Despite a noticeable lack of butterflies swimming in my constantly chocolate cake-stuffed stomach (the Rollers Cafe, to the drastic panic of my waistline, was quickly becoming Luke and I's hotspot, if he'd gathered enough money to afford taking the typically late bus into town), a sensation of passion and love pounded inside of me when I caught the first glimpse of his L'Oreal slicked-back blonde hair, a welcoming grin always outstretched on his plump, juicy (usually from picking up a hamburger as a 'small snack' on the way) and definitely kissable lips, ready to offer me a heart-pounding hug as a gesture of our increasingly growing affection towards each other.
So, was the compelling power of love sweetening the affectionate air? Oui, oui: I would have to be putting on the hugest front that the world had ever seen if I was dishonest to admit my powerfully strong feelings. Although we had only just got to properly know one another, Luke and I shared a special bond which would take a earth-sized bomb to fully destory. In other words, Luke and I were unbreakable and not in the least fragile, unlike my short-lived, sort-of-fantasized relationship with Joel.
Talking of which, Joel hadn't breathed a single word to me since I'd dramatically stormed out of the cafe in the manner of the hormonal She-Hulk (or She-Sulk, which I did a lot of in the days following), though if I was strutting around in his size 12 Adidas trainers, phoning an over-emotional girl to apologize would be one of the very last things I'd like to do, after bothering to wash my cherished ketchup-stained Forever 21 jeans, which, in hindsight, should never been worn at my uncle's annual summertime barbecue last Sunday.
Still, it didn't stop me from drifting to and fro on the delicate subject from time to time, usually when I was sitting alone in my overly-bright bedroom, writing my thoughts down on paper. One thing was for sure - my English teacher would be beyond thrilled with my perfectly neat handwriting once the new school term began; he'd always commented on how my handwriting represented my views in a 'lazy' and 'messy' way, which I could never stand to hear. In the days of virtual keyboards and even Windows 98 computers, what use would old-fashioned handwriting have in this technology-mad world? Ironically, I forgot all about this short-sighted view once my thoughts and feelings flowed onto neon-shaded pages of paper, laying my soul bare and replenishing my overworked mind, which felt like a much better treat than visiting a cheap, chav-infested spa near the local high street.
A few weeks had passed since Luke and I's hit-and-miss encounter and our friendship was strongly growing into another thing; if we carried on trawling into overcrowded clothing stores (my idea of fun, whilst Luke stared at the bright yellow sights, probably wishing the tiled floor would swallow him) and plopping down on aged wooden benches in the park, we'd hit the valuable jackpot within no time: the first spine-tingling kiss, which would make our hidden sentiments rise to the surface and reveal so much more than words could ever say.
Yes, Luke and I driving on the long, yet fun road heading to Lovemania at an alarming fast speed - and unless I fearlessly jumped out of the car, there was nothing I could do to cause a diversion.
And strangely, I wasn't entirely in touch with my true emotions, which seemed to have taken a quiet back seat in the midst of the exciting events: did I really love Luke as a shoulder-to-cry-on when my life was torn into shreds, offering the calm tranquillity I was denied by Joel and perhaps a lot more, or was he simply a fantastic male friend with whom I could enjoy spectacular laughs and take off my invisible veil, unleashing my fun-loving and care-free side?
It was certainly a strong case of Je ne sais quoi and as each day passed and flowed into the next, I was developing more and more confused about the right actions to take. Guilt would follow me around like remorseful shame if Luke and I reached a point where the truth had to be laid bare - how would Luke feel if I admitted that I didn't quite love him in the way I once implied, tearing apart the sturdy alliance we'd lovingly built together?
Pain was what I wished to avoid - at all expensive costs. And I nearly did until one afternoon, when an unknown monster released itself inside of me, heartbreak utterly inevitable.
***********
"You don't like toffee popcorn? Huh, I was under the impression that you used to devour a bag of it in one sitting!"
"One sitting? What do you take me for, a hungry animal!"
"Cas, I didn't imply that, but I meant that you were obsessed with toffee-flavoured popcorn - it was virtually your life!"
