Part 7 of the Truth

Part 7: $1.95 More. . .

Well I would guess if you had a head for fairy tales as I do (and this can indeed be classified as a fairy tale I would say, it's a regular Cinderella, or something of the kind anyway.) you might already have realized that the girl who sat next to me those first few weeks in American history didn't keep dreamy and I apart for long. She moved before long and I found Jake sitting in her place one wonderful afternoon.

As long as I live I swear I'll never forget the way it made me feel to have him next to me for so long the first time. The hour floated by. I was completely comfortable, like I had known Jake for years and I could tell him anything he bothered to ask about, but at the same time my heart raced like I was on a treadmill the entire time. The next few weeks were all like that. Every day at one o'clock I was pulled into this magic little world only Jake knew the way to.

Now, I know it isn't natural to enjoy a gym teacher's presence, but at the time I had one who seemed to be trying to make gym class bearable as best she could. So as an incentive for us on our first day of class she offered drinks to the winners of a certain game. So when I was on a winning team that day and the slip of paper with the orders on it was passed around I did what came naturally to me and put my name down by energy drink. This payed off a week or two later when the teacher passed out the drinks, I drank mine almost as fast as I could during lunch and sooner than later found myself twitching and bouncing on my feet as I stared up at Jake in the lunch room before the bell rang.

"Energy drink?" He asked.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. When we got to class he watched me have a general spaz attack before crashing hard at around two o'clock.

Apparently this little display was enough to give dreamy the idea to buy me a monster energy drink. When he told me I figured it was a joke. Monster was a rare treat for me, my mother always told me that at around two dollars a can it was too expensive to be wasting money on. But my suspicions proved incorrect and one morning not much after the first energy drink incident I happened to be upstairs, running an errand for my English teacher, and I ran into dreamy in the hallway.

He smiled, tugging on his lappet, "See, black parade jacket."

I blinked. Somehow I hadn't expected this, I had been picturing a cheesy hoodie with a band logo on it, or something of the like, but how wrong I was. It was a black marching band jacket, and I nearly fainted.

"Awesome." How my vocabulary hath failed me in the face of such a thing.

"And I brought Monster." He added, handing me the tall onyx can.

We had just reached the main office, my destination and he followed me in where I finished my errand in an awkwardly official and girlish manner. As we left the office I handed the can back to him, as I said before I figured he was only messing around and didn't actually intend for me to keep it. However when I saw him again fourth hour he gave it back almost right away.

"Drink it tomorrow during lunch, I wanna' see you while you're all hyper."

Truly devious. At this time our history teacher noticed the contraband and told me to put it in my locker when we left for the library in a couple minutes. Of course I didn't, my locker was upstairs and there was no way I was going to tear myself away from dreamy to do anything so tedious as putting away an energy drink.

Instead I put my sweatshirt over it we burned away the rest of the hour, he and I. It's really a wonder I ever did anything American history related when he was around, we just wasted time, because even wasted time spent with Jake was more valuable that efficiently used time spent with anyone else. I snapped a purple-tinted picture of Jake with his head rested on the table-top, which was mostly hair anyway, so I deleted it. I astounded him by doing a backbend against one of the bookcases nearby and just as we were about to leave I tried to land a bite on his shoulder, but he dodged me.

The next day I drank the monster as he had directed me to, during lunch and raced to American history class. I jumped down the stairs, imagining I was a character in a video game. When I got to the bottom someone I had passed on their way up told me I shouldn't jump down the stairs in a skirt.

I turned and screamed, "It's a skort." Then ran off giggling to American history.

When I got there Jake, already in his seat, looked me over (I never did understand what he was looking for, perhaps he thought I would grow big furry monster paws.) and asked, "Did you drink it?"

I giggled hysterically for a moment (Because, you know, that was funny, did you drink it? hahahaha. . ha. . . ha.) then my eyes bugged out and I said, "Yeeeeea."

"Oh, wow. . ."

Furry monster paws would have been less conspicuous.

The rest of the hour passed in a hyperactive blur. It was a good day, because now I knew I was worth at least a dollar ninety-five more than I thought I was to the boy I was falling in love with at an alarming rate