Part 13

Storytime! 13

                For the kids in the San Dieguito High School District, there was approximately one month left in the school year before graduation, summer and no homework. A lot of things happen in the recent two weeks of drama. There was heartbreak, anticlimactic confessions of love, exciting saves and reopening wounds; all of which, were reported on Facebook.

Ranging from “TPers save Lord Jason’s opening night” to “Christie and Zack are in a relationship”, Facebook made sure nothing was hidden from anyone who went to either schools and beyond. The reason people don’t like Mondays, and yet anticipate it eagerly anyway, is because of all the things that happen on the weekends. Surely it brings stress to some people and joy to others.

♦♦♦Canyon♦Crest♦♦♦

                In Canyon Crest Academy, it brings stress to Zack Yang. “HOLY CRAP,” a boy exclaimed eagerly, “Zack, you have a girlfriend!?” Hence, the joy being brought to this particular boy. He had a dark complexion and wore a green, yellow and red beanie on his head. The boy wore a green, black and yellow soccer shirt with black shorts.

                Zack was completely flustered and overwhelmed, other people were watching, some knew him, and that was even more embarrassing. He tried to calm down his friend, “Khenan, don’t say it so loud… I mean… it’s on Facebook anyway.”

                “Zack, this is serious, what will Daddy do when he hears that our little princess has found the prince of her dreams? Leaving the safety of our castle to go outside into the world of love! Mommy is happy for you anyway,” Khenan emphasized.

                Frustrated and feeling like a seven year old, he questioned the warning Khenan gave him, “What are you talking about? She isn’t a prince! She’s obviously a girl.”

                Khenan chuckled, “Of course, it’s like how you’re not a princess, and I’m not your Mommy.”

                “Zack!” another familiar voice called out. “Facebook told me that you’re in a relationship with a girl!”

                Khenan nudged Zack with his elbow, “Daddy’s here.”

                “Yeaah… no offence, but I don’t see how I’d have one with a guy,” the stressed Asian boy sighed, “Hi to you too Andre.”

                Andre pulled out the iPhone from his pocket and went on Facebook. “One more thing,” he added as he showed Zack the news he was really concerned about, “Who’s the person that saved Jason’s opening night?” His somewhat deep voice complimented his somewhat muscular look.

                “I thought you went to the play…?” Khenan inquired.

                Andre pouted and stomped his foot, “I know! I was going to go, but then something came up at home and I couldn’t! It’s so unfair, Jason’s first production, all the costumes I made, and I couldn’t go to opening night to see it all unfold before me!” He gave Zack a firm pat on the shoulder, “You have to tell Jason that I’m extremely ashamed of myself for not making it. I... right now, I don’t have the face to look—to even dare look at his face!”

                “Okay…” the baffled little Asian managed to say. “Did you still want to know who saved Jason’s play?”

                Andre’s eyes shone,” Yes, yes, yes!”

                “…why?” Zack wondered.

                “The pictures… they burn a hole in my heart.”

                “Wow, that sounds painful,” Khenan commented.
                “Hush, Khenan, I’m in the middle of something,” Andre noted. “His passionate display was tear jerkingly awe-inducing! And that was only a picture… Not only that, but he saved the great Jason’s play, I must know this hero. This hero, who had fit perfectly in my costume and not only killed the ladies, as that costume was made to do, but killed the actors!”

                Zack rubbed his head thoughtfully, “Oh, wow, okay. Um… yeah, so that tear jerkingly awe-inducing savior of yours was my twin brother, Leon.”

♦♦♦Torrey♦Pines♦♦♦

                Meanwhile, in Torrey Pines High School, Facebook brings stress to Christie Haller. She tried very hard to avoid her best friends from rampaging her with questions by hiding in her geometry class, no one ever goes to the math hallway for… anything. Although, when she thought about it, she didn’t think she could keep avoiding her friends by hiding in her math class.

                Lest Christie knew it, the door creaked open, a silencing hush kept the teacher’s mouth shut and three suspicious figures crept up on the unsuspecting girl. “Je vous ai trouvé! (I found you !)“ an eerily familiar voice said in triumph.

