the contrarian #2
Sep. 13th, 2025 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f0rrestI was stepping quick down the wide stair brick, cool breeze washing over me, one hand dragging along the top of this fancy low cement wall for balance, when I heard my name called from behind me. I didn’t stop, but, while moving, I tried to turn my head to catch a glimpse of whoever it was, and that’s when I lost my footing a little bit and stumbled down the last few steps, landing on my palms at the bottom of the stairs, contents of my messenger bag spilling out all over the walkway, and not just a few things spilled out, all of it did, my Moto flip, bright yellow Sony Walkman, headphones with the orange puffs, cassette copy of Beck’s Sea Change, zipper binder with all my papers and stuff in it, wallet and credit card, that copy of Catcher Mr. Moody told me to hang on to, some loose comics I had drawn earlier, a few textbooks, Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil which I didn't understand a word of but felt cool carrying around, my little pill baggie, and the Final Fantasy VIII strategy guide I had been keeping in there for when I got bored in class, which was like all the time, and even my pack of Luckies, thankfully they didn’t burst open or nothing, so the cigs were unharmed, which was important because, well, I couldn’t buy them myself, on account of being seventeen, so I had to get my sister to buy them, and she always made a big deal out of it for some reason, saying I shouldn’t smoke and all that, which is rich considering she smokes weed like all the fucking time.
Anyway, on that brick walkway, on my hands and knees, clumsily scooping everything back into my bag, I could feel my face flush red with fuzzy embarrassment, and my stomach was churning a little bit as I imagined the whole student body watching me, laughing, which probably wasn't actually happening, but I imagined it anyway, and I was hungry, having not eaten all day, because I was watching my weight, always thinking myself fat as hell, even though Mom always told me I was too thin, but I knew she was just trying to make me feel better.
Anyway. When I went to pick up that old copy of Catcher, a chunky wrist reached down and picked it up for me, so I looked up and there I saw Aaron, holding my book, wearing his signature suspenders with green bowtie, tucked Epworth nearly bursting at the buttons. He was breathing heavy, which was normal for him, because he was actually fucking huge, and his cheeks were all puffy and red, but he had this big smile on his teddy-bear face.
“Sorry, Nathan,” he said in baritone, pausing for breaths, “didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t scare me,” I mumbled, snatching the book from his hand, glancing around nervously as if I were a criminal who had just committed the unforgivable crime of being a tall, awkward teenager with zero coordination and a bag full of incredibly nerdy shit.
And I felt kinda bad about what I did next, because I was like Aaron’s only friend, but I started speed-walking down the brick walkway, toward the Harrington Building, determined to distance myself from the embarrassment zone, passing all sorts of polos along the way. Aaron waddling behind me, trying to keep up, huffing and puffing the whole time, “hold on, hold on,” but I just kept zooming, passing through the crazy shade of one of those mighty oaks, until I reached a fork which verged into an alley between Epworth and Harrington, where Aaron caught up with me and said, “Hey, aren't you going to class?” but I just gave him a dismissive wave and said, “Yeah, I’ll be there in a few,” then I turned into the alley, head down because, well, if a teacher saw me or something, they'd stop me and ask me all sorts of questions, which I didn't really want to deal with right now, because I just wanted a damn Lucky, so I picked up the pace a little bit, through the alley, through the parking lot behind Epworth proper, and finally through a shady opening in the evergreen wall surrounding the entire campus prison complex, and when I looked back, Aaron was nowhere in sight, so I guess he must have waddled his way to Fine Arts. He was such a stickler for the rules, always worried about being on-time and shit, which often made me wonder how we got along so well, considering I didn't give a fuck about any of that.
Stopping in the shade of leafy tunnel, I dug my hands through my bag, pulled out my pack of Luckies, which also housed my Bic, and then I slid a Lucky between my lips, at which point I started rumaging through my bag again, looking for my Walkman, which took me a few seconds to dig out, and when I did, I quickly put my headphones on and pressed down on that chunky play button, and that’s when Beck’s Sea Change started playing with all its strings and acoustics and moodiness.
