that I was just going to have to get used to the way things were. I was going to have to accept the fact that Brendon and the cheerleaders and all the other kids aspiring to obtain my seal of approval were never going to leave me alone. I should learn to like all the attention--as Brendon had pointed out the day before, anyone else would. I wasn't used to it and thus didn't know how to react...but maybe I could learn to like being in the center of everyone's attention.
I just wished I knew how I had ended up there.
-----
By fifth period--Drama--on Friday, all of us students were completely uncontrollable.
"Okay," announced Mrs. Christenson so loudly that it only amplified the nasal quality of her voice, "for our next activity--" the class finally quieted, and she continued in a normal tone of voice--"I'm going to put you all into pairs."
The noise level rose up sharply again as everyone started shouting across the room for partners, and Mrs. Christenson glared at us so crossly that I half expected her to stomp her foot or something. "You all need to be quiet," she snapped. "I'm not going to talk over you. I'll wait..."
We hushed, listening expectantly for further instructions.
"For this assignment, you and your partner will be performing a two-person prose piece of your choice. Once you pick the piece you wish to perform, you need to ask my permission, and then you and your partner should meet at least once or twice after school to practice. Performances will be in about three weeks; I will give you a rubric to go by, but this assignment will be mostly graded on effort."
She paused briefly, looking around at her students--none of which looked very happy at all to be doing this assignment--to make sure they understood. Seeing that everyone looked about as bummed out as they should, she cleared her throat and went on.
"I'm not letting you pick your own partners, as you've all proven to me today that you are not mature enough to be self-directed." She paused to glare at us for a moment. "So, I'm going to come around, and each of you are going to draw for your partners." She retrieved an ugly green basket off of her desk, shaking it lightly to mix up the little slips of paper folded carefully into squares within.
She finally came around to my desk and I reached into the basket, fishing out a piece of paper near the bottom. I unfolded mine: in big black letters was the number twelve.
When she had finished circulating around the room and everyone had drawn, she half-shouted over the din that had inevitably ensued, "Now, find the person with the same number you have! And no cheating--no trading papers..."
She stopped talking as we quickly drowned her out, jumping up out of our seats to traverse around the room to check and see if we were partnered up with any of our friends. For several minutes, the place was a complete madhouse, and I couldn't find my partner to save my life.
By the time Mrs. Christenson had called us down and ordered us to go back to our seats, I still hadn't found my partner. Frowning, I looked around the room to see if there was anyone who wasn't mouthing something at their partner across the room: I couldn't find anyone.
"Is there anyone who didn't get a partner?" asked Mrs. Christenson.
I raised my hand and my stomach lurched as I noticed Brendon raising his as well. We looked around at each other, slightly alarmed.
This can't be happening, I thought to myself in desperation. I can't be paired up with him. All the bad karma in the world couldn't possibly...
Mrs. Christenson rubbed her withered lips together, a nervous habit. "What number did you get, Mr. Urie?"
"Twenty-seven," replied Brendon confidently, without so much as glancing at his shred of paper.
I had to stop myself from letting out a sigh of relief. So I wasn't paired up with him. Thank God.
"And what number did you get, Ms. Matthews?"
"Um..." I glanced at my slip of paper again, just to be sure that I wasn't in for a huge letdown. "Twelve."
But Brendon and I were the only ones in the room with our hands raised
"Hmmm," murmured Mrs. Christenson. She bustled over to her desk and flipped through her attendance book, stopping at today's page and rubbing her lips together again. "Well, no one's absent, so...I must've made too many," she determined, shutting the agenda book again and glancing up at me and Brendon again. "The two of you are partners."