Caine held his hands up in surrender and backed off a little. When Ryder cooled off, Caine swiftly reached out and grabbed a side of bacon, grinning wickedly as he dropped half of it into his mouth. I watched as Ryder glared at him from across the bench. I didn’t understand why he was being so tense and weird. I know guys are really protective over their food, but they didn’t go all ice-queen when it was their friends trying to steal a bite, right?
“What’s up with you?” Caine raised an eyebrow at Ryder, asking the question I was thinking of.
“Nothing, just what are you doing here?” he answered.
“Don’t you want me around?” Caine didn’t sound offended, just confused. “Are you feeling alright?”
Ryder didn’t say anything; he just stared blankly at his friend, body stiff. The tension between the boys was suffocating and the longer the silence stretched, the more uncomfortable it became. Although I knew my attention shouldn’t be directed at them, I couldn’t help it and gradually, my appetite dimmed and breakfast didn’t seem so appealing. It was none of my concern to just jump into all the testosterone but I couldn’t tolerate their behaviour any longer.
“This is intense.” It was probably the stupidest and most obvious thing I could say in that situation. When I received the oh-my-god-you’re-a-moron glances, I clicked my tongue and dragged out a low whistle. “Intense,” I repeated, feeling like an idiot, but not knowing what else to do.
“Hey, you know what? Maybe I’ll just head to school.” Caine looked at us briefly, swung around in his stool and stood. He showed no sign of emotion and his tone was neutral. “See you guys there?”
“Bye…” I answered as he gave me a tight nod and slipped out the back door. I waited a minute or so, just to make sure he was gone before I whipped around and faced Ryder. “What was that all about?”
Ryder wasn’t looking at me. He just picked up the plate full of food and stepped around me to the bin, throwing away the contents. “Nothing. I think he likes you.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. I was glad Ryder was keeping distracted by throwing the dishes into the sink otherwise it would have been even harder to clear my head. This was way too much for me to absorb in the morning, so I did the only thing that I could: I dismissed the thought.
“I don’t think so.”
He paused and leaned against the counter to look at me but I tipped my head forward, letting a strand of hair fall to hide my eyes and pretended to be fascinated by a smudge on the floor. The heavy stare of his eyes studying my face was almost unbearable, so I coughed and looked up to slowly meet his gaze.
Ryder stared at the strand of hair with knitted eyebrows and the muscles in his arm twitched as if he were going to reach out. But he restrained and looked away, turning to the sink and picking up the sponge. The sounds of clinking glass echoed through the kitchen.
“Do you,” Ryder paused for a moment, slowing the movement of the sponge against the surface of the plate, “like him?”
“Caine?” I questioned, almost barking out a laugh. “I hardly know the guy.”
Ryder seemed to think about my answer. “I mean, would you give him a chance?”
Would I?
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly.
He thought for a moment while he turned the tap on and rinsed the soapy residue off the plate. “I still think he likes you,” he repeated
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, picking up a cloth to dry the wet plates. “You aren’t trying to hook me up with him, are you?”
“No!” Ryder burst out, with a little more edge than I expected. His face hardened. “No,” he repeated, in a much calmer tone. “I just don’t think you should date him if he asks you out. He’s not right for you.”
I stopped drying and gave him a look. “You don’t think anyone’s right for me,” I pointed out.
A smile formed on his lips as he turned and looked at me a moment. He held his gaze for merely a second though before turning back to the running water to rinse off the rest of the dishes. I watched as his hands moved over the soapy surface of the glistening cutlery. Sunlight shone through the window above the sink, specks of dust floating around him like flecks of glitter disappearing as they travelled out of the light. His hair seemed a shade lighter, eyes brighter. And at that moment, I looked at him in a different way. I saw beyond the arrogant exterior and haughty attitude and saw him as someone…normal. Not the superstar senior who roamed the school halls like a lion in his jungle kingdom. But as someone who cooked breakfast and washed dishes and did normal stuff. It was wonderful. All ways I had seen him were wonderful. From his compassionate and caring side when I had my dating disaster, to protectiveness and courage when he stood up for me to half the footy team and to the vulnerability and fright after the fight at the beach. The more time we spent together, the more emotions he expressed and the more characteristics were visible, ones that weren’t airbrushed with an artificial coat. It made me wonder if anyone else had seen this part of him…
…and if anyone else was falling in love with it too.
