recalling that faithful day. “I disliked greatly the recess they would have for us after naptime. I enjoyed naptime. Still do if there is time.” The pebble that she twisted in her hand a moment ago skidded its way into the water. “But ah—I bid a fib to the one of the teachers. I said I was ill and she believed me. I mean, what kid would want to miss recess?
“And she let me reside on the small mat they had for us. I was ecstatic.” She grinned wickedly. “I had no friends at the daycare, yet another reason to bypass recess. Apparently, Eric was cutting to be in the front of the line. So the teacher did what teachers do best, discipline.” She said this as if the word had no meaning in her life. Poor Eric had to be sent to the back.
“He found me sitting on the mat, waiting for the others to play out in the hot blazing sun. Then he questioned me. He asked ‘Why are you sitting here?’ and ‘What about recess?’ So I said the same thing I said to the teacher—I was utterly sick. But unlike our teacher, he didn’t accept that. He thought I was flat-out lying. Which I was.” She shrugged her arms. “But I didn’t think that it would bother anyone. He insisted on me going outside. I didn’t budge. He tried a second time, no success. The third time, though, he became physical. Picking me up at the wrists.
“I screamed my head off Dorothy.” She laughed. “Oh boy. The teacher must have been terrified enough to pee in her pants. I bet she thought I was dying or something.” Her face turned very serious. “But both the scream and the teacher heading towards us didn’t stop him from achieving to stand me up. He received a timeout and an apology to me. And Eric was willing to pay the time, but he refused to say he was sorry. That pissed me off forever, still does.
“But even so, Eric became an interesting person to me, and I don’t let interesting people pass up in my life.” She smiled sweetly and I predicted her to say another sweet thing to go with the smile. I didn’t expect her to say, “So I stalked him.”
“You…stalked him?” I was baffled.
“M-hm. Carried around a little red notepad to write down the behavior of daily Eric. I immediately saw a pattern in him: he was arrogant, telling off everyone in our class. He didn’t appreciate the liars populating our world, the way he would stand so high and mighty. Better than everyone else I suppose.”
“So when did you guys get together?” I interrupted the flow of her story. The suspense was killing me though.
“What?” She asked with her face expressionless. Obviously, she doesn’t know what I meant. But as I opened my mouth, realization hit her, as she nodded. “Yeah, I don’t know.” Her shoulders rose and fell. “We just are?” The question at the end made me suspicious. How can she not know anything about her and Eric? They’re together.
I raised an eyebrow curiously at her. She looked away. What a liar. “I’m no Eric, but I suspect you’re bad at telling a tale.”
“Ugh.” She exaggerated a sigh from her lips. “Eric’s never going to get me that book now.” She shook her head and gazed at me. “Everything is a lie. Remember that, won’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I mean.” She smirked. “Do you want to know why Eric kidnapped you?”
My eyes widened. “More than anything!”
“Well,” She started, “I can’t honestly say, but I have a verdict on why he did that.” She said, “After all, I spent my whole life studying him!” She laughed. “Eric’s lonely, Dorothy. I mean we’re all he’s got, friend wise.”
Girlfriend wise. Why isn’t she mentioning that?
“Ever since the deaths of all around him….” Shannon trailed off and found my eyes. “Do you believe he killed them?”
Hard to say. Everyone thought he killed them when word got out, even me. But now, I don’t know what to think. “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I mean, I thought at first—”
“DON’T THINK THAT!” She said, fiercely. “Eric doesn’t deserve any of that, he didn’t kill anyone.”
“How do you know?”
She closed her eyes. “Eric’s other friends were strange, that’s when I noticed he started to go sour.”
“Sour?”
“He was training to be a bad seed. No more troublemaking Eric who judges anyone who lies. A dark, cynical Eric has come upon us all,” she said. “His friends talked a lot about suicide.”
“Suicide?”
“Do you not know the definition of that word?” Then she muttered, “These moronic people…” She brought her elbow on her leg and used her palm to cup her chin, facing the ocean again.
“I know what it means,” I said irritated. I hated it when people wrote me off. “I just don’t get your point. Was Eric suicidal or something?”