I was trying to like the album, I really was, but it was so different from his previous work that it kinda annoyed me. I mean, this is the guy who did “Loser,” for fuck’s sake, the wizard of poetic junk pop, who once sung about “garbage-man trees” and “mouthwash jukebox gasoline,” but now he’s sitting here strumming an acoustic guitar, comparing himself to a paper tiger like he’s Neil Young or some shit. It was a big change for him, which I guess makes the title appropriate, but it also kinda pissed me off, not that I hate change or nothing like that, but I just don’t see the point, especially when you had something good going on before. I just don’t get why everyone is always trying to change all the time. It makes me kinda sad, in a way, like whenever someone changes, the person they were before just withers away and dies or something.
Anyway, around the time Beck started singing about “stray dogs gone defective,” I sparked up and took a nice long drag, and as the smoke reached my lungs, I was overcome by this heady feeling like I was a storm cloud full of heat lightning just rumbling off in the distance or something like that, then I glanced at my watch, seven minutes till, just enough time to finish smoking and get to class on time, so in that moment, I was feeling pretty good, not a care in the world, so I decided to push a little further through the wood, into an opening between a circle of trees, fully shaded by a thick canopy, into a place I had taken to calling Smoker’s Grove because, well, it was a grove that I smoked in, and it was a special to me, a place to call my own, a place where no one bothered me. The ground was all dead leaves, twigs, and branches, so it was snap-crackle-pop whenever you took a step, and there were a few fallen logs and stumps scattered about, perfect for sitting, but I usually preferred to sit on this out-of-place, long-forgotten electrical box off in the corner, because it was the only spot where you could see the sky through the canopy, so, taking another drag, then blowing a huge smoke cloud, imaging myself like some sort of sick dragon in a Japanese role-playing game, I turned to the electrical box and, to my surprise, there was already someone sitting right on it.
She was just sitting there, with headphones on, reading a book, one finger on the page, mumbling to herself. “What storm is this that blows so contrary?” A stray sunbeam shone down on her, through the canopy, as if she were chosen by the heavens or something, not that I believe in heaven or nothing like that, but you know what I mean, and her pale legs were crossed at the knees, and her long orange hair was draped over one shoulder, and she had these big duck lips, and these big square glasses, which made her look kinda nerdy, but also kinda cute, so cute, in fact, that I forgot about the Lucky dangling from my lips, smoke swirling up into my nostrils, which made me sneeze, which must have startled her because that’s when she looked up from her book, her big green eyes scanning me up and down, and for a moment there I thought that I had disturbed an angel or something, not that I believe in angels or nothing, but man, seeing her sitting there in that stray sunbeam could turn any boy religious, I'm telling you.
In that moment, with our eyes locked, I tried to affect some sort of cool pose, but my body was stiff, feeling pretty nervous, so instead I put a hand up to my face, trying to catch the Lucky between my fingers, but ended up knocking it right out of my mouth onto the leaves below, and when I bent over to pick it up, that’s when my headphones fell off my ears, which dragged my Walkman out of my pocket, causing it too to fall into the leaves below. Then, confused as to which thing to pick up first, I sort of fell forward onto my palms, and that’s when that fuzzy feeling of embarrassment I had come to know so well returned, so I scrambled to pick up my Lucky, burning my hand a little bit before getting it back into my mouth, then I slung the headphones around my neck and pocketed my Walkman, but not before pushing down that chunky stop button, which, at that point, I wished had also just stopped my life, because I was feeling like a fucking idiot, I really was.
So I just sat there on the ground, in the lotus position, looking down at the leaves, feeling like an idiot, half covering my face, adjusting the Lucky between my lips, face probably red as hell, from all the falling down, but after a few seconds I looked up at the girl anyway, expecting to see a look of terror, but instead she was just sitting there with this cute curl on her duckish lips, looking both amused and mischievous, like an elf almost, because her ears were poking out of her hair just so. And she looked so radiant with that sunbeam that I had completely forgotten about being embarrassed, so I said, in the smoothest voice possible, “Hey,” then I took a long drag on my Lucky.