“I don’t think everyone is bad for you. In fact, I know someone who is perfect for you,” Ryder answered, snapping me out of my mental ranting.
“Oh, really?Who?”
He turned the tap off and looked at me seriously. He looked determined and encouraged, then…scared. Like he doubted his answer, rethinking his response. He looked down, away from me and knitted his eyebrows in concentration as he calculated something. But that flash of questioning was replaced by a grin of arrogance and an entertained sparkling in his blue eyes.
“Fred Grosby.”
I blinked. Definitely wasn’t expecting that answer. “He doesn’t even like physical contact.”
“Exactly.”
Eighteen
Seeing Mel at lunch was the greatest moment in history. I had spent the past few days with way too much testosterone, a seriously hormonal and pregnant sister and Ryder’s moody mother. The sound of my best friend’s chatty tone as she gushed out the latest gossip was like music to my ears as we met up at our usual lunch table outside.
“So,” Mel said, as she cracked open her bottle of orange juice, “I heard that one of the students is having a scandalous affair with that really hot P.E. teacher. Apparently they’ve been having one-on-one lessons on something a little more physical than volleyball.”
“No way,” I replied, jabbing a piece of macaroni with my fork. Skipping breakfast was a bad idea because I had spent third and fourth period with a stomach that sounded like a dying whale symphony.
“Way,” she exclaimed. “Trust me, she’s totally seen his personal bat and balls. I bet it’s that girl that transferred here from Jefferson. The poor thing is going to graduate with an STD rather than her HSC.”
That cracked a laugh from Ryder, but he kept his head down, smiling secretly to himself and staring at the blank piece of paper in front of him. We had gotten an English assignment before the start of lunch and Ryder was determined to get his finished…or at least started.
“Ugh, is that the Shakespeare speech?” Mel wiped the orange moustache that had stained her upper lip and glared at the notification resting between Ryder and I.
“Seven minutes minimum.” Ryder sighed in frustration, scratching his head with the end of his pencil. “And it’s about old Elizabethan English.”
“What play are you studying?” my best friend asked, picking up a perfectly cut sandwich sector.
Mel was the kind of person who could eat three times as much as the average person and still have supermodel thinness. She didn’t eat because she was passionate about food or because it was a dietary requirement. She ate a lot because she claimed to be on “a hunt for boobs” to which she claimed, although she was seventeen, her boobs will come out of hiding.
She tried an assortment of different food groups, spices and flavours. Last week she was binging on the flavoursome taste of Indian food and the other day, she ate nothing but watermelon. But
today she had settled with a dainty arrangement of food you’d find at a tea party. A cleanly cut cucumber sandwich sat in front of her, the edges removed and sliced into neat, triangular quarters. There was an assortment of colourful fruits, all peeled and sliced that sat comfortably in a little Tupperware container. Three ANZAC biscuits wrapped in glad wrap sat next to it and of course, there was her bottle of organically squeezed orange juice. It looked like a feast compared to my bowl of cold mac ’n’ cheese.
“Othello,” Ryder replied, popping the lid of his Gatorade. “It’s depressing. They all die in the end.” Mel disposed of the rest of her little slice of sandwich, brushed the crumbs away and gave him a sympathetic look. “Trust me, it’s just as bad as Macbeth.”
“I thought this was the cool table, but everyone seems to be talking about homework.” I looked up from my lunch to see Caine sliding into the spot next to Mel and across from Ryder. He gave me a wink and threw his bag onto the table.
