Chapter 4

Note: Good News! About half of chapter 5 is already written! Sorry this one took so long. You won't be disappointed with the upcoming chapters, though. Oh, and the setting of this is Davie, FL. I just decided that tonight. Enjoy!

“Due to the overwhelming short amount of time we have left to complete two units, I am assigning you a project that you’ll have no class time to work on.” My English teacher, Mrs. Higgins, paced in the front of the room. I slowly tapped my pencil eraser on the desk top in front of me, observing her. She had a peculiar way of talking, enunciating every word and ending her T’s sharply. Red lipstick stained her lips, barely missing her teeth. She always had a dress on with floral print and marched along in tall high heels.
“You will be paired with one other classmate, and you are to research two authors of the 19th century. Keep in mind we will be reading some poems and short stories from some of these authors over the next few weeks. You are to make a backboard comparing and contrasting your authors, and each of you will complete an individual report on one of them. The other partner will take the author you don’t have. It will be due a month from tomorrow, which is the third Friday in October. I will pass around a paper later with all the details, but now I will assign your partners.”
She proceeded to read down the list. I continued to tap my pencil, only half listening for my name. It had been two weeks since the December Breath concert, and Ellis and I didn’t talk much. My wish to forget him seemed to be coming true whether I wanted it to or not. Homework and Frisco kept me busy most days, but I regretted wishing him away. It was as if some unknown force heard my thoughts, took them seriously, and pushed Ellis and I as far apart as it could.
“Hazel Tamblyn and Ellis Lennon.” I perked up at my name. Had I heard right? Ellis was my partner? “You’ll be researching Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe.”
I twisted around to look at Ellis, who sat behind me. He gave me a smile and flicked his eyebrows up in unison. I smiled and faced forward. Mrs. Higgins kept rambling, but I didn’t pay attention. No class time would mean we had to get together and work at one of our houses. Either I’d be going over to his house, or he’d be coming to mine. I thought about Ellis coming into my home, seeing where I got ready in the morning and lounged around every day. I thought about me going to his house and seeing the same thing.
The bell broke up my thoughts. Absentmindedly I collected my things and walked out the classroom. However, there was a crowd forming to get out the door, so I got pushed to the back.
“Hazel!” I turned to my right, and there he was. “I’m really busy these next few weeks with recording that demo. The one my band won, remember?” I nodded. “Well, I have to talk to you really soon about getting together to do this project because my schedule fills up fast.”
“Okay. I’m pretty free most of the time. I don’t really do that much after school or anything.” I realized the last sentence was totally unnecessary, but the throng crowding the door was thinning fast, so I just stepped out into the hall without saying anything else.
That night he surprised me by calling. I kind of enjoyed the suspense of seeing a new number pop up on my cell phone’s screen. You never knew who it could be and what they would tell you.
“Hello?” I answered, eagerly anticipating who the mysterious caller was.
“Hey, Hazel.”
“Uh, hey.” I paused. “Who is this?”
“Oh, sorry. It’s Ellis.” My heart pounded. How in the world?
“Oh! Hi!” I was relieved that my disbelief didn’t come through.
“Yeah, I got your number from Heather.” That was one of the acquaintances I sat with at lunch. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all.”
“I was just calling to set up a time we could work on that English project.”
“Oh. I’m pretty much free most of the time, so whenever you can do it.”
“What about after school on Thursday? Is that good?”
I gulped. “Yeah.” I choked on the word as it left my mouth. “Yes. That’s fine.”
“Okay. I have to make up a quiz I missed, so I’ll be there around three.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
“See ya.”
“Bye.”
I hung up, startled. Ellis was coming here, to my house. Immediately my mind started processing a flow of steady questions. Where will we work? How long will he stay? What will he think? How awkward would it be? What would we talk about?
I shook my head to clear it. I was unsuccessful (big surprise there), so I threw myself into tidying up my house. I started with my room. I didn’t really want him in my room considering all of my personal obsessions that were displayed openly. All of my random signed posters from Frisco were tacked up on one of my light olive green walls. On another wall, my sunset calendar was hanging up. I’d received it for Christmas from my Mom, and for lack of a better choice, I put it up next to my bulletin board. That had pictures of my family, Cassie and I, and some of my previous pets which had since died pinned up on it.
There wasn’t all that much to clean in my room, just a few wrinkled clothes thrown in a corner and some old books. As I was picking up one of my books, a note fell from it. I instantly recognized Cassie’s handwriting and her infamous doodles that circled the front. I undid the elaborate folds of the thin notebook paper, a design we’d always fold the paper in whenever we had a note for the other. It was written in blue ink, Cassie’s favorite kind of pen since the seventh grade, and decorated in purple, her second favorite.