                “Oh là là (Oh dear),” Christie replied in dismay as she turned around slowly.

                The short haired girl next to him had her arms crossed, ready to interrogate her best friend. “Boyfriend…? Don’t tell me it’s that guy.”

                “I didn’t think you would expect it to be a girl?” Christie laughed nervously.

                Frustrated, Jade grabbed onto Christie’s shoulders, “I was kidding! TELL ME! I know it’s him, but I just can’t believe it! ¿¡Por qué!? (Why!?)”

                The third person chimed in, “Easy on, Jade, how many times do I have to tell you?”

                “Don’t ‘easy on’ me, Flynn!” Jade argued.

                Christie stood up from her chair and complained, “I don’t understand what you have against Zack! He’s a really nice guy, what glaring flaw have you possibly found in him?”

                “It’s sounds stupid, but he’s from CCA.” Jade’s facial expression was serious, she wasn’t joking around.

                The other two boys widened their eyes, and Christie was not satisfied with the reason. “That’s so irrelevant. You know that! And I thought you were supposed to be good at persuasion,” Christie stormed the room just as the bell rang for lunch to be over.

                Flynn approached Jade and asked her, “…what are you going to do now?”

                “Convince her that people from CCA are no good.”

♦♦♦Torrey♦Pines♦♦♦

            Jade left the room with Flynn trailing her. Ian, on the other hand was trying to explain the situation to the math teacher. “It’s really not that big of a deal, so don’t worry about it,” he convinced his teacher.
                A couple of students came in talking loudly. “Einin, wait, let me fix your hair first,” the boy pleaded.

                The girl struck Ian with surprise. She had brilliant long, red hair with an orange glow, curled up at the ends. “My hair is fine, Leon, stop messing with it,” she blushed in embarrassment. Comparatively, the girl was very short to Ian. Her height looked about maybe just a bit over five feet tall.

                A second girl hopped into the room, literally, hopped into the room. “Yeah! Let him fix it, Einin!” she egged on eagerly. Contrastingly, this girl was super hyper and was swaying her arms back and forth in the air. Ian knew this one, her name was Oralie Huynh, a fellow sophomore, who happened to be in his next class.

                The Einin girl sighed and gave up. She let the boy, who seemed familiar, but he didn’t remember from where, fix her hair. “Ahaha! Let me put some magic of you!” he laughed off alongside the crazy sophomore. Although they sounded silly, with a few twists of the wrists and a professional tie of the ribbon from Oralie, Einin’s hair was neatly packaged into a bun.

                “Are you done yet?” Einin asked warily, “If you are, you really should be getting to your classes now.” She noticed Ian’s presence in the room, but left it at that.

For a second, Ian had a lapse of nervousness. “Even her eyes are pretty, but they remind me of something, what?” he thought to himself. “Ah! I better hurry, the bell is going to ring!” he realized. Ian gave his farewells to the teacher and started a light jog towards the locker rooms.

Leon left first.

“Woah-ho! Ian?” Oralie recognized in the hallways, “wanna run to the gym together?”

“Uhh… yeah sure,” Ian replied. They ran off without getting caught and changed out after they reached the locker rooms. He took a seat on one of empty benches on the bleachers. People stopped by him to say hi and talk about random things, then they would leave to converse with their other friends.

Out of nowhere, Oralie took a more permanent seat next to Ian. “She’s pretty isn’t she?”

He analyzed her facial expressions and pretended not to know Oralie was talking about, “What?”

“My Freshman friend, Einin, ain’t she the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen?” she asked with a huge smile on her face.

Ian squinted, “I don’t get it.” She is pretty, but he wasn’t going to admit in front of this strange Asian girl.

Oralie frowned in disappointment and cross her legs. “I was just trying to show her off.”

“Why on earth would you need to do that?” he asked, still perplexed by Oralie’s spontaneous character.

She grinned at him, as if that was just the question she wanted to hear. “I’ll tell you after roll call,” Oralie assured.