“Are you alright?” she said, her voice all smoky and southern, as if she were a country-jazz fusion singer or something.
“Yeah,” I said, taking the cigarette out of my mouth, flicking ash. “I just, well, I just didn’t expect to see you there.” I was affecting a real cool tone, feigning obliviousness, as if nothing had happened, which was kind of my default attitude, especially with girls, whom, for some reason, I just can’t stop myself from flirting with. I can’t help it. I’m always thinking girls are cute, even the dumb ones, but there was something different about this girl, something beyond cute, maybe it was her strange southern accent, which normally, on most people, I think sounds trashy, but, combined with the whole reading-a-book-in-a-shady-grove thing, projected some sort of like alluring intelligence or something that I just couldn’t get enough of.
She turned her attention to the book in her lap, slid out a bookmark with sunflowers all over it, put it between the pages, then closed the book, pulled her headphones down, removed those nerdy glasses, folded them, and hung them right between the collar of her green Epworth top, then she looked right at me and said, in that smoky southern accent, “Were you expecting someone else?”
“No, it’s just that,” I paused because at that moment, without the glasses, I recognized her. We weren't in any classes together, but I had seen her in the halls a few times. It was a large campus, but it was a small school, only about fifty high schoolers or so, so it was hard not to notice people. But I think she was new, because she just randomly appeared after Winter break, and I knew she was a senior, like me, because I always saw her leaving AP classes, none of which I'm actually in, on account of my poor grades. And I had only ever seen her from a distance, so I never really noticed how cute she was until just now, and she wasn't cute in this typical twiggy-barbie type way that you see on television or whatever, she was actually kind of big, in a way, not like fat or nothing, but she was taller than most girls, probably up to my nose, and I was 6’2 on a good day, and her face was long and pale and flecked with all these little orange dots, like a sunflower or something, and I was like lost like a bee in nectar there for a moment, probably staring a little bit longer than I should have been.
But she was just blinking those big greens at me. “It’s just what?” she said, finally.
And that snapped me out of my trance. Looking away, I took a drag off my Lucky and blew a smokescreen, then I said, “It’s just that, like, no one ever comes back here.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “It’s a nice spot.”
“Are you going to, uh,” I lifted my Lucky, “tell anyone?”
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then,” she said, that mischievous curl coming back, “your secret’s safe with me.”
Then, for a moment there, it was disney, what with all the birds chirping and leaves rustling and branches crackling and squirrels scampering up trees, and, in this quiet fantasia, we stole glances at each other in this shy sort of way, until, out of nervousness mostly, I flicked the filter of my cigarette so hard that the cherry flew out, so then I quickly stood up to stomp it out, and that’s when I heard her giggling a little bit, so I turned and there she was, covering her mouth, watching me. I didn’t know what to say at first, so I just ran a hand through my hair, pushing my bangs to one side like I do, and said, “So, hey, like, what were you listening to just now?”
“Oh,” she said, then, still sitting on the electrical box, she dug a hand into her pocket and pulled out this bright green iPod, then she thumbed it and looked down at the screen. “This song called ‘Neon,’ by,” but before she completed her sentence, I completed it for her,
“John Mayer?”
Her lips did that little curl again. “How’d you know that?”
“Good guess, I guess,” I said, feeling a lot cooler now, so I removed another Lucky from the pack and lit it. I was actually kinda obsessed with that song for a little bit, back in the day. That jazzy guitar line in particular can get stuck in your head for weeks. I was actually a big fan of John Mayer, although I didn’t often admit it because his music was a little too mainstream, and I was trying to distance myself from all that radio-friendly shit, but sometimes, when the music is just so good, you just can’t resist it. Besides, he was a really good guitarist, and he knew how to write a hook, and out of the big three corny singer-songwriters of the time, that being John Mayer, Jason Mraz, and Dave Matthews, John Mayer was easily the least offensive, musically. My mom was a big fan too. We even saw him live once, down at the Memorial Stadium. She even let me skip school for it, which was pretty cool of her, I guess, now if only she would stop lying to me all the time about being too thin, that would be even cooler.