Hazel Tamblyn! How fun was last night?! Seriously, when you broke the microwave I almost died.
I smiled to myself. It had been a Sunday night, and Cassie was over. We got bored and hungry, so we wanted to make microwave quesadillas. I put them in our old microwave for the correct amount of time, but after about a minute the whole thing popped and sputtered until it just died on there on the spot.
I was having such a great time that I totally forgot to tell you about my thing with Ryan on Friday. Well I ended up wearing that really weird blue shirt. I guess you could call it blue. We never decided, remember?
Unexpectedly, I got choked up. I hadn’t talked to Cassie in weeks. That last time had been when I’d ran into Ellis and she saw it. We never wrote to each other anymore, or called, or got together. I felt like our friendship was slowly being washed away like an insignificant seashell being prodded by the ocean until it finally frees its grip on the beach’s sand, losing its place there forever.
I think Ryan had a good time. Sadly, I was trying so hard not to pig out on my ice cream that I accidently dropped some on my shirt. Super embarrassing! My mom got it all out, though. I swear she’s a miracle worker with stains.
I remembered once I was over at Cassie’s house, and I got some red punch all over my cream colored shirt. She took care of it while I borrowed a shirt from Cassie, and within the hour she had the stain out.
This is kinda getting long, and I think the teacher is suspecting me writing this instead of listening to his lecture. But how can he expect me to pay attention when we’re talking about the anatomy of a pig? Ew! I’ll talk to you at lunch about plans for Wednesday. Bye!
I folded up the note and left it sit on the floor. I didn’t feel like moving after reading it. I sat there, trying to work my way through what had happened to our friendship. Last year we’d talk every day and usually get together once every one or two weeks. I could easily see the huge contrast between that and this year. Were we just too busy for each other now? I felt like she was slipping fast, too fast for me to do anything about it. It was like someone accidently falling off a cliff and it happens too fast for anyone to catch their arm and pull them up again.
A single tear was threatening to leave its home in the corner of my eye and trickle down my cheek. The reasonable part of my brain was considering getting up to turn on the lights since the sun was almost done setting and the room was growing darker by the minute, but my emotions won. I wanted to stay sitting here for as long as it took to make me feel better, which could be awhile. I glanced at the note, and saw a P.S.
P.S. on the back of this note are some pictures just for you!
I unfolded it again and flipped it over. There was a cartoon of Cassie and Ryan on their ice cream date, complete with Cassie distressed about her stained shirt, and a drawing of her teacher at that time, Mr. Bradley. Obviously these were supposed to be humorous, but I didn’t laugh. The tear that had been pushing to slip out finally did, followed by another from my other eye. I didn’t make myself push them away, but simply let them fall. Was our friendship over?
The ringtone of my phone went off. Its light illuminated the portion of the room I sat in. I looked at the number, recognizing it as Ellis’s. Under my breath I muttered an unintelligible “crap!” and flipped open the phone. I was determined not to let him know I’d just been crying, but things didn’t go my way. On my greeting my voice cracked, but I hoped that didn’t totally give it away.
“Uh, hi. It’s Ellis again.”
“Oh. Hey.”
“Some things in my schedule got shifted around, so I can’t make it Thursday anymore. But if you’re free tomorrow, I have time then after school.”
“Yeah, I’m not busy then.” Some unwanted mucus started to drip in my nose, so I had no choice but to sniff.
“Hey, are you okay? You sound sad.”
Darn it, I hadn’t hid it! “Um,” I said slowly, trying to quickly think up an excuse. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just something…” I let my voice cut off.
“If you want to talk about it, I’ve got time.”
If I was being honest with myself, I really did want to. Badly. I wished I could pour out my heart without seeming like a miserable idiot, but that wasn’t reality. If I chose to tell him, that’s exactly what I would come across as.
“Honestly,” he said quietly, “I’m not just saying that. I really do want to know if you’re upset and why.”
“A little upset.”
“Why?”
I sighed, trying to suppress it as much as I could. “Well,” I started. “It’s kind of stupid.”
“That’s okay. I get upset about weird stuff all the time. What is it?”
“My best friend and I got separated this year for classes, and that’s never happened before. Last year we were really close, but over the summer we were really busy and didn’t get together much, and now I don’t see her at school. We haven’t talked in weeks, and a few minutes ago I found a note from last year when it actually felt like we were best friends. But now, I’m not sure.” I stopped awkwardly. The miserable idiot part of me definitely came out.
“That’s not a stupid reason. I mean, you’re losing a friend. That hurts.”
Why did he have to put it that way? I sniffed again, but the tears had stopped flowing now. “Yeah.”
