“I’m going to pretend you said thank you. You’re welcome, Red.” He shoved the candy at me, and I had to catch it so that it didn’t fall on the floor. “Are you always this rough on people when they try to get to know you?”
“If it’s so hard, then why are you doing it?” I needed to hurry my butt to class, but I wasn’t letting him have the last word.
“Maybe I like a challenge,” he said, but he wasn’t grinning. I saw something else on his face. Determination. Yes, Dusty Sharp was a guy who was used to getting what he wanted; anyone could see that. He even walked with a swagger that broadcast it to the world, but instead of leaning toward the cocky douche-bag side, he just seemed confident. Self-assured. A lot of women found that sexy.
“I have to get to class. Thank you for the unnecessary candy. It was...sweet of you.”
“I’m a sweet guy.”
Uh-huh.
“Shall we?” he said.
We walked together up the stairs, and I left him on the second floor.
“Later, Red.” There was that wave again.
I copied him and he laughed. “’Bye, Dusty.”
* * *
My first assignment in my creative writing class was to write a two-page paper about something I had never done before. Greg gave us our assignment with the attitude of Santa presenting orphans with shiny presents.
How the hell was I supposed to write about something I’d never experienced? Seriously, how?
Everyone else seemed just as perplexed as I was, and a guy sitting near me was muttering under his breath and most of the words weren’t complimentary. We had the entire class period to complete the assignment, so I got out my notebook and a pen and tried to figure something that I could write so I could just complete the damn thing.
Well, the first thing I could think of to write about was completely out of the question. My still-intact virginity was a relic from my other life. I’d been way too focused on school and other things, and it didn’t mesh well with my political aspirations.
There was also something romantic, I’d thought at the time, about saving that milestone in my life for marriage. My ex had been completely on board with it; in fact, he’d been more for it than I was. We’d done things here and there, but every time it got heated one of us stopped it, citing our vows of chastity. The funny thing was, it never really got all that heated.
The kissing was fine, but I never found myself wanting to just rip his clothes off like in some horny teenage fantasy. There was probably something wrong with me. I had no problem getting myself off, so my sex drive wasn’t broken, but I never fantasized about getting hot and heavy with Matt. He wasn’t a hot-and-heavy kind of guy.
Honestly, I didn’t care anymore. It was low on the list of things I was concerned about. Right above floods and right below zombie apocalypse.
I tried to think of something to write that would fill two pages with my small handwriting. Some of my classmates were already writing away, but others were just as stuck as I was.
Music. I wanted to write something about music.
The only thing I could think of was that I’d never performed onstage, at least not outside of a late-afternoon fantasy. I’d actually never really sung in public. I’d been in choirs in school, but had never tried out for anything where I had to sing a solo.
I wrote a sentence, and then another, and then another. I described the stage and the lights and the fluttery feeling of captivating everyone in the audience with just my voice and maybe a guitar.
Before I knew it, I had filled three pages, front and back.
“Okay, everyone. Just hand in what you’ve got and I’ll go make copies. Don’t worry about neatness or spelling. That’s not the point of this exercise. The point is just to write what comes to your mind, to stretch it and see what happens.”
Greg left and people broke out talking, mostly complaining about the assignment and how lame it was and that they’d bullshitted their way through it. Yeah, like Greg wasn’t going to see right through that. At least I’d been honest about mine. No one talked to me, for which I was grateful. Greg came back with a huge stack of papers and handed them to each of us.
“Okay, so your assignment for next time is to read everyone else’s and make at least three comments on each paper. Got it? You’re dismissed.” He waved his hand, and I wondered if he’d been British in a past life. He certainly talked like it, even though he didn’t have an accent.
I was freaking about everyone else reading my paper because it was so personal. I hadn’t meant it to be, but the words had sort of come out of nowhere. Nothing I could do about it now.
I pulled the Skittles and M&M’s out of my bag and tore them open, pouring an equal amount into my hand before folding the bags back up and putting them back.
You and your weird snacks. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with your taste buds, Jossy.
I cracked an M&M’s between my teeth and chased it with a Skittles.
* * *
That night I finally got around to updating my music blog. I’d gained ten followers that week, which made me want to dance for joy. It didn’t sound like a lot, but for being relatively new, I was gaining followers pretty steadily. My happy was taken down a notch when I saw how many stupid spam comments I had to delete.
“Jos!” Renee yelled from upstairs. I had my headphones around my neck and my music on low, so I was able to hear her over my new Lenka CD.
“Yeah?” I yelled back.
“What are you doing down there?”
“Nothing.” This was ridiculous. I went to the top of the stairs. “Why?”
“You’ve just been down there forever.”
“Well, I’m not setting my hair on fire or slitting my wrists, if that’s what you were worried about.” I leaned in the doorway. She was killing my blog-updating momentum.
“No, I just think it’s silly for you to be down there alone.” The living room was full of people, as usual, and also full of half-done homework, open books and too many highlighters. Darah had a thing for using different colors for each class.
“Maybe I like being alone.”
She didn’t have an answer to that. Renee hated being alone. Being raised with so many siblings had had the opposite effect on me.
“Oh, come on, Little Ne. Why would you want to be alone when you can hang out with us?” Mase was twisting Darah’s hair around his fingers, and she was trying to concentrate on a textbook open in her lap.