4. Alex
FOUR
Alex
I ’ve officially decided that I hate this place.
At my old school people were cool. Sure, there were always those douchebags that picked on the weird kids, but everyone left me alone. Someone has already started a rumor that I kissed a boy in the bathroom. It isn’t true, I’ve hardly spoken to anyone here, let alone kissed them.
I drag a hand through my long hair, tugging on the ends. Should I cut it? Maybe it’s making me a target. I never thought people would really be that ignorant, but apparently I was wrong.
It doesn’t help that sometimes, I do look at boys the same way I do girls. I get nervous around them, just the same way I would a girl, if I find them attractive. I’ve never had an actual crush on a guy, but I don’t think it would be that crazy if I did.
I toss my bookbag into one of the seats near the back of the bus and plop down next to it. The older guy in the seat across the aisle eyes me up and down, but doesn’t say anything.
“Can I sit here?” The same delicate voice from earlier pulls me from my inner monologue. My eyes move to the front of the bus and they land on a pair of ashy braids. Oh. Of course she’s on this bus, we live only a few doors down from each other, but for some reason I still wasn’t expecting to see her.
Every time I see her it feels like a surprise. A shock to my system. Something about her is so other-worldly, almost ethereal.
I hear some other girl giggling a few seats ahead of me. “Find somewhere else to sit.” The person lowers their voice to an almost-whisper, “Ugly.”
Ugly? I don’t understand, that’s the second time today that I’ve witnessed someone insulting her looks. Something about that doesn’t sit right with me.
Opal’s mouth twists into a frown, and those frosty blue eyes blink rapidly as she looks around the bus. She keeps walking forward, her anxiety seeming to grow with every step she takes.
I scoot towards the window, setting my backpack on my lap. “Sit here.”
She lets out a sigh of relief before softly perching herself on the very edge of the seat. “Thanks,” she says, one side of her lips pulling up slightly into a grin.
“You don’t have to do that.” I pat the space between us. “I don’t bite.”
Her eyes meet mine and I can see they’re still filled with anxiety. I wonder what her story is. Why is she so nervous? I know some people are just shy by nature, but she wasn’t afraid to tell that Mark asshole to shut up today. You have to be a little ballsy to stand up for a total stranger like that.
The bus finally cranks to life and slowly pulls out of the lot, the smell of diesel fills the air. Finally she slides an inch or two closer to me, so at least her legs are fully out of the aisle.
I keep waiting for her to say something, but she doesn’t. Maybe she really is just the quiet type. I’m on the quiet side myself, but for some reason I feel compelled to talk to her.
She’s mysterious, and I want to figure her out.
“What are you gonna do today?”
Her eyes volley over to me, and again she looks surprised. “Nothing,” she shrugs.
She reminds me of a bird, small and nervous, but also mesmerizing.
My mom always loved watching the birds from our porch back in Ridgewood. She’d record all the different species that passed through our yard, and would learn the different sounds they made. She loved teaching Ezra and I how to tell the birdsongs apart from one another. Her favorite was always cardinals, she swore that they brought good luck.
And ironically, they’re also a symbol of a deceased loved one visiting you from the afterlife.
Bluebirds were always my favorite.
“Maybe we could hang out. I mean, you know, if you want to.”
Her eyes meet mine and she silently glances at me for a few seconds, her eyes searching my face. Her fingers are picking at a hole in her blue jeans and her whole body appears tense and jittery.
“Really?” Her voice is weak and soft.
“Yeah?”
Finally she glances away from me and looks at the blue faux leather seat in front of us. “Okay…” Her eyes peek over at me again, and a barely-there smile forms on her thin lips.
When the bus stops at the end of our street she stands up and hurries to the door.
“I have to tell my grandma I’m going to a friend’s house first!” she yells over her shoulder as she runs towards the end of our road. We live on a little dead end street with eight houses, four on each side. Mine is the first house on the left corner, and hers is the last house on the right. I figured that out when I noticed her riding home on her bike that day through my window.
I pull my keys out of the smallest compartment in my backpack and unlock my front door. Our house still feels empty and soulless. No pictures on the walls, despite having our family photos done every year ever since I was born. I know we have several boxes full of them, but Dad hasn’t hung a single one. It still smells like an empty, unfamiliar house. Nothing but the scent of lemon Pledge and lingering dust on the hard to reach surfaces. It doesn’t feel like home.
Dad has thrown himself into work at his new job. He’s always done that, to a degree, but now it’s like I don’t even exist. At least before everything changed he would act excited to come home.
A few minutes later I hear a light tap on my door. I open it and see Opal’s small form through the glass.
“Hey,” she says nervously.
“Come in.”
