0 7
Roll Up
Any talk about Jalen and rumors ceased after Daniel's cryptic response.
He annoyingly clang to his idea of it being wrong to speak about the dark blue eyed boy without him being there to defend himself, making me actually wish his annoying twin David was here instead. He seems like he'd spill all the beans.
But, alas, Daniel isn't saying shit, so we switch the topic to general things, such as our new school Arlin Preparatory High School.
"You know, you don't have to keep saying the school name in full," Daniel says to me. "Everyone just calls it Arlin."
Everyone meaning all of his snobby rich kid friends. Do I really want to be just like them? Yeah, no thanks.
Instead of saying that, though, I choose to smile at him and keep my mouth shut.
"What's a regular day in Arlin look like?" Noah asks, of course quickly adapting to their slang.
"Honestly, it's just like any other school," Daniel responds as he takes another sip of water. He sees our skeptical looks, so he adds, "Well, educational wise, it's the same. The classes are similar to public schools. They swear we have better teachers and harder work, and, well, that may be true, I don't know. I've only ever gone to Arlin." He lets out a chuckle at that, making me wonder how he is still so down to earth if that's the case.
"I don't really give a fuck about the classes or teachers," Noah says as he waves his hand dismissively. "I wanna know about their sports teams."
"And how good they are," I clarify.
"We have really great sports teams," Daniel boosts. "I'm on the football team, actually. We've won the national championship three years in a row. I'm hoping we get our fourth, and set the record for most wins for Arlin for my last year."
"Cool," Noah says in awe. "What position do you play?"
"I'm the quarterback."
My eyes widen slightly, both shocked and extremely impressed by that revelation. Daniel didn't strike me as the typical jock, and most certainly didn't seem like the star quarterback, arguably the most important and popular position. Isaac Wilson was the quarterback at Beach Way, and he embodied every fucking stereotype that came with the title. Daniel's nothing like him. Unless...
"How are the cheerleaders?" I ask as a segway into my next question.
"They're great, too," he compliments, sounding proud. "They compete in cheering competitions, and they won first place last year. It was actually a really big deal seeing as that was our head cheerleader's first year leading, and she did it perfectly."
Wow, it's almost like he tripped and fell into this one. "Oh," I comment cheekily. "So, she's perfect?"
Daniel lets out a light laugh. "At cheering, yes."
"Anything else she's good at?" Noah asks lowly, winking at Daniel who's now shifting awkwardly in his seat.
His body language shows he's getting uncomfortable, making me wonder if it's because he does know what else she's good at or he wishes he did.
"Is there a typical head cheerleader, star quarterback love story going on that we need to know about?" I ask teasingly.
"No way," he snorts. His eyes then widen before he shakes his head and backtracks. "I don't mean that in a negative way at all, she's just... not my type."
He really is too sweet. The girl's not even here and he's still going out of his way to remain respectful, not wanting it to come across that he thinks there's something wrong with her.
Ugh, why can't all guys be this seemingly perfect?
"What is your type, then?" I send him a teasing smile, but in all honesty, if I wasn't dating Liam, I'd literally throw myself at him. He's got to be the closest thing to male perfection. Usually not my type, but still. I'd love to give it a try for once. Frankly, I'm getting tired of having my heart broken by assholes... a.k.a Liam.
Noah ruins any chance of me even knowing if Daniel would go for someone like me by cutting off whatever the boy was going to say. "Lynnie, don't even fucking try it. There's no chance."
I scoff, annoyed that he thinks I have no shot and that I have no better response than, "Shut up, bitch."
Daniel laughs at our exchange, but says nothing else, effectively ending our conversation about that topic.
"So, how's the track team?" Noah eagerly asks, as I reach for his water bottle and claim it as my own, knowing he can talk about his passion for running for hours.
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It's almost eleven o'clock when we're ready to leave the Williams' house, and surprisingly, we're one of the last ones to do so. The place had slowly been clearing out for hours before, but I had stood so secluded in the back with Noah and Daniel that I barely noticed. It wasn't until Malia came out, saying it was time to go, that I noticed how late it was.
Daniel hugs us each goodbye, promising we'd see each other at school in two days. My stomach had turned at that thought, both nervous and excited for my first day at Arlin Preparatory.
I push that thought aside as we walk further away from the backyard and Daniel, into the large house. Malia's a few steps ahead of us, and now that it's kind of just Noah and I, I can feel the annoyance radiating off of both of us.
"I can't believe you're trying to steal my friend," I whisper childishly.