Cassie snorted, sounding exactly like an adorably cute piglet. Well, she was the baby of the family, after all. "As if! The dentist told me to cut it out because it could cause my teeth to rot, so I stopped eating it."
My eyes widened, accentuating the sea-coloured eye shadow I'd applied onto my almond-shaped lids. As far as I'd been aware, Cassie never paid the slightest hint of attention to her life-long dentist, Dr Anderson, even when he issued a grave warning to cut down on her addictive coconut mushrooms habit a few years ago and she gave him the petty kind of glare that only bossy/moody pre-teens can master - he soon shrunk back into his chair, petrified about the prospect of having to put his hands into my occasionally scary sister's mouth within a few months. I promised him that Cassie didn't bite, but my words did nothing to reassure him: Mum and Dad were rolling up with laughter on the drive back home, which probably wasn't the wisest thing to do whilst driving on one of the busiest motorways in the country, narrowly getting out of the way of a humongous-sized Coca Cola truck.
"Does it matter?" Cassie sighed, her fingers speedily typing a message on her Samsung smartphone, smoke nearly puffing from the screen.
"Are you sure you can see in that light?" I asked, re-adjusting my bronze-shaded sunglasses and gazing at the sights of families setting up picnics ahead of me. As Mum had literally begged for us to get some fresh air and hog the dwindling-in-supply fridge every half-an-hour, Cassie and I had headed to the local park, soaking up some sun rays and lying on the same bench where Luke and I usually talked, chatting up on some sisterly gossip.
"Just about," Cassie murmured, then shifted her position towards the green oak trees, whose thick, long branches offered a cool place of shade and darkness. "Ugh," she grumbled, letting out an irritated groan, "my friend never replies back to me!" Cassie moved again, her expression showcasing pure annoyance.
"Which friend?"
"Amelie," Cassie huffed. "She only tends to talk whenever I meet up with her, which has only happened once this summer." Cassie sighed sadly.
My hand reached out for Cassie's, who willingly took it and held it, sighs of sadness the only communication we both shared.
"I've had the same problem, too, though I may not have talked about it much," I said, my tone passive and emotionless. All of a sudden, a chill spread through my frozen body and I shook my head, willing myself to turn a blind eye.
Cassie's face darted to mine in a blur, interest sparkling along with a notion of forlornness in her eyes.
"Apart from Tara, I haven't met any of my friends since school broke up last month," I confided, a surge of gut-wrenching misery rising in my stomach and bringing unfallen tears to the brims of my glassy eyes.
"Why?" Cassie inquired, panic turning her skin a pale shade of paper white. "I thought your friends liked you and -"
"Yeah, they do," I cut in, wishing to calm Cassie's nerves.
Cassie gaped, then abruptly zipped her mouth shut, slowly digesting my cut-throat response.
"Look, most of my friends are away on their holidays or doing other things, it's hardly a big deal," I huffily pointed out.
"B-but you look quite upset, Sadie," Cassie admitted, in a muffled whisper.
I looked away, forcefully blinking my watery eyes, which were longing to rush into an untameable stream of provoked tears, and avoided responding to Cassie until I was positive that I wouldn't cause a very public scene of reality TV-style crying.
"No, I'm fine," I promised, after turning my head back in Cassie's direction, a forceful, fragile-as-glass smile placed on my wobbling lips.
Cassie, having gained a reputation for her quizzical nature, was on the verge of raising a questioning eyebrow, but I heavily shook my head in protest. "Cassie, all of us have wobbles at times," I conceded, secretly acknowledging my wished-to-be-forgotten feelings, "and after all, we wouldn't be human without it."
However, Cassie wasn't going to be accepting my response as a reasonable and satisfying answer without further quizzing - why, oh why, did I put on my sixth birthday list for my sister to be an exact doppelganger of myself? At this rate, a career as a detective would certainly be on the cards for Cassie - or a demanding interviewer. One of the two, anyway.
"But they are supposed to be your friends, aren't they?" Cassie wondered. "So, if they truly are, then why haven't they bothered to send you any texts or emails? That's my honest question."