♦♦♦Canyon♦Crest♦♦♦

As Jason had a free period, he spent time cleaning up some stuff backstage and went back and forth from the Drama classroom. Every time he entered the class, he felt stranger-than-usual stares piercing his back. When he turned around, he saw Andre Pelletier look up at him all teary eyed. “What exactly do you want from me, Andre?” asked Jason warily.

“To meet your brother!” Andre replied excitingly.

Puzzled, Jason remarked, “My brother? Zack is your best friend, you’ve clearly already met.”

The Canadian frowned, “Not Zack, I mean the other one, Leon! The genius who saved your play on opening night!”

“Oh, Leon… He’s not really a genius,” Jason laughed, ” Just someone who happened to be perfect to play the part. To be honest, he’s a novice at acting, not a natural. If he only knew, there’s a way to kiss someone without actually kissing them.”

“So can I visit your house?”

Jason sighed heavily, “Sure, although I don’t know why you’re asking me when you could just ask your best friend.” Leaving Andre in a state of glee, Jason continued muttering to himself, “Does everyone have so much free time in the last month of school? I thought this type of leisure was reserved for seniors; I feel cheated. When my house became the place to hang out afterschool, I’ll never know.”

♦♦♦Torrey♦Pines♦♦♦

Sophomore P.E. was rather lax, and there was 2 hours of it, so naturally, there was plenty of time to mess around. Instead of hanging out with the usual gang, Ian decided to do a walk-and-talk with Oralie, the girl who had promised to explain herself. “Want to conti—“ he began before he was cutoff.

“Isn’t Einin pretty?” Oralie bragged again, “and when I mean pretty, I mean abso-CUTE-ly gorgeous? See what I did there? All those different levels of beauty defining adjectives~”

Ian kept trying to compare the mental image of Einin with those descriptions, but they didn’t seem to work very well. He attempted to bring Oralie back to earth by saying, “You’re so obsessed over your friend, that’s not natural.”

Instead of being brought down to earth, she seemed more disappointed than anything in his response. “At least try to indulge me by giving me an answer I want. It seems like you’re trying pretty hard to avoid the obvious facts.” As they continued walking around the field, the Asian girl spoke in a somewhat more serious manner, “I thought that you, at least, would be able to understand me.”

“How, exactly?”

“Think about it… You’re a romantist, I’m a romantist, we both love the romance—duh! Well, I suppose you’re more involved in the real deal and I’m more of the rabid 2-D fangirl, but… small details! Small details! If only Einin was a little taller, she could sweep any guy off their feet!”

He struggled to comprehend where this whole conversation was going and stopped Oralie before she could go off on a tangent. “This girl, ‘Einin’, keeps  coming up when you talk, explain, you said you would.”

Even with his best efforts, Oralie ignored his proposition and resumed her rant on Einin’s potential. “I mean, we know she’s got the looks, but she also has the smarts and talent! This girl is brilliant--- she practically gets straight A+’s for every report card! Her musical performances turn in a wonderous dream filled with magical unico—“

“STOP!” Ian demanded in frustration. She stared wide-eyed at him, feeling somewhat embarrassed. “I… don’t need to know these things… Ay caramba. (Geez)”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized in dismay. Oralie looked around warily, wondering if anyone saw them or worse, heard them. “You wanted to know why I’m telling you all this, right?”

Ian was irritated, but he kept his cool. “If you knew, then… whatever, just tell me. I can’t believe I yelled at a girl like this. “ This Italian boy wooed girls, he definitely never intended to yell at one, but Oralie was one of those exceptions.

“Haha, I feel honored to be the only one then. Anywho~ I’m a little obsessed about Einin because… well maybe it’s because I read a lot of shoujo manga. Hmm… that seems to explain it. However, the reason why I’m telling you about her, is because I saw the way you two looked at each other in that math class.” The grin emerged again and a delightful look of pleasure twinkled in Oralie’s eyes.

He stepped back in shock of realization. “Are you trying to set me up with her?”

“No, no, no, of course not,” she giggled, as if the reality of that idea would be the best thing in the world. It sure wasn’t convincing to Ian when she denied it like that. “Actually, I just wanted you to help bring out her full potential.”

