High - @((Y^!@ Allyvia (guided reading books .TXT) 📗

The Journal

 

 

Nix stared at the old, worn notebook in hand, promising to remember the way she looped her y’s and didn’t dot her i’s or j’s. He may have been holding the thing more intimate  than the red, silken panty set he always envisioned her wearing underneath those dark, black sweaters and old Chuck Taylor’s. It was killing him-- to open or not to open, that was the question. 

 

 He didn’t know what compelled him to take the journal. The way she batted those lashes, the way she smelled so fresh... Those were the things racing through his mind as he slipped that worn thing into his bag. 

 

 He touched the frayed, soft edges of the pages, wondering how many times Lucy herself had touched each one. He could just picture those slim fingers turning each one, sticking out her tongue as she madly scribbled words he was dying to read. 

 

 She had doodled, all over the dark purple cover, little stars and flowers and skulls and hearts. Lucy didn’t seem like the type to draw those things, but they weren’t just little silly scribbles girls in second grade put on notes they gave to their crushes’.  They were good- with thorns on the roses and shading on the skulls- better than anything he had ever seen. Staring at those hearts, which she had shaded and made pop off the page, he finally turned to the first page. What he saw shocked him.

 

 I know I’m supposed to love them, because... well, I don’t even know why I’m supposed to. Most guys here haven’t even heard of Sòley or Trinity College Dublin, let alone xx or Winter's Bone. I feel as thought just sitting in the same classroom as them will lower my IQ.

 The girls here-- Amy and Jenny and Leah and all the other blond, stereotypically perfect girls everyone secretly hates-- locked me in the janitor’s closet last week. Michael Brown was in there too. We talked about the Pythagorean Theorem and his newest science project until the janitor let us out.  I felt bad for him, Michael, I mean; in the daylight, I saw his glasses were bent, and his nose was bloodied.

 And why the hell does everyone call them by their full names, the populars, I mean?! Amy Herring isn’t any more intimidating; Nick Keating isn’t any more brutish; Amanda Nichols isn’t any more... whatever the hell Amanda is. I was thinking something along the lines of a nun swayed the wrong way. 

 I think it’s some psychological thing; instead of peeing on every tree and claimed homecoming date, guys call each other by their last names as though they’d forget them if they didn’t. 

 I think Amy just likes hearing herself talk, say her full name. Herring. Isn’t that a fish? 

 

Nick couldn’t deny the way his heart squeezed in his chest when he read that. Lucy Edwards thought he was brutish. The thought made him feel bad, and... rejected. When was the last time he had felt that feeling of rejection? Sixth grade when Amy refused to give him a Valentine’s Day card?

 

Lucy Edwards had been locked in the supply closet Nix and a couple of other team mates had shoved Michael into. He was the ass who bloodied Michael’s nose and bent his glasses.

 

Skipping pages-- pages of those dot-less i’s and j’s, and drawings he had to stare at for a few minutes before fully understanding how much detail she put into each, and the way she looped the y is Lucy-- he found one entry much more recent. Just from the day before. 

 

Kingsley got in another fight. I think it was with Eric Sanders, but I’m not sure. These days, I’m not sure of anything. I’m not sure if I can be... good. 

Somedays, I feel dark, bad. Is that normal? Then again, a girl pouring her heart and soul and inner deepest thoughts onto a single sheet of college ruled paper isn’t normal. 

Sometimes I wonder if other people think like me. 

I think dancing in the rain is fun.

I think dark chocolate is the best thing in the world, besides Hugh’s Burgers. 

I think curly hair means the person has much more intelligence. You know, they have so much intelligence it sends their hair into spirals. That’s what I told the girls at St. Mary’s so they’d stop teasing me in second grade. It didn’t work.

I also think my father finally married Liza. I’m not a huge fan of her-- neither is Mom or Kingsley, from what I’ve told him-- but I’m happy for my father. He finally found someone as horrid as he is....

I think.... 

 The thought is vain, because I have Kingsley and my mother and a journal to scribble in all day without someone dissecting and judging me, but I think I need a friend.

 

Nix felt as though a cold, iron hand had clamped onto his stomach. This wasn’t just some silly, daydream journal. This was Lucy’s deeper, inner thoughts, one’s no one should ever see. 

 

  She wasn’t just bullied-- shoved into supply closets and basically shunned by the whole student body-- she was alone. She was alone, except for that purple spiral notebook Nix now held, feeling as though it was going to burn his hand if he read any further.  

 

As if on cue, to break the ice and lighten the load of the iceberg dangling over Nix’s head at the moment, Amy Herring bounced into the seat next to him, her pale freckled legs peeking out from beneath the short gold cheerleading skirt she adorned. He wondered how long Lucy had sat in that closet, while Amy-- his red-haired, funny, sweet Amy-- sat outside the door, laughing with all the other cheerleaders.

 

“Nix! Hey, I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she cried dramatically. She was oblivious to her victim’s thoughts right under her nose, as she drank in those features that made up beautiful Nix. She didn’t seem to notice how he was suddenly second-guessing everything about her. 