“Actually,” I said, kicking my feet a little bit, “I really like that song, especially the guitar riff or whatever you call it.”
“Oh,” she smiled, “me too. I’m trying to learn it on my viola.”
“I saw him play one time, down at,” I paused for a second. “You play viola?”
“I try,” she said, her smile so cute I could barely even look at her. Then she added, “Do you play something?”
“I, uh,” I said, dragging on my Lucky, thinking for a second. “I play guitar.”
I don’t know why I said that. I don’t really play guitar. I mean, I know a few chords, but I don’t actually play guitar. I was in a band one time, in middle school, but was kicked out for, well, not knowing how to play the guitar, like, at all.
“I’d love to hear you play,” she said.
“I, uh, yeah, sure.”
The birds were chirping again. I was kicking my feet. Then she broke the silence. “What were you listening to?”
“Beck.”
“Bach?”
“No, Beck. You know,” I paused to prepare myself, then I started singing, poorly, “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill meeee.”
She was doing that lip curl again. “You sound just like him.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah, you should do it again.”
So I took a long drag off my Lucky, exhaled, then sang it again, practically screaming this time, “I’M A LOSER BABY, SO WHY DON’T YOU KILL MEEEE,” which echoed in the canopy and sent some birds flying off like crazy, then I added that funny little line at the end, “Get crazy with the cheese whiz.” And that cracked her up. She had these low hearty laughs, which warmed my dark heart, they really did. So I kept going, “Kill the headlights and put it in neutral, stock car flamin' with a loser and the cruise control.” I was laughing between verses at this point. “Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love-seat.”
“You’re a natural. You don’t even need school. Just do Beck covers for the rest of your life.”
I did one of those single ha’s, then I said, “I wish,” and put out my Lucky on a nearby tree, then I whipped out the pack and held it out to her. “You smoke?”
She shook her head politely and said, “What’s your name?”
“Nathan,” I said comfortably, “Nathan Wheeler.”
“I’m Katie-Belle,” she said, “Gallagher,” she added. “Most people just call me KB.”
I repeated her name over and over in my mind, then I said something really stupid, I said, “like KB Toys?”
But she didn't seem to mind, she actually laughed. “Yes, like KB Toys.” Then she smiled at me and said, “I just transferred here,” and then after a brief pause, brushing some orange out of her face, she said, “I’ve seen you around.”
She’s seen me around, I thought, she’s seen me around. I was getting excited and queasy in the best way possible. “Yeah, me too,” I said, “seen you, that is, I mean, around.” And the more her lips curled, the more I lost my way with words, but I just kept going, “Where’d you come from, if you don’t mind me asking, like, what school were you at before, were you even in school, or were you, like, home-schooled, or something?"
“I used to live in Alabama.”
“Really?” I said. “How’d you end up here?”
“My parents,” her voice a little lower now, “Divorced.”
“Oh yeah, mine too,” I said, my tone too happy for the subject matter, which I could tell made her fidget a little bit, but I just kept going. “I read somewhere that, like, ninety percent of marriages end in divorce.” I was just making shit up at this point, but I kept going. “So it's almost like marriage is like a self-fulfilling prophecy or something.”
She laughed one of those beautiful laughs again then got real quiet for a second before saying, “So I take it you never plan on getting married?”
“Well, uh, I never really thought about it, you know. I guess, if I met, like, the right girl, or whatever, maybe. I don't know.” She was nodding, so I just kept going. “And, like, I'm not religious or nothing, you know, so I don't really see the point, it's not like God is gonna strike me down if I don't get married or whatever. I'm agnostic, to tell you the truth.”
She was still nodding, and the birds were still chirping, and the squirrels were still scampering up their trees, and after a few seconds of letting my eyes wander, from the squirrels, to her, then to my feet, I said, “Well maybe I would, you know, get married, or whatever, but she’d have to be, like, really special.” Then, in that disney moment, overcome by some surge of confidence, I looked straight in those big green eyes of hers and said, “You know what I mean?”