"Don't worry, Jalen is all yours," he replies back with a smirk, leaning closer to my face, practically breathing on me.
I shove him harshly away from me, causing him to slam into a small table to his side. Picture frames fall off and we both stare wide eyed, holding our breaths at the chaos we just caused.
Noah crouches down to pick them up, and I quickly snatch them away, checking for any cracks in the glass.
"What the hell are you two doing?" Malia's rough voice questions.
Her heels click loudly against the marble floor as she walks back toward us. I feel like a four year old about to get reprimanded by their mother for acting up, so naturally I defend myself.
"It's Noah's fault!"
"Bull-fucking-shit. You pushed me," he replies back, pointing at me before turning to Malia, hoping she believes him.
"I don't give a fuck about who did what. Just don't break anything of theirs," she says as she comes closer and snatches a frame from me.
I look down at the one she's holding, quickly noting that there's three little boys in the picture. Daniel and David have a brother?
Upon closer inspection, I see the little boy is too pale to be related to the twins, and once Malia carefully sets the frame down in the middle of the table, I catch the dark blue eyes the little boy has. And that same dimple on the right side of his mouth is present.
Jalen must be eight or nine years old in this picture, and he's gotta be the cutest little kid ever. He's standing between the twins, arms wrapped around each of their shoulders, smiling widely for the camera.
I can tell David's the one to his left, leaning his head on Jalen's shoulder as he holds up some toy they must have been playing with. Daniel's on the other side, and the grip Jalen has on him is much looser than the one he has on David. Daniel's smile is nowhere near as bright or wide as the others, and that kind of hurts my heart, seeing as he seems to be the nicer one out of them all.
It's becoming clear that Jalen and David must be the closer ones out of the trio, and poor Daniel is just the tag along.
"Are you done checking out the little boys, Lynnie?" Noah annoyingly questions.
I look up and glare at him, before placing the other frame I had in my hand onto the table as well. It's a double frame, holding two pictures, one for each twin's graduation. In these pictures, Daniel's back to being the happier twin, smiling widely with his cap and gown on, no more than ten years old. David, on the other hand, isn't smiling at all.
We hear a crash from down the hall, and it's much louder than the one Noah and I made mere seconds ago. I look toward where the sound came from, unable to stop myself from taking off in that direction, curious as to what caused it.
A hand wraps around my upper arm and yanks me back before I can turn the corner. I come face to face with Malia, who drops her grip from my arm but keeps her steady eyes on me.
"You're not worried about what's happening over there?" I ask her, hearing faint shouting now.
She briefly looks over my shoulder, down the hall, before bringing her gaze back to mine. "I know when to mind my business."
A door slams shut, before being opened again, and a female voice yells, "You do this every fucking time!"
A male voice comes next, though he's not as loud as the female when he responds, "Stop!"
The voice sounds familiar to me, but I can't pinpoint who it is. From the look on Malia's face, she knows exactly who that voice belongs too, and I'm willing to bet she knows just what they're arguing about.
"We're just gonna stand here as a male and female fight in the other room?" I ask judgingly, trying to pry on Noah's morals. He was known in Beach Way for constantly being in fights, either starting them or breaking them up.
Noah sighs, clearly not wanting to get involved, but not wanting to feel like shit later if something bad happens.
Malia picks up on what I'm doing. "No. No one needs to intervene. This kind of petty fighting happens at every Arlin party. Couples can't hold their liquor, then find an empty room to argue in and later on makeup in."
Noah picks up on what she's implying, nodding his head along with it and reaching out to gently push me further away from where the voices are slowly lowering. "Let's get out of here."
I groan, pissed off that Malia was able to manipulate him better than I could, and at the fact that he even took her side. This results in a quiet car ride home. Noah took the front seat again, but this time, there's no conversation at all.
When Malia pulls up in front of our house, Noah quickly exits the car, leaving me to push the front seat back into place once I'm out.
"Lyndon," I hear Malia call gently. I finish snapping the seat into place before looking up into her brown eyes. "If you're going to survive at Arlin, you've got to learn how to stay to yourself."
I furrow my eyebrows at her words, and more so at the tone she says them in. She's not condescending or reprimanding at all. In fact, she sounds almost sympathetic, like she truly wants to help me.
"What do you mean by survive?" I ask, harping on how odd that sounds. She makes it sound like I'm entering the Sahara desert in two days. It's just a high school.
She sighs, turning away from me, seeming to lose any hope in saving me. Saving me from what? I have no fucking idea.
I become frustrated at how quick she is to dismiss me. One second, it seems like she genuinely cares, and the next, she seems like she can't even be bothered with talking to me.