 

“Here I am,” he shrugged, slamming the notebook shut and stuffing it into his bag quickly, before she had a chance to ask why he had Lucy Edward’s infamous book of witchcraft and meth recipes and hit list and every other nasty thing people had thought she was carrying around in that notebook, “Crazy how I’d be in my first block class.”

 

Amy, laughing and rolling her eyes, swatted him playfully. “You’re a riot. Look, I need a date.”

 

She said it so flatly, with a straight face, Nix almost withheld a snort. Almost. 

 

“Why’re you coming to me? Matt’s so whipped-”

 

“I am not whipped,” an excited Matt Jenks cried, falling into the seat next to Amy, before planting a giant kiss on her cheek. Amy kissed her teeth to withhold from telling Matt to scram for a few moments.

 

“As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted by said slave,” Nix hinted, nudging his friend playfully, “why’re you asking me?”

 

Matt, wrapping his arm around Amy, who rolled her eyes at an angle no one could see, grinned. “I have a hot date.”

 

“Oh yeah,” Nix laughed, “with who? Your grandma?”

 

 “Close,” Matt admitted, “I’m helping my mom plan my cousin’s sweet sixteen. Personally, I had never noticed the difference between taffeta and silk until now.”

 

 Nix, chuckling and shaking his head, raked his fingers through the cropped strands that fell into his eyes. Amy watched the whole time, envisioning herself doing the same thing one day. 

 

 “Said like a true fag,” he joked, looking at Amy with a fake sympathetic smile, “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

 

 Matt, rolling his eyes, grinned before his expression faded from one of teasing to one of remembrance. “Speaking of fags, guess which punching bag called in sick? Little dweeb Michael told the office he was suffering ‘chronic depression’,” he said with an eye roll, putting quotes around ‘chronic’ and ‘depression’, “ took a health day and everything! Is that a load of bull or what?”

 

 Matt laughed, but in the moment, Nix was beginning to think it sounded more and more like an ass-- you know, a mule?-- braying. Amy watched as her friend’s gaze shifted from Matt to the bag at his feet, in which he had shoved that familiar purple spiral notebook.

 

 “Look, Matt-” Nix began, only to stop when Kingsley Abrahams walked into the classroom. An eerie, almost supernatural, hush washed over the classroom as that stoner stepped through the tall doorway. 

 

 Those gossiping B-list girls in the back of the classroom looked up, their fake-lash, kohl stained eyes widening. Those jocks and cheerleaders in the middle of the room let their lips tug into satisfied, shameless smiles, each glancing at Eric-- who had only a cut lip to prove the two had scuffled-- Sanders. Eric looked at Kingsley and smiled evilly, from the middle of the room, with all of his A-list friends. And the nerds, in the front row of desks, were too busy hungrily reading their Physics books and history notes. 

 

“Nice of you to join us, Mr. Abrahams,” Mr. Marreck, their English teacher, smiled, clapping a hand on Kingsley’s back. Kingsley just glared at the middle row, where Nix and Amy and Matt and Eric Sanders and Leah and Jessica and all the populars sat. Nix had to look down at the engravings ‘PENI$’ and “B.A. is BaddAss’ on the dark top of his desk to keep from blushing. 

 

 Kingsley just smiled a bitter smile that only meant trouble. “Yeah. Didn’t you hear, Mr. M., I was busy making deals behind the school and beating the living snot out of dear old Eric over there?”

 

Everyone’s gaze shifted to Eric, who ducked uncomfortably under the gazes of his peers. Mr. Marreck, clearing his throat and drawing the attention to the front of the room, uncomfortably motioned for Kingsley to sit. Nix couldn’t bear to look up at Kingsley for the rest of the block, and instead focused on the carved letters on his desk. He knew if he looked up, he’d see Kingsley Abrahams staring at him. At the purple spiral notebook that barely peeked out of his book bag.

~~~

Amy Herring sat in her eighth block class, staring  vacantly out the window. ‘Could anything be more boring,’ she thought to herself, rolling her eyes as Mrs. Lang handed back Amy’s C-minus worthy essay about some war no one really remembers, and whose survivors are buried somewhere in the middle of Who-knows-where, Arkansas... or maybe it was Alaska....? Either way, Amy would have rather plucked her eyebrows with a weed wacker than sit through another one of Mrs. Lang’s ‘I’m-so-disappointed-in-your-grades-your-class-has-so-much-potential-I-have-failed-as-a-teacher’ speeches she regularly preached. 

 

Sometimes it sucked being Amy Herring. She wasn’t a blond; her hair was a carrot orange. She was incapable when tanning, instead burning to a point where she looked like a lobster. She was covered in freckles, something she prided herself in despite how they sprinkled across her shoulders like stars in the sky, and across the bridge of her nose more frequently than potholes in the road. 

 

Amy couldn’t simply buy blond hair and tan legs and freckle-free skin. As much as she wanted-- craved-- to look like her best friend, it would never be. From first grade all the way to freshman year, Amy had never felt... pretty. And then, sophomore year, Amy began dating Matt Jenks. 

 

At first, Amy believed she was head over heels for Matt, especially since he was so close to Nix, the guy she told everything. At first, Amy began planning their wedding and naming their fictional children, and kissed Matt at every chance she got because this kid was unbelievable; he thought Amy was flawless. You know, he thought that beautiful cheerleader, who