Then, as if on cue, that stray sunbeam vanished, but KB was still radiant, even in the darkness of the grove, like a beacon of hope within the gloom or something. She was just staring at me, not saying a word, so cute I could barely look at her, then it started to feel like butterflies were killing each other in my stomach or something. I was suddenly overcome with this feeling of regret, like I had come on too strong or something, so I turned away from her, all red-faced, checking my watch, and that’s when I realized I was ten minutes late to class.
So I shouted “FUCK” and bolted the hell out of there.
I could hear KB shouting faintly behind me, “wait, wait,” but I just kept running, not because I was concerned about being late to class or whatever, but because Mr. Moody said I was just one write-up away from being expelled, which normally would’ve been fine with me, but not this time, because this time was different.
This time I knew KB.
Anyway, on that brick walkway, on my hands and knees, clumsily scooping everything back into my bag, I could feel my face flush red with fuzzy embarrassment, and my stomach was churning a little bit as I imagined the whole student body watching me, laughing, which probably wasn't actually happening, but I imagined it anyway, and I was hungry, having not eaten all day, because I was watching my weight, always thinking myself fat as hell, even though Mom always told me I was too thin, but I knew she was just trying to make me feel better.
Anyway. When I went to pick up that old copy of Catcher, a chunky wrist reached down and picked it up for me, so I looked up and there I saw Aaron, holding my book, wearing his signature suspenders with green bowtie, tucked Epworth nearly bursting at the buttons. He was breathing heavy, which was normal for him, because he was actually fucking huge, and his cheeks were all puffy and red, but he had this big smile on his teddy-bear face.
“Sorry, Nathan,” he said in baritone, pausing for breaths, “didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t scare me,” I mumbled, snatching the book from his hand, glancing around nervously as if I were a criminal who had just committed the unforgivable crime of being a tall, awkward teenager with zero coordination and a bag full of incredibly nerdy shit.
And I felt kinda bad about what I did next, because I was like Aaron’s only friend, but I started speed-walking down the brick walkway, toward the Harrington Building, determined to distance myself from the embarrassment zone, passing all sorts of polos along the way. Aaron waddling behind me, trying to keep up, huffing and puffing the whole time, “hold on, hold on,” but I just kept zooming, passing through the crazy shade of one of those mighty oaks, until I reached a fork which verged into an alley between Epworth and Harrington, where Aaron caught up with me and said, “Hey, aren't you going to class?” but I just gave him a dismissive wave and said, “Yeah, I’ll be there in a few,” then I turned into the alley, head down because, well, if a teacher saw me or something, they'd stop me and ask me all sorts of questions, which I didn't really want to deal with right now, because I just wanted a damn Lucky, so I picked up the pace a little bit, through the alley, through the parking lot behind Epworth proper, and finally through a shady opening in the evergreen wall surrounding the entire campus prison complex, and when I looked back, Aaron was nowhere in sight, so I guess he must have waddled his way to Fine Arts. He was such a stickler for the rules, always worried about being on-time and shit, which often made me wonder how we got along so well, considering I didn't give a fuck about any of that.
Stopping in the shade of leafy tunnel, I dug my hands through my bag, pulled out my pack of Luckies, which also housed my Bic, and then I slid a Lucky between my lips, at which point I started rumaging through my bag again, looking for my Walkman, which took me a few seconds to dig out, and when I did, I quickly put my headphones on and pressed down on that chunky play button, and that’s when Beck’s Sea Change started playing with all its strings and acoustics and moodiness.
I was trying to like the album, I really was, but it was so different from his previous work that it kinda annoyed me. I mean, this is the guy who did “Loser,” for fuck’s sake, the wizard of poetic junk pop, who once sung about “garbage-man trees” and “mouthwash jukebox gasoline,” but now he’s sitting here strumming an acoustic guitar, comparing himself to a paper tiger like he’s Neil Young or some shit. It was a big change for him, which I guess makes the title appropriate, but it also kinda pissed me off, not that I hate change or nothing like that, but I just don’t see the point, especially when you had something good going on before. I just don’t get why everyone is always trying to change all the time. It makes me kinda sad, in a way, like whenever someone changes, the person they were before just withers away and dies or something.