"I'll see you Thursday, Lyndon. Good night." Her dismissive response makes me want to slam the fucking door in her face, but since this car is much too perfect to disrespect like thatâno matter how pissy it's driver isâI simply roll my eyes and lightly close it, like a mature adult would.
When she speeds off right after, nothing stops me from flipping her retreating car the finger.
The short walk from the curb she left me at to the front door of the house leaves me no time to think over her words. I'm really trying not to get stuck on them... but she confused me. Saying the word survive feels so troubling. As if she really thinks I'm going to get eaten alive come Thursday.
What, just because I'm not a rich girl who's had her wealth for years I all of a sudden don't know know how to handle myself?
Arlin Preparatory High School is just that. A high school. A place to get educated. And not to toot my own horn, but education is kind of my thing. Hard work makes me itchy, but I won't for one second pretend I'm not good at it. I'm fucking smart.
I'll be fine, Malia. Even more so without you, just like I was for the last six years.
The house is eerily silent when I enter, and I mentally jump for joy at the fact that Dad didn't stay up waiting for me again. Clearly, he trusts Noah to be safer than me.
Asshole.
A noise from the kitchen catches my attention. I turn to see it's Noah grabbing a fruit roll-up from the cabinet, before quietly closing it and facing me.
Suddenly, I feel drained. I've spent the last thirty minutes annoyed at Noah for stealing my friend, at Malia for trying to control me, and now at my dad for, well, I'm not even sure why I'm mad at him all of a sudden. That anger's just a constant emotion for me whenever I think of him.
From the look on Noah's face, it's clear we're way past overdue for a talk, so before he can speak, I raise my finger to my lips, indicating for him to be quiet. He looks at me questioningly, but follows me nonetheless when I motion for him to do so.
We enter the bathroom, confusion showing even more on my twin's face. I kneel by the toilet, using my hands to lift the top off the tank behind it. Noah leans over me and looks inside, eyes widening when he realizes what I'm retrieving.
His bag of weed is hidden within a black shopping bag. I had carefully placed it at the top, making sure it didn't touch the water, and also making sure that if someone opened the tank they'd have to have had the intention of actually looking for the bag before they could spot it.
"No you fucking didn't," he says in shock.
I raise my finger to my lip again, shushing him. The last thing we need is our parents or Saint Knox hearing us, figuring out what we're about to do.
He takes the hint and is now the one leading me out of the room, over to somewhere else. We travel quietly through the house, the plastic bag clasped tightly in my hand. We stop at the kitchen where Noah grabs the box of fruit roll-ups he had before, opting to take the whole thing with us.
We make our way down the hallway on the opposite side of the living room, where I haven't been before. He leads me to a screen door that he quickly unlocks, and as he opens it the shit practically screams. We run out and close it behind us, cool air immediately hitting me.
Part of me briefly wonders if our parents purposely chose a house with doors that make a lot of fucking noise when they're opened and closed, for situations like this, for when Noah and I are doing something we shouldn't be.
The thought leaves my mind as quickly as it comes when I observe our surroundings. The backyard is huge, something I wasn't expecting, seeing as I don't recall the backyard in our old house in Queens being as big as this. Honestly, this shit could rival our Miami home in size.
There's no pool and everything's mostly cement, but the one section that does contain grass has a relatively small tree planted on it. Piles of wood and a picnic table are by there.
"We have a huge backyard?" I stupidly question, still whispering in case our parents' room is on this side of the house. I still have no clue where anyone besides myself sleeps, to be honest.
Noah chuckles at my obliviousness, but keeps walking further out, until we reach the piles of wood by the tree. He plops down onto one, indicating for me to do the same. I choose to not question why we're sitting here rather than on the picnic benches. Must be because this makes us further from the house, giving less of a chance for our parentsâor Knox's tattle tale assâto hear us out here or smell the weed. Once I'm seated, he snatches the bag out of my hands and quickly opens it.
"I can't believe you hid it in the toilet," he says with disbelief, shaking his head as he starts preparing to roll a joint.
"It wasn't in the toilet. It was behind it," I say, quite proud of myself for thinking of such a good spot. Clearly, Noah was never going to find it.
"Whatever. I'm just glad it's here now," he says happily, finishing rolling up. He holds it up and appreciates his work, before handing the joint over to me. "Here," he says when I don't immediately take it.
I take it from him then, worried he'll snatch it back and smoke it himself. I'm still staring at him as he begins rolling another, but he stops midway, looking over at me.