“Have you made any new friends yet?”
I thought of my lunch table. Most of the time I just stared into space, only half listening to their meaningless ramblings. They didn’t exactly talk to me, and I didn’t really talk to them. I wouldn’t really call that a friendship.
“Not really. I have a few more acquaintances, and that’s about it.”
“Mm. I’m really sorry, Hazel. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“That’s okay. It’s enough that you listened.”
“I’m pretty good at that. Anytime.”
“Well, I’ll let you go. See you tomorrow.”
“Okay, bye.”
I stayed seated on the floor, but repositioned myself. I decided that I’d call Cassie. As Ellis put it, I felt like I was losing her, and I didn’t want that to happen. On the third ring, I decided that I’d leave a message if she didn’t pick up. “Hi guys, this is Cassie’s cell phone. I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave me a message.” Hearing her bubbly prerecorded voice worsened the ache left over in my throat from crying. Beeeeep.
“Uh, hi Cassie this is Hazel. I found this old note from last year and, um…” Idiotic! “…I was just thinking about how much I missed you. Call me back when you get this. Bye.”
The next day I didn’t talk to anyone unless I had to, especially Ellis. I was a little embarrassed about telling him my concerns the previous night, and didn’t even feel like making eye contact. However, the thought of him coming to my house this afternoon loomed above me like my own personal rain cloud. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to come, but I was scared and overwhelmed. I especially didn’t want him to play counselor with me like I knew some people would. I didn’t peg him to be that type of person, though. I hoped he wouldn’t surprise me.
At the end of the day after the last bell rang, Ellis came up to me in a beige corduroy jacket with a brown bag slung over his shoulder. I couldn’t help but notice how good he looked even through my nervousness.
“I forgot to get your address last night. Could you write it down?” He handed me a half sheet of notebook paper. “Uh, I forgot a pen. Hold on.” He dug through his bag until he found a little pencil with its eraser worn down to the metal holding it in.
I quickly scribbled down my house number and street and handed the paper and pencil back to him. “Are you coming straight over?”
“Yup. I’ll see you soon!” he called down the halls as he walked away.
I sighed and continued packing up. The warm Florida air greeted me as I went out the door. I loved that the warmth here stayed year round, and I didn’t have to worry about wearing heavy winter coat. In fact, I could wear flip-flops and swim in December, something most of the United States didn’t get the chance to do.
Thankfully I got to my house before Ellis did. I ran to my room to put down my bag and wait for him. In about five minutes, the doorbell rang. I greeted him at the door. It was strange seeing him inside my house for the first time, possibly because I was used to seeing him at school. My small one-floor house seemed too quiet all of a sudden.
“We can go to the computer and look up stuff. It’s over here.” I led him through the hallways of my house until we reached the computer.
“Who are we doing again?”
“We’re supposed to compare and contrast Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe on a backboard, and then write a separate report on one of them. Do you know which one you want?”
We discussed the project, at least for the first hour. I ended up getting Mark Twain for my report, which I didn’t mind at all. I’d read some of Poe’s short stories such as the Tell Tale Heart, and got the idea that he was a very dark and depressing person. I was later proved right by my English teacher. Twain, however, always seemed much more upbeat. I hadn’t read any of his books, but I’d seen the play Tom Sawyer before and I didn’t think it was bad.
All was going well with Ellis until he asked the question I’d been dreading, but kind of knew he was going to ask eventually.
“So are you feeling any better?”
“Yeah, I’m doing alright. I’m still not sure what to do about it, though.”
“That’s a tough one. Basically, you can try and mend it or let it go.”
“I tried to call her last night, but she didn’t pick up. I left a message, too, but she didn’t call back.”
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but quickly closed it. He paused for a few seconds before answering. “I was going to say it sounds as if you’re more dedicated to maintaining the friendship right now, but it’s stupid to judge that by a phone call.”
I nodded silently.
“I’d keep trying,” he went on, “and if it stays like it is now, I’d just let it go. But you can always try.”
“That’s all I can really do, I guess.”
“I think you’ll find a new friend somewhere. There’s always one around the corner.”
I thought about my time with Cassie. I’d never looked for another friend in four years, expecting to not find anything like the friendship I had with her. Perhaps it was about time I’d moved on.
As I thought I stared at Ellis’s long sleeved blue shirt. Just as I was about to ask why he always wore long sleeves, he announced he had to go. I escorted him out the door, and when he was gone, I thought. It occurred to me I’d never seen him wearing a short sleeve shirt, ever. For Florida weather, that was very strange. Even when he got really sweaty performing, he didn’t change. I was determined to ask him about it sometime very soon.