Anyway, around the time Beck started singing about “stray dogs gone defective,” I sparked up and took a nice long drag, and as the smoke reached my lungs, I was overcome by this heady feeling like I was a storm cloud full of heat lightning just rumbling off in the distance or something like that, then I glanced at my watch, seven minutes till, just enough time to finish smoking and get to class on time, so in that moment, I was feeling pretty good, not a care in the world, so I decided to push a little further through the wood, into an opening between a circle of trees, fully shaded by a thick canopy, into a place I had taken to calling Smoker’s Grove because, well, it was a grove that I smoked in, and it was a special to me, a place to call my own, a place where no one bothered me. The ground was all dead leaves, twigs, and branches, so it was snap-crackle-pop whenever you took a step, and there were a few fallen logs and stumps scattered about, perfect for sitting, but I usually preferred to sit on this out-of-place, long-forgotten electrical box off in the corner, because it was the only spot where you could see the sky through the canopy, so, taking another drag, then blowing a huge smoke cloud, imaging myself like some sort of sick dragon in a Japanese role-playing game, I turned to the electrical box and, to my surprise, there was already someone sitting right on it.
She was just sitting there, with headphones on, reading a book, one finger on the page, mumbling to herself. “What storm is this that blows so contrary?” A stray sunbeam shone down on her, through the canopy, as if she were chosen by the heavens or something, not that I believe in heaven or nothing like that, but you know what I mean, and her pale legs were crossed at the knees, and her long orange hair was draped over one shoulder, and she had these big duck lips, and these big square glasses, which made her look kinda nerdy, but also kinda cute, so cute, in fact, that I forgot about the Lucky dangling from my lips, smoke swirling up into my nostrils, which made me sneeze, which must have startled her because that’s when she looked up from her book, her big green eyes scanning me up and down, and for a moment there I thought that I had disturbed an angel or something, not that I believe in angels or nothing, but man, seeing her sitting there in that stray sunbeam could turn any boy religious, I'm telling you.
In that moment, with our eyes locked, I tried to affect some sort of cool pose, but my body was stiff, feeling pretty nervous, so instead I put a hand up to my face, trying to catch the Lucky between my fingers, but ended up knocking it right out of my mouth onto the leaves below, and when I bent over to pick it up, that’s when my headphones fell off my ears, which dragged my Walkman out of my pocket, causing it too to fall into the leaves below. Then, confused as to which thing to pick up first, I sort of fell forward onto my palms, and that’s when that fuzzy feeling of embarrassment I had come to know so well returned, so I scrambled to pick up my Lucky, burning my hand a little bit before getting it back into my mouth, then I slung the headphones around my neck and pocketed my Walkman, but not before pushing down that chunky stop button, which, at that point, I wished had also just stopped my life, because I was feeling like a fucking idiot, I really was.
So I just sat there on the ground, in the lotus position, looking down at the leaves, feeling like an idiot, half covering my face, adjusting the Lucky between my lips, face probably red as hell, from all the falling down, but after a few seconds I looked up at the girl anyway, expecting to see a look of terror, but instead she was just sitting there with this cute curl on her duckish lips, looking both amused and mischievous, like an elf almost, because her ears were poking out of her hair just so. And she looked so radiant with that sunbeam that I had completely forgotten about being embarrassed, so I said, in the smoothest voice possible, “Hey,” then I took a long drag on my Lucky.
“Are you alright?” she said, her voice all smoky and southern, as if she were a country-jazz fusion singer or something.
“Yeah,” I said, taking the cigarette out of my mouth, flicking ash. “I just, well, I just didn’t expect to see you there.” I was affecting a real cool tone, feigning obliviousness, as if nothing had happened, which was kind of my default attitude, especially with girls, whom, for some reason, I just can’t stop myself from flirting with. I can’t help it. I’m always thinking girls are cute, even the dumb ones, but there was something different about this girl, something beyond cute, maybe it was her strange southern accent, which normally, on most people, I think sounds trashy, but, combined with the whole reading-a-book-in-a-shady-grove thing, projected some sort of like alluring intelligence or something that I just couldn’t get enough of.