"Oh," he says as if he just realized something, reaching into his pocket and handing me his lighter. "There you go. Why do you look so damn shocked, Lynnie?"
I shake my head, looking away as I answer. "Considering the fact that you bought this for yourself, and I stole it and hid it away from you for over a week, I'd think you wouldn't share... or at the very least, you wouldn't let me have it first."
He finishes rolling his, taking the lighter back from me and slowly lighting each of our's up. Then he shrugs his shoulders, bringing the joint to his mouth. "I thought you giving it back to me was a peace offering. Me helping you're hopeless ass smoke is mine."
We both laugh, beginning to smoke in silence. He's right, this was my peace offering, and I'm glad he accepted. Fighting over a friendship with Daniel is suddenly so fucking stupid. I'm still annoyed we'll be associated together in school, but maybe it's not such a bad thing. Malia's a lost cause for me in the friend department, and now I'm extremely weary about Jalen because of these apparently horrible rumors. Noah's all I got.
"Can we just agree that we need to stick together?" I ask after a while.
Noah crunches up his fourth fruit roll-up wrapper. "What do you mean by that? Don't tell me you wanna hang out all the fucking time."
"Fuck no. I'd go crazy if we spoke more than three times a day," I say, lightly shoving his shoulder, and stealing a fruit roll-up for myself. "I just mean, we're going to a new school with people that are clearly different from us. Between rumors and fights and all that other shit, I just want us to agree that we'll be there for each other. Okay?"
He looks at me for a few minutes, making me wonder if he even heard a word I said. "Yeah, okay. But you never worried about this shit in Beach Way..."
"Fuck Beach Way," I quickly say, pissed just at the thought of everyone there.
"Did something happen, Lynnie?" When I don't answer, Noah kicks my shin with his foot, causing me to cry out in pain. Before I can smack the shit out of him for hurting me, he's already asking another question, and he sounds pissed. "Did Liam do something?"
"No, no, he didn't..." I begin, but I cut short after. Because I don't really know the answer to that. A part of myself is still nagging at me that something did happen at that stupid fucking party. "I don't think so. We're just... not on the best of terms right now. Some shady shit happened a week ago, I'm still trying to figure it out. Things are just... kind of tense between us."
Noah sucks his teeth and waves his hand in the air, looking like he's smacking a fly out of his way. "Man, fuck him." Then he turns to look at me and laughs. "Actually, no, don't do that. And don't tell me that you have because... gross. I mean don't stress that bullshit. He's not worth it."
I laugh along with him, and at the disgusted face he makes when I nod my head at the fuck him part. "Don't worry, twinsie. I'm most definitely not stressing that bullshit, or any other bullshit. In fact, this is a no stress zone. I am officially the none-stresser, starting today!" My words get louder as I talk, and I stand up by the end of my sentence, raising my hands in the air like I just won a medal at the olympics.
"Lynnie, lower your goddamn voice," Noah says, laughing at my stance and chopping me in the back of the knees with his hand.
My reaction is instant, as my body quickly comes crumbling down the moment he makes contact. I almost hit my head on the pile of wood I'd been sitting on, but Noah reaches an arm out last minute to break my fall.
"I could've died," I announce once I land on his arm, taking half of him down with me, all while laughing hysterically.
Noah joins in, agreeing that he did indeed almost fucking kill me.
Hours pass almost too quickly as we sit there smoking, eating, and laughing. Soon enough, it's four in the morning, and Noah helps me into my room.
"Noah," I call out after he tosses me onto the bed, almost causing me to land on the floor due to him not actually looking at where he was throwing me.
"Yeah?" He whispers, not wanting to alert our parents or younger brother.
"Are you nervous for school?" I whisper back.
He snorts. "It's just school, Lynnie."
I nod my head along. "True, true."
He salutes me as a way of goodbye, exiting the room and gently closing the door behind him.
When darkness engulfs the room, I reach for my phone, using the light to properly get under the covers of my bed. I see I have more texts from Jess, and none at all still from Liam. I'm not even shocked at that, and at this point, in this moment, I don't even fucking care.
Because when I get comfortable under my blankets and toss my phone onto the floor, it isn't the thought of seeing Liam that lulls me to sleep like it usually would when I was kind of delirious due to, uh, similar circumstances.
It's Jalen's dark blue eyes and dimple that come to mind. It's the bright smile he had when he was a child that I want to see on his face now despite these apparent rumors.
I only think of Jalen. The thought is both haunting and thrilling, but it leads me into a very peaceful sleep anyway.