Popularity Rules

by Shamika Lindsay

  “Jason?” my mother called as soon as I opened the door.

  I sighed and removed my shoes. So much for stalling. I found them in the kitchen, sipping cups of tea and eating crackers. For any hormonal teenage girl, the sight of them would make them misty-eyed but all I could focus on was how close they were to the backyard. I had no thoughts about how syrupy sweet their relationship looked in that instant; well, maybe a little but not nearly as much as some prepubescent girl would have.

  My parents stared at me in confusion while I wondered how I could distract them. “Are you alright?”

  I nodded slowly. “Why are you guys back tonight?”

  My father frowned. “No, ‘how was your trip’?”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Yeah, yeah boring seminar. “I’ll ask that soon but really why are you guys here?”

  “Well, we bought this place so…,” my mother quipped.

  “Are you going to tell me or are you going to be like this all night?”

  They shared a glance and chuckled. “Maybe,” my father replied but continued as he saw my face, “we couldn’t stay there with those ‘do good’ sellouts. I almost committed homicide.”

  They both cracked up at that one. Law enforcement people and their jokes, so clichéd.

  “Come, sit and have some tea,” my mother said possibly daring me to say no. “You can tell me why you thought it was a good idea to leave your little sister here alone.”

  Crap, just when I thought I was home free.

  We spent the next 20 minutes discussing random things about the future that clearly could wait. I kept fidgeting and looking towards the door. My father even noticed and joked about how I must’ve hidden something outside. I sucked in a deep breath at that. Once again he had guessed right without even knowing it.

  What my parents were saying was beneficial and I appreciated them for taking the time out to plan my future then tell me I could do anything I felt comfortable with as if I had a choice. I didn’t even bother to point that out because I wanted them to hurry to bed. After a series of impassive responses from me, they left me in the dimly lit kitchen. I knew better than to rush to the door as soon as they left. Instead, I shoved a handful of crackers into my mouth while I listened to the bathroom door open and close.

  After a moment, I heard someone coming towards the kitchen, I shook my head at how well I knew them.

  “Sweetie,” my mother called, making me force a smile onto my face. “Lock up before you turn in, alright?”

  “Will do,” I muttered hurriedly.

  “Love you, goodnight.”

  “I love you too,” I answered offhand, standing to give her a kiss on the cheek.

  That time, I actually believed she was gone for good. I waited on the soft click of their bedroom door before hurrying outside. Unfortunately, the moon was behind a cloud and the backyard lights were out, I was practically blinded in the smothering darkness. I waited until my eyes fully adjusted to the darkness before moving. I had to blink to see if I was seeing right when I saw Avery curled up into a ball on the lawn. I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not. I gently used my foot to jostle her.

  “Sorry about—”

  “It’s not your fault. I heard a majority of the conversation. Your parents seem really nice.”

  I coughed uncomfortably. “Thanks… I guess.”

  I noticed her sleeve was pulled all the way over her palms and she used it to wipe her face. “Your mother’s voice sounds oddly familiar though,” she mused.

  The conversation was starting to get odd. I grabbed her hand and pulled her up, as much as I tried to avoid looking at her cheek, my eyes diverted to it and my brows furrowed in an automatic reaction. Before I could get a good look at it, she ducked her head and used her hair as a shade. I led her through the kitchen door while still checking for any signs of life through the windows upstairs.

  Once inside, I led her to where we were sitting earlier. I walked towards the hallway to check if anyone had come down. I sighed in relief as the silence was undisturbed. I turned to see Avery shoving handfuls of crackers into her mouth.

  “You know, as a guest, you’re supposed to wait until I offer,” I commented.

  “As a host, you’re supposed to shut up and let me do what I want.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her but stopped as I saw the red mark on her cheek. Wordlessly, I headed over to the freezer and grabbed the first frozen thing I could find. I brought it over to the island and sat beside her on the stool. Avery looked up at me just in time and I pressed the pocket to her face. She tried to pry my hand off of it but I held on tightly. After a moment of struggling she gave up and just rested her hand atop mine. For a moment there we almost bonded but my phone interrupted it by ringing jarringly.

  I used my free hand to take the phone out of my pocket. I had to put it on speaker because of Avery’s squirming.

  “Hello?” I called, trying my best to be quiet.

  The voice on the other end filled the entire kitchen and I fought a smile from playing on my lips. “Hey Jason, Marc gave me your number if that’s okay.”

  “Yeah—I—that’s great.”

  I could feel Avery’s gaze on my face so I kept my eyes trained on the phone. “So, I wanted to tell you I enjoyed today. Although you bailed on me—”

  “Sorry about that,” I interrupted.

  Chantal chuckled and it seemed as if the entire kitchen was filled with her warmth, unlike Avery who was making everything a condensed cold. “That’s okay; I could tell it was really important…”

  I stopped listening and looked up at Avery, Chantal was right; she was important. Maybe one part of my brain didn’t know, it but the other part was screaming it at me. Her orange-brown eyes burnt holes into mine and even then I saw she was important.

  Way more than I was ready to adapt to.