Her eyes ricochet back and forth from my living room to my kitchen. “Where are your parents?”
“Dad’s at work.”
Her brows arch as she hesitantly steps inside. “And he’s okay with me being here?”
I didn’t think about whether or not he would be okay with it. Probably because I don’t really care. “Yeah.” I walk down the hall towards my bedroom and she follows a few steps behind me.
She looks around curiously at my room. I guess maybe she’s never been in a boy’s room before. I wonder if she has any siblings.
“Is that your guitar?”
I look over at the corner of the room where her eyes are pointed. “Yeah,” I walk over and pick up the blue acoustic Ibanez. It’s still a little bit too big for me to hold comfortably. It was Ezra’s before it was mine. He was already seventeen when he bought it.
“Can you play it?” One of her eyebrows arches slightly before she reaches out her hand to softly graze the neck of the guitar.
“Hey! Don’t!” I flinch, twisting around so that the guitar is just out of her reach, and my outburst causes her to take a step back, her blue eyes widened in alarm. “Sorry… it’s just, it was my brother’s, I don’t really let other people touch it.”
“Oh,” her shoulders sag a bit, and her eyes fill with instant regret. “I’m sorry. Does he get mad if people touch it?”
That familiar lump forms in my throat the way it always does when someone asks me about Ezra. Obviously Opal has no clue, it isn’t her fault, but I still hate having to talk about him. I wish I hadn't brought up the subject.
“Um, kind of.” I quickly blink away the tears that start to form in my eyes. This girl is going to think I’m a pussy if I start crying like a baby in front of her, so I swallow back my emotions and put on a straight face. “And yeah, I can play it.”
I lay the strap over my neck and sit down on the edge of my bed with the guitar in my lap. “What kind of music do you like?”
She nervously twists one of her braids around her pointer finger. “Umm, I don’t know. Country, I guess. Rock, pop, folk.”
“Folk?” My brow lifts.
“Yeah,” she shrugs. “What’s wrong with that?” she asks defensively.
“Nothing. I just don’t meet a lot of people our age that like that type of music.”
“Well, my grandma listens to it sometimes. So, yeah I like it.”
Nodding, I start strumming the chords to a Bob Dylan song. Quickly I get lost in the melody, like I always do, and I close my eyes, letting the song flow through me, my fingers delicately plucking the strings. I peek up at her and see her mouth hanging wide open, her blue eyes filled with bewilderment.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re like…really good.”
A softness pulls at my chest, and I rub it, willing the weird feeling to go away. I work really hard at guitar, harder than I work at anything else. I’m not great at school, I’ve never cared about sports, but music has always been my thing.
I’ve always felt like there was a song for every emotion, and when I couldn’t verbalize how I was feeling, music was able to fill in the words that were missing. It’s gotten me through every hard thing I’ve experienced in my life: losing my brother, my mom taking off, and now moving hundreds of miles away from my home. Without music, I think I’d be completely lost by now.
“Thanks,” I shrug, trying my best to play it cool like her compliment doesn’t affect me.
She nods, looking around my room awkwardly before sitting in the big, fluffy papasan chair that used to be Ezra’s. “So, where are you from? You just moved here, right?”
I set the guitar down on the floor and lean it against my bed. “Colorado.”
“Wow. The mountains?”
“Yep.”
“Must be pretty different from here. I’ve never even seen a mountain.”
Homesickness starts to creep into my body as I think about my former home. I miss it, but more than that I miss what my life was like before everything changed. “It’s very different. It’s awesome there, a lot cooler than this place,” I scoff.
She suddenly looks offended, her mouth curving into a grimace. “This place isn’t that bad.”
“It’s hot as hell and there’s nothing to do. The only scenery is strip malls and the occasional cow.”
Her icy blue eyes narrow slightly. “We have more than that.”
“Oh yeah? Where?”
Her mouth snaps shut, and I can tell she’s getting angry. I’m not trying to be mean, but I can’t help but feel slightly amused that she’s defending this town so much. Like it personally offends her that I don’t want to be here, it’s kind of humorous for some reason.
“Well…we have a swimming hole.”
My brow furrows, and I wonder if I heard her correctly. “A swimming hole?”
“Yep,” she pops the P at the end.
“Like, a pool?” I’ve noticed that nearly everyone here has a pool. In Colorado only rich people had pools, but here almost every house big or small comes with its own pool. I guess it’s a small consolation prize for living somewhere that’s hotter than Satan’s ass.
“No, a swimming hole. Like, a lake…type thing.” Her face flushes and she looks down at her feet nervously.
“Okay. Show me this amazing swimming hole then,” I challenge.
Her eyes flick back up at me and she straightens up. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Right now?”
She shrugs. “Why not?”