She turned her attention to the book in her lap, slid out a bookmark with sunflowers all over it, put it between the pages, then closed the book, pulled her headphones down, removed those nerdy glasses, folded them, and hung them right between the collar of her green Epworth top, then she looked right at me and said, in that smoky southern accent, “Were you expecting someone else?”
“No, it’s just that,” I paused because at that moment, without the glasses, I recognized her. We weren't in any classes together, but I had seen her in the halls a few times. It was a large campus, but it was a small school, only about fifty high schoolers or so, so it was hard not to notice people. But I think she was new, because she just randomly appeared after Winter break, and I knew she was a senior, like me, because I always saw her leaving AP classes, none of which I'm actually in, on account of my poor grades. And I had only ever seen her from a distance, so I never really noticed how cute she was until just now, and she wasn't cute in this typical twiggy-barbie type way that you see on television or whatever, she was actually kind of big, in a way, not like fat or nothing, but she was taller than most girls, probably up to my nose, and I was 6’2 on a good day, and her face was long and pale and flecked with all these little orange dots, like a sunflower or something, and I was like lost like a bee in nectar there for a moment, probably staring a little bit longer than I should have been.
But she was just blinking those big greens at me. “It’s just what?” she said, finally.
And that snapped me out of my trance. Looking away, I took a drag off my Lucky and blew a smokescreen, then I said, “It’s just that, like, no one ever comes back here.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “It’s a nice spot.”
“Are you going to, uh,” I lifted my Lucky, “tell anyone?”
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then,” she said, that mischievous curl coming back, “your secret’s safe with me.”
Then, for a moment there, it was disney, what with all the birds chirping and leaves rustling and branches crackling and squirrels scampering up trees, and, in this quiet fantasia, we stole glances at each other in this shy sort of way, until, out of nervousness mostly, I flicked the filter of my cigarette so hard that the cherry flew out, so then I quickly stood up to stomp it out, and that’s when I heard her giggling a little bit, so I turned and there she was, covering her mouth, watching me. I didn’t know what to say at first, so I just ran a hand through my hair, pushing my bangs to one side like I do, and said, “So, hey, like, what were you listening to just now?”
“Oh,” she said, then, still sitting on the electrical box, she dug a hand into her pocket and pulled out this bright green iPod, then she thumbed it and looked down at the screen. “This song called ‘Neon,’ by,” but before she completed her sentence, I completed it for her,
“John Mayer?”
Her lips did that little curl again. “How’d you know that?”
“Good guess, I guess,” I said, feeling a lot cooler now, so I removed another Lucky from the pack and lit it. I was actually kinda obsessed with that song for a little bit, back in the day. That jazzy guitar line in particular can get stuck in your head for weeks. I was actually a big fan of John Mayer, although I didn’t often admit it because his music was a little too mainstream, and I was trying to distance myself from all that radio-friendly shit, but sometimes, when the music is just so good, you just can’t resist it. Besides, he was a really good guitarist, and he knew how to write a hook, and out of the big three corny singer-songwriters of the time, that being John Mayer, Jason Mraz, and Dave Matthews, John Mayer was easily the least offensive, musically. My mom was a big fan too. We even saw him live once, down at the Memorial Stadium. She even let me skip school for it, which was pretty cool of her, I guess, now if only she would stop lying to me all the time about being too thin, that would be even cooler.
“Actually,” I said, kicking my feet a little bit, “I really like that song, especially the guitar riff or whatever you call it.”
“Oh,” she smiled, “me too. I’m trying to learn it on my viola.”
“I saw him play one time, down at,” I paused for a second. “You play viola?”
“I try,” she said, her smile so cute I could barely even look at her. Then she added, “Do you play something?”
“I, uh,” I said, dragging on my Lucky, thinking for a second. “I play guitar.”
I don’t know why I said that. I don’t really play guitar. I mean, I know a few chords, but I don’t actually play guitar. I was in a band one time, in middle school, but was kicked out for, well, not knowing how to play the guitar, like, at all.
“I’d love to hear you play,” she said.