  “…what I’m saying is, can we just go somewhere else to study? Next week maybe?”

  “Uh,” I started, tearing my gaze away from Avery’s. “Um, yeah, yeah. That sounds great.”

  We both hung up and I peeled the half-melted package from Avery’s cheek. I felt like I had just messed up. And to top it off, Avery finally looked away, any sign of emotion draining from her face in droplets, taking any indication of life from her face with it. I watched as she did her best to avert her attention from me. I didn’t make the situation more awkward by trying to talk to her, instead, I simply began closing up the house and turning out the lights.

  I felt around in the darkness until I was in the living room where Avery had gone ahead to. She looked so out of place in my living room, a place that (apart from when Jade was present) was normally filled with laughter and playful teasing—when my parents weren’t extremely tired, that is. I grabbed her hand from where it was clamped over her arms and began leading her in the direction of the staircase.

  A full second hadn’t passed before she yanked it back and whispered loudly at me, “Let me go, I can find it myself.”

  “Can you stop being hostile for a moment please?” I whispered back, very calm.

  Avery narrowed her eyes at me in the dimly lit room. “Touch me again and you’re a dead man.”

  I held my hands up in surrender. “Fine, fine, lead the way.”

  She complied, looking rather smug and charged at the stairs. She didn’t make it to the third step before she tripped. I used my hand to stifle my laughter.

  “Real smooth, real smooth,” I commented, stepping by her.

  My room wasn’t as clean as the first time she’d been here; it actually was quite appalling. The bed was unmade, my clothes were strewn all over the floor and some indistinguishable food items were left on my desk. Avery shoved by me, waltzed into the room and then turned to give me an incredulous look.

  “You’re quite a pig, aren’t you?”

  I shrugged and discreetly kicked a pair of underpants out of sight. “You can’t have it all.”

  Avery took a seat on the bed and looked at me
expectantly. She didn’t seem as thoroughly disgusted by the room as I’d expected so that was a start.

  “Uh, you can take the bed,” I muttered.

  “Obviously I was going to.”

  I stopped to look at her with furrowed brows. “It’s customary to decline while I insist, you know,” I said, still in slight shock.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she retorted, turning to lie on the bed.

  I sighed and grabbed a random shirt and shorts and headed for the bathroom. After changing, I grabbed my toothbrush and flinched as I saw Avery’s reflection in the mirror.

  “Can you stop sneaking up on me?” I demanded.

  She just continued staring at my reflection thoughtfully. “Why do you do it?”

  I paused with the brushing of my teeth just long enough to look at her. “Do what?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get really mad at me and I’m always so nasty to you.”

  That was a loose interpretation of it. I spoke around the heaps of foam in my mouth. “I think I ask myself that every day. I don’t know why I do. You piss me off 85% of the time but I’m still willing to spend time with you like a lunatic.”

  Avery nodded and averted her gaze to the floor. I took that as an opportunity to rinse. She was probably looking for something to say that would offend me. She said nothing though, which was a surprise. I dried my mouth on a nearby towel and gestured to the door, she complied and went ahead of me. Although the whole bipolarity thing was exhausting, I had begun to work with it, adjusting.

  I took some large comforters from the closet and piled them on the floor, hoping to reduce some of the rigidity but not succeeding. I grabbed one of my pillows and threw it on my make-shift bed. I know what you’re thinking, ‘why wasn’t I doing something completely cliché like offering her my clothing or a toothbrush or something like that?’ I already know how she’d react so I decided to leave her be.

  I watched as she slipped her shoes off and pulled her hair into a ponytail. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her despite how stalker-like it seemed. After all the times I wanted to protect her, I finally got a chance. As usual, she met my gaze so suddenly I jumped in surprise. Her lips turned up in a small smile before she disappeared beneath the covers.

  I fell back unto my makeshift bed. As you can probably imagine, it hurt a lot. I tried to stifle a groan, but I heard Avery snicker from the bed. I rolled my eyes.

  The smile on my face was huge.

  Chapter

  XVI

  I could barely hear my thoughts over the loud, torrential rainfall. It couldn’t have been later than seven. But I couldn’t get back to sleep; I spent half of the night worrying that Avery’s ex would come busting through the walls with some weapon of mass destruction. That didn’t happen, of course, but a very over-active imagination was just as destructive.

  I sat up and rubbed my head lethargically. It turned out that I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep. Avery was staring at the ceiling. I cleared my throat and her eyes flashed to mine. It was unnerving how she wouldn’t start as I would.

  “Can’t sleep either?”

  Avery sat up and shook her head sadly. “I thought they’d come in and take you away.”

  I pressed my lips together to hide my smile. A caring Avery was way better than the other facets of her personality.

  “Jason, listen, I’m not going to beat around the bush, I want everything out in the open.”

  I nodded solemnly, with no protest. I disentangled myself from the cocoon of sheets and made my way over to the desk chair in the corner of the room. The rain made it impossible to see anything outside, I sat and faced her, propping my hands under my chin like a therapist saying, ‘Tell me more.’

  Avery grabbed the pillow and flung it as hard as she could at my head. I ducked just in time and chuckled lightly. “Stop joking, this is serious.”