I smiled weakly. Mel almost had a heart attack seeing him there. I wasn’t sure if it was of excitement or fright because she looked like she wanted to hug him but run away at the same time. Ryder, on the other hand, made it brusquely clear that he disliked his friend joining us.
“We’re just discussing the assignment,” I informed him.
Caine looked at the assignment notification and snatched it into his hands. He frowned down at it and studied intensely. After a moment though, he gave up and looked up at us. “This is the reason I do a standard level of English and not an advanced. I mean, we’ve been studying Shakespeare since the start of high school, but it’s still like trying to understand Chinese calligraphy.”
Mel let out something between a giggle and a screech of pain. I raised an eyebrow at her, and she mouthed: oh my god, he’s sitting with us. Caine was still grinning, one of those boyish smiles, mischievous and playful. But he soon lost it when no one replied to him. Other than the animal-like sound made by Mel, he didn’t get a reaction.
“I get the feeling I’m not wanted here,” he said, looking between the three of us.
When his gaze reached Mel, she quickly looked away and busied herself with rolling around a grape in her fruit salad. She brushed a piece of fuzzy hair behind her ear, a pink blush slowly creeping its way up her pale cheeks. The way she tried to keep her interest on her salad was starting to creep me out. She was basically staring down at her lunch cross eyed.
“How about we all hang out this afternoon?” I asked, trying to start another conversation. “We could all catch an early-night movie or something? Or just rent a DVD and have microwave popcorn at my place. It’ll be fun.”
Caine didn’t seem convinced. He looked at Ryder for support. “What do you think, man?”
Ryder was scribbling furiously into his notebook, his messy scrawl filling up the lines as he shrugged. He looked up to meet his friend’s eyes and his eyes – eyes that had been so alive and sparkling that morning - turned as cold as ice.
“So you ask my thoughts about this, but not about the other thing.”
Caine scrubbed a hand down his face and looked at me. “Sorry, Nora, I don’t think hanging out tonight is a good idea-”
“I thought I made it clear that you need to back off.”
Caine suddenly didn’t look so patient. “Look, I don’t know why I like her, okay? I guess it never occurred to me to think of her in that way and once I started to, I liked it. A lot. I couldn’t help it, alright?”
“You hardly know her.”
“Neither do you, man.” Caine looked angry now.
“I’ve known her for years,” Ryder growled, a feral sound erupting from the back of his throat.
“No. You did know her. You had your chance and you fuc-”
Ryder stood up causing me to half jerk up with him, the metal of the handcuffs biting into my wrist. Fists curled, knuckles white, he challenged Caine with his eyes. His friend was up and ready in an instant for a fight and Mel just sat there with Bambi eyes and a dropped jaw.
Oh, God, I thought.
But before either of the guys could throw a punch or a snarky comment, a high pitched shriek pierced through the school. Instantly, I covered my ears, trying to block the sound but it did no good. The screaming alarm sent shivers through my entire body and yelled for attention.
“What’s going on?” Ryder had forgotten his duel with Caine and pulled me close as if the alarm was going to grow legs and attack.
Then the familiar, commanding sound of Mrs. Coleman’s voice yelled through the speakers. “All students report to the school oval and organise yourselves into year groups. A fire has been reported. This is not a drill.”
And all hell broke loose.
Nineteen
Drills were always cooperative, mainly because most of our fire drills happened straight after fourth period and right before lunch. Students were usually calm and collected and we were merely gathered together for longer than twenty minutes. I guess going to lunch was a motivation. But now that the real thing was happening, havoc struck.
We were always told that in this situation, we were to always leave our belongings behind and to just continue down to the designated location in an orderly fashion. However, people were repacking lunches, shoving books into bags and running towards the football field like there was no tomorrow. Kids shoved their way past to race to safety and stressed teachers struggled to keep them in order.