“I, uh, yeah, sure.”
The birds were chirping again. I was kicking my feet. Then she broke the silence. “What were you listening to?”
“Beck.”
“Bach?”
“No, Beck. You know,” I paused to prepare myself, then I started singing, poorly, “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill meeee.”
She was doing that lip curl again. “You sound just like him.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah, you should do it again.”
So I took a long drag off my Lucky, exhaled, then sang it again, practically screaming this time, “I’M A LOSER BABY, SO WHY DON’T YOU KILL MEEEE,” which echoed in the canopy and sent some birds flying off like crazy, then I added that funny little line at the end, “Get crazy with the cheese whiz.” And that cracked her up. She had these low hearty laughs, which warmed my dark heart, they really did. So I kept going, “Kill the headlights and put it in neutral, stock car flamin' with a loser and the cruise control.” I was laughing between verses at this point. “Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love-seat.”
“You’re a natural. You don’t even need school. Just do Beck covers for the rest of your life.”
I did one of those single ha’s, then I said, “I wish,” and put out my Lucky on a nearby tree, then I whipped out the pack and held it out to her. “You smoke?”
She shook her head politely and said, “What’s your name?”
“Nathan,” I said comfortably, “Nathan Wheeler.”
“I’m Katie-Belle,” she said, “Gallagher,” she added. “Most people just call me KB.”
I repeated her name over and over in my mind, then I said something really stupid, I said, “like KB Toys?”
But she didn't seem to mind, she actually laughed. “Yes, like KB Toys.” Then she smiled at me and said, “I just transferred here,” and then after a brief pause, brushing some orange out of her face, she said, “I’ve seen you around.”
She’s seen me around, I thought, she’s seen me around. I was getting excited and queasy in the best way possible. “Yeah, me too,” I said, “seen you, that is, I mean, around.” And the more her lips curled, the more I lost my way with words, but I just kept going, “Where’d you come from, if you don’t mind me asking, like, what school were you at before, were you even in school, or were you, like, home-schooled, or something?"
“I used to live in Alabama.”
“Really?” I said. “How’d you end up here?”
“My parents,” her voice a little lower now, “Divorced.”
“Oh yeah, mine too,” I said, my tone too happy for the subject matter, which I could tell made her fidget a little bit, but I just kept going. “I read somewhere that, like, ninety percent of marriages end in divorce.” I was just making shit up at this point, but I kept going. “So it's almost like marriage is like a self-fulfilling prophecy or something.”
She laughed one of those beautiful laughs again then got real quiet for a second before saying, “So I take it you never plan on getting married?”
“Well, uh, I never really thought about it, you know. I guess, if I met, like, the right girl, or whatever, maybe. I don't know.” She was nodding, so I just kept going. “And, like, I'm not religious or nothing, you know, so I don't really see the point, it's not like God is gonna strike me down if I don't get married or whatever. I'm agnostic, to tell you the truth.”
She was still nodding, and the birds were still chirping, and the squirrels were still scampering up their trees, and after a few seconds of letting my eyes wander, from the squirrels, to her, then to my feet, I said, “Well maybe I would, you know, get married, or whatever, but she’d have to be, like, really special.” Then, in that disney moment, overcome by some surge of confidence, I looked straight in those big green eyes of hers and said, “You know what I mean?”
Then, as if on cue, that stray sunbeam vanished, but KB was still radiant, even in the darkness of the grove, like a beacon of hope within the gloom or something. She was just staring at me, not saying a word, so cute I could barely look at her, then it started to feel like butterflies were killing each other in my stomach or something. I was suddenly overcome with this feeling of regret, like I had come on too strong or something, so I turned away from her, all red-faced, checking my watch, and that’s when I realized I was ten minutes late to class.
So I shouted “FUCK” and bolted the hell out of there.
I could hear KB shouting faintly behind me, “wait, wait,” but I just kept running, not because I was concerned about being late to class or whatever, but because Mr. Moody said I was just one write-up away from being expelled, which normally would’ve been fine with me, but not this time, because this time was different.
This time I knew KB.