  I tried to put on a serious face, but I could tell it wasn’t working. Avery ignored me though and tucked her feet underneath her. I decided to play her words out in my head and tried to see it from her point of view.

  It was her first time at some rundown high-school, much like my own. Apparently, her parents enjoyed moving around quite a lot and she would be on the receiving end of the attention being a new student brought. She wasn’t as hostile as she is now, as strange as it is to believe. She was the quiet one which wasn’t necessarily hard to imagine.

  “Hey, are you having a running commentary about this?” Avery called from atop the bed.

  I pressed my lips together guiltily and gestured to her to continue.

  Much unlike now, Avery actually fit in, she was just a normal person on the outside. Her parents had promised her that the unnecessary moving would stop at this juncture and she was thrilled to be able to settle down in one place, after all those lost childhood years. Although no one was interested in talking to her, she was happy. Finally, she could be normal despite being the new girl once more.

  The first person to speak to her was a very nice, very handsome under his nerdy composition—according to her words—boy. I don’t know but that description was oddly reminiscent of Dylan. At first, she wouldn’t give him the time of day because, as we all know, nice guys have the hardest time in successfully moving from just being friends. I wish I could’ve attested to that but I honestly couldn’t. But after a while, they started to hang out and they eventually became friends.

  Their friendship was then noticed by bigger fish because while studying at the park, Elijah, the most popular guy in school—

  “Hold on,” I interrupted. “How can he be the most popular guy in school?”

  Avery shot me a flat look and rolled her eye before continuing. Elijah noticed their friendship and made it his goal to talk to them. Jonathan, her friend, shot him down immediately, knowing of his notorious bad boy reputation and aiming to shield Avery from the repercussions of being too close to it. But, Avery, the little love-struck girl she was, invited him to join them at lunches.

  She didn’t notice at first how much Elijah was constantly touching her arm and her knee. Jonathan noticed though. When he tried to tell her, she shot him down. Typical girl reaction. Eventually, Avery began falling for him and Elijah used that to his advantage by inviting himself along to their study dates.

  Never fall for the bad guy, it wasn’t worth the heartache.

  Avery was one of those girls deluded by the dreams of possibly changing him for the better because it was obvious that he wouldn’t be changing any time soon. Of course, Avery didn’t know about a majority of his reputation, so she was entrapped into a web of lies. She didn’t care anyway. With the attention of the school’s most popular guy in her corner, she was liked more at school so that was a plus.

  She probably could’ve stayed out of trouble if she listened to Jonathan because he was at her house the night everything changed. They didn’t have to study that night, but Jonathan wanted to talk to her. He could see what was happening and he tried to prevent it, he basically warned her about what he was seeing unfold before his very eyes. As soon as Avery heard what Jonathan was saying she froze over, a lot like she often did now.

  To make matters worse, she told him that he was jealous of what she was becoming and called him a bad friend. I guess that must’ve hurt because according to her, Jonathan was there for her from the start. It was even worse because Jonathan liked her—a lot, it seemed.

  Surprisingly, Jonathan wanted her to see behind her delusions so he did what any equally as deluded guy would do. He kissed her. By the longing look in her eyes, I could see it wasn’t something that she regretted but she still pushed him off and slapped him. That sounded pretty harsh to me and a little unnecessary. Not to mention the fact she told him to leave harshly. I didn’t even know the guy but I could picture someone looking quite hurt. And for some reason, it made me really uncomfortable.

  Avery stopped speaking when there was light knocking on the door. I sprang out of the desk chair and onto the bed,
pushing Avery off in the process. I tried to sound as natural as possible, but my voice fell flat.

  “Come in,” I called after a moment.

  My mother entered and at once her gaze went directly to the floor. She took in the crumpled sheets with a furrowed brow. “Why are those on the floor?”

  I scrambled around in my brain for a suitable response and came up short. Her suspicious gaze wasn’t making it easier. “Um, the ground was cold because—uh—it’s raining?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me as if saying, ‘I know you’re hiding something and I will find out what’. I gulped and averted my gaze.

  “We are going to have breakfast soon.”

  “Uh, I have something important to research for a project, can I just come get it and eat up here?”

  My mother stared at me for a moment then began nodding slowly. I could tell she didn’t buy it, but she probably couldn’t be bothered to enquire any further. I exhaled deeply as she left the room and glanced at Avery who was shooting me daggers from beside the bed. I grinned sheepishly before sliding off the opposite side of the bed. I had to figure out some way to inconspicuously gather enough food for us both.

  I could hear the dull chatter of hunger all the way from the staircase, into the living room. It wasn’t much of an accomplishment to have them all together cordially but I considered it as one because my family were terrible morning people. Luckily, I could avoid the mundane conversation because my mother was piling dishes of food onto the table.

  I grabbed a plate and began packing as much food as I could onto it. I knew everyone was staring at me strangely, but I ignored them until it was a tilting tower of food. Because I was so awkwardly incapable of doing anything remotely right, I decided to stuff my mouth with toast to avoid any conversation aimed at me.