“Eric is…” She searched for words, concluding with, “complicated.” And she was right—Eric was complicated. Just when you think you know him, he snaps into some other personality. Like a psychotic fireball. The launching that I couldn’t handle. “He seemed to like the idea of suicide. I knew him much to better. He was afraid. I could see that in his eyes.” Just as she said that, she looked into mine.
“We both grew up Catholic. We had daycare, elementary, and religion class together. Still, people get lost.” She dropped her eyes to her electric green and pink converse. “We’ve had a lot of conversations, is what I mean.”
“You guys are close,” I noted, but despised the fact that my voice hinted jealously.
“I think you’re keeping him alive, Dorothy,” she said in a loud and strong tone. Funny, how I could be so jealous of her and all she cares about is the well being of Eric. “For some reason, I dunno, he needed to do this. Call him crazy, but now you know he’s been crazy his whole life.” I felt certain she kept some information to herself, but she wanted to spill out more.
“Come on Dorothy.” She grabbed my wrist, dragging me up with her. We were halfway back to the guys when she said, “I’m sorry, but I get easily frustrated when having to say three or more syllables in a name.” Then it took me a minute to comprehend that she was talking about my name. Dorothy, three syllables.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized, apathetically.
“Do you have a nickname of some sort?” she said.
“People call me Dottie.” I confessed.
“Dottie,” She thought over this, scratching her chin. Her face was hard. “Has a nice ring to it.” She smiled. “Yep, Dottie it is. We are going to be great friends, Dottie.” She held her right hand out for a shake. I took it with ease. Like a deal—we were going to be friends.
10. CAMPING OUT
When we went back to the guys, they were all sitting around each other in a huddle sort of circle. Travis and Aaron were discussing something along the lines of food.
“Fried chili paste.” Aaron pointed his finger. Then he crossed his arms, leaning back and nodded his head like a catchy tune was on.
“Ew,” Carter said with dull emotion. This time he wasn’t actually on his phone, but his fingers continuously fondled over it.
“I gotta go with Carter on this one,” Travis said, nodding over to Cater. But he snapped his head back to Aaron, face all serious. “I’m not a pansy.”
Aaron waved his hands at him. “Never said you were.” They noticed us. “Girls are back from whatever they were doing.”
“And that remains between us,” Shannon said. Her eyes suddenly got wide and she put on a cleaver grin. “You guys! We should sleep over here!” Everyone fell mute when Shannon whined. “Come on guys! You promised me that one day we would do it.” She crossed her arms in a very childish manner.
“One day,” Eric said, trying to wrap his mind around the word. “That was five years ago, Shannon.”
“So?”
“So….we were twelve. That scary crap out here was supposed to be on a dare. And now we’re older… therefore—”
“Oh don’t give me that “therefore” junk. Remember that I’m the literate one here. Who else is taking English honors?” She looked around to everyone, shrugging.
/> “Who’s talking Calculus honors?” Carter murmured.
“And being in an honors class doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smart.” Travis spoke up. I silently agreed with him. He looked up at Shannon, “It just means you care deeply about being better than everyone. Also that you care a lot about you’re education.”
“I care a lot about my education.” I said.
Travis took his glance off of Shannon to me. “Yeah but you’re normal.” He pushed himself up with the grass. “You see, we take our normal average classes and do average in them. We’re just regular old people. And people like Carter and Shannon will rule over us, sadly, but won’t really have a very nice normal lives like us.” He gave me a wink.
“Who said I wanted to be normal. Who said I liked normal?” She bit her nail and took a gander at it.
“Well who said I liked smart?” Travis said back. I stared between the two. I couldn’t help feeling that they were hiding something from each other—something beneath all the relentless arguing.
Shannon tightened her eyes and glared up at Travis since he was now leaning over her. Then she stepped back, yelling to Eric. “WE ARE SLEEPING HERE TONIGHT! BRING CLOTHES. I’LL DO THE REST OF THE CONVINCING!” After saying that, she grabbed Travis by the hand and Carter too. Both of them didn’t fight, just obeyed her. The hold she had over guys.
Eric clutched on my hand as well, jerking me to follow him. We embarked our way back to Aaron’s car as he ranted on about nothing in