Feeling less cautious, he walked side-by-side with Oralie again, pondering her request. “Oh, I see, so you mean, give her a makeover, teach her the ropes and land her a nice guy? Then again, we don’t really know each other, so I don’t think I can do any of those things for her.”

“Come on!” Oralie begged, “I thought you were the ultimate player! You can’t even help a pretty lil’ girl out? You’re Ian Versailles, you don’t even know the meaning of rejection when it comes to girls! You’ve got quite the reputation amongst the Sophomores here.”

“Do people really think of me like that?” he scoffed. “For your information, I only do those things because I do know those girls. I’ve had long, personal conversations with them. I try to lighten up the mood when there’s a dark cloud hovering over them… and I’m not a player, it’s not like I’ve ever went out with any of them! They are my friends, understand?” Ian’s heart constricted a little, he didn’t like having to argue with people because he was trying to prove them wrong, and making people feel bad, just wasn’t one of his hobbies. Trying to salvage the situation, he continued by saying, “Look, I can’t help your friend because she’s not a friend of mine. One misunderstanding from her, means the end of the world for me. I don’t enjoy hurting people emotionally, even though it looks like I play around with it all the time. Forgive me because I can’t do anything for you or her.”

He looked up to see Oralie’s facial expression, wondering if a dark cloud appeared yet. Instead, she was deep in thought. She turned to face him and tilted her head. “What math class are you taking?”

♦♦♦Canyon♦Crest♦♦♦

“Guess what, guess what!” Andre chanted with great excitement. Zack and Khenan were walking to their last class of the day, surprised by Andre’s sudden arrival since his classroom was on the opposite side of the school. “It’s amazing news regarding Lord Jason, something that you could never even imagine! I was so shocked when I heard about it… but it will happen soon, today even!”

Immediately ending the guessing game before it even started, Zack replied less enthusiastically, “Uh… you’ve got me stumped, what is it?”

Andre gave an affectionate wink towards Zack, “Lord Jason has given me permission to go to your house!”

“…wait. Couldn’t you just ask Zack to go to his house?” Khenan reasoned.

“No, no, no! I must respect  Lord Jason’s home. I hope you don’t take offense, Zack. You are my home slice.”

Khenan laughed, “Granted that the home slice is cut from the authority of his own home, man, that be irony.”

Zack sighed in response, “Then you’ll be coming home with us or going later?”

 A gasp uttered from the Canadian’s mouth. “I… can ride in Lord Jason’s car!?” he squeaked. With an affirmation from his friend, he exclaimed with great delight, “Yes! C’est la vie! (Life is good)” With that issue resolved, he proceeded to run back to his class before the bell rang on him.

Lest he knew, a couple of Seniors caught grasp of Andre’s cry to the world. They only heard the first part, but Iris and Trevor were clearly alarmed. “H-how does he know about that?” Trevor shivered, not sure what to think about Andre most of the time, as his best friend’s number one fan boy.

Iris felt a bit jumbled too, “I know Andre’s a bit of a stalker, but there’s no way he could know about her since he was in middle school. Let’s safely presume that none of Jason’s fanatics had any knowledge of what went on in Jason’s life outside of school.”

“Right,” Trevor agreed, “only we know that she’s coming today, right? We’ll meet up with Sigvard, Xyza and Daniel at the San Diego Airport after school to pick her up a have a bit of a welcome party! You know I’ll be there to cook up something nice for the occasion.”

“Without Jason’s knowledge,” Iris added in, “it’s a surprise until their anniversary of separation.”

“It was such a depressing separation too,” he recalled sadly. “Dude, he was literally a zombie for a week after that! Thank goodness it was summer, or the school would’ve been in shock.”

“Yes, and I never did quite understand what happened between them. Long distance relationships didn’t seem like it would affect them. Maybe it was something a little more than that. That must be the case because any other reason just doesn’t make any sense to me!”

Upon entering their AP French class, they decided to drop the conversation until later. Jason would be stuck with a bunch of freshmen, while a presence so powerful in his life would be landing in a couple of hours.