Caine, Ryder, Mel, and I seemed to be the only calm students there.
Mel made a little excited squeak. “This is the most exciting news ever!”
Trust Mel to get excited over the gossip of a fire rather than the fright of getting, I don’t know…killed. It reminded me how much I love her. Shooting her a grin, I calmly packed up my things and let Ryder guide us through the sea of students towards our specialised area.
“Ugh, I heard some year ten kid farted in front of his friend’s lighter. I didn’t even know that was possible,” a junior girl said, tossing her long, dark hair over her shoulder as she fluttered past.
Mel’s ears perked and she instantly followed. “Hey! What’s this I hear about a lighter and a fart?”
When she disappeared, it was just Ryder, Caine, and I. There wasn’t as much tension as there was at lunch, but you could tell they were still uncomfortable around each other and just the suggestion of conflict could influence them into a brawl. Ryder tried to ignore his friend and searched the school.
He inhaled deeply. “I can smell the smoke but I can’t see the fire,” Ryder examined, looking confused.
Caine let in a breath too and frowned. “I can smell it too.”
Feeling kind of left out, I was the last to have an intake of air. “I smell…popcorn.”
Ryder looked down at me but didn’t say anything. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all after that. Neither did Caine. Halfway through all the chaos, he disappeared into the sea of students and gathered around with the other guys from our year group.
Eventually, all the standing around was making me tired and I muttered to Ryder that I wanted to sit. Even then, he hardly made a sound. He just kept his focus alert as he dropped down to the grass with me and soon enough, we were surrounded with gossiping students trying to come up with solutions to solve the mysterious fire.
I don’t know how long we stayed outside for, but it seemed like forever. All students and staff were to wait until the fire brigade came. Once they triple checked the premises for any more signs of danger and confirmed that the flames were put out, we were given permission to leave early. It was already two thirty by then and school would have been out in half an hour, so it wasn’t much of an excitement, particularly when my phone buzzed while we were in the car on the way home.
~♥♥♥~
Officer Brandy called with our first task of community service: serving soup at the community kitchen. He notified us that it would probably be best if Caine, Ryder and I were split up to avoid any more trouble. But since Ryder and I were chain
ed together, we had no choice but to stick together and service chicken-noodle soup to the homeless, lonely, and elderly while Caine disappeared to do his own specialised job. I guess I was relieved knowing that Caine wouldn’t be there. It would have been extremely awkward because of the tension earlier at school.
“Just grab a hairnet, an apron, and a ladle,” Mary - the woman who was in charge - instructed as she started scooping up soup into bowls and passing them to the line of people.
Ryder looked at the hairnet packed safely in a little plastic sleeve and pulled a face of disgust. “I’m not wearing one of those,” he announced.
I, on the other hand, was already rolling my hair up into a bun so I could place the net over my head and amuse myself with how weird it felt. When we were all dressed up and had our spoons, we were directed to the end of the line to hand out bread slices.
It was only a two-hour shift, from three to five, but it was the craziest part of the day for the soup kitchen. A lot of old people turned up for an early dinner, most of them scattering into little groups to play chess, knit, and read as they ate their meals.
There was about half an hour left to go and a lot of people were finishing up their meals. As I was casually brushing crumbs from the bread onto the floor and sneakily pretending it wasn’t me, the chime from the front door rang and in stepped a girl. She was about six or so, dirty dishwater hair in a sloppy ponytail and freckles dotted across her pale face.
“What’s the kid doing here?” Ryder asked, looking at the girl as she walked in with a backpack that looked way too big for her slim figure.
Mary turned towards the door and waved at the little girl. “Hi Gracie. How you doing, hon?”
Gracie lit up like a firefly when she saw Mary and skipped up to the counter, reaching up on her toes. “Hey, Mary. Do you have chicken-noodle today?”
“Sure do,” Mary said, grabbing a bowl and swiftly scooping in a bowl of soup for the kid. “How was school?”