And honest it was. Surely my friends, such as show jumping pro Alice or New York-born Natalie, couldn't be riding over brightly-coloured 4ft jumps on their stunningly handsome Arabian horses or going on magnificent tours to the Statue of Liberty, living the wonderful life of a native New Yorker, without a second to spare to pick up their cheetah print-covered iPads or luxurious phones and get in touch with any of their BFFs? Nothing made sense at all.
Sure, I'd been offered an engagement-free summer, which some overworked people would kill to have, and so far the majority of it had been wasting by rolling around on my bed, flicking through year-old issues of ELLE and finishing off the final bag of bargain-priced salted pretzels, yet no objects were standing in my way to stop me from catching up with beloved friends and seeing the world from their point of view, which made a much-appreciated change from mine.
Perhaps they'd grown bored about hearing of my miserably dull existence?
"I can't tell you, Cassie, because I really don't know," I said. "I wish that I knew, I honestly do, as I detest nothing more than being left in the dark unknown."
"Have you sent any messages recently? Maybe they forgot to reply to some of your older texts?"
I vigorously nodded, red-hot heat boiling in the centre of my pounding heart. "Yes, I only sent one to Natalie yesterday evening, so she wouldn't be woken up at 4am in the morning and fly into a rage." I icily laughed. "Natalie was always to be feared whenever she got annoyed - her tantrums apparently became famous before she joined high school, which were easy to believe."
A miserable frown darkened Cassie's concerned expression. "Hey, it doesn't matter about my friend - I guess that all of us go through it at one stage or another." Cassie paused, placing her index finger on her baby-smooth lip. "C'est la vie, huh, don't you think?"
"Yeah, certainly indeed that's the way life is, whether you like it or not."
My words sparked the end of the depressing discussion, a gloomy atmosphere filling the air, and Cassie sat in silence, unsure of how to respond or talk about a happier and uncaring-friends-free subject without provoking any sudden reactions from myself.
"Um, do you want anything?" I asked, tentatively.
"Like what?" Cassie was scrolling through her cat-themed Twitter account on her phone, her eyes a million miles away from my direction.
"An ice cream? You mentioned earlier that you wanted to get one."
"I'm not in the mood right now."
I exhaled a sigh, submerged in melancholy. Why did I have to thrust the spotlight on myself in Cassie's moment of need, when all she desired was comfort and safety that only a loving elder sister could offer? I only meant to assure her that she wasn't the only person dealing with that situation, but instead tears issued a threat and I'd be bound to lose control, having not realized how my locked feelings, chained inside an imaginary box at the back of my crowded mind, had been bruised and wounded, awaiting the ideal moment to make its pain known and knocking me off my stunned feet without a second to grasp anything. Selfish, thoughtless and way too sensitive, as a stifled cry choked my lumpy throat.
"Well, I'm just going over to get one. See you in a moment, OK?"
A reluctant nod was the sole response I received from zombie-brained Cassie, whose hands were stuck like super-glue to her phone, as though she was cradling a much-loved teddy bear. It barely felt like yesterday when she used to carry Melvin, the polar bear with a permanent sticky jam-flavoured patch, around wherever she travelled; I would've much preferred him to an over-the-top, highly fragile mobile which never offered any consoling hugs.
I jumped out of my heated seat and followed the clear path towards the ice cream van situated near the pavement by the hectic, car-swamped road, butterflies sweeping past my waves of hair, which lightly lifted into the breezy air, and giant bumblebees, their loud buzzes remarkably near my ears, nearly flew me into a frightened state, my lifelong fear magically coming to life.
Sometimes, it may have been too noisy for my liking or the boiling sun would've prevented me from sprawling on a blanket for hours on end, lightly dozing with only a wide-brimmed hat to offer any protection, but I loved the park from the bottom of my heart. One of my very first memories as a toddler was racing to the swings on a crisp late September day, just as the leaves were falling from the trees and turning from a bright green to a dark brown, and my out-of-breath dad was pleading for me to slow down. I laughed, happiness bursting like a balloon, and I spun around and around until I was dizzy...
That was the sensation that passed through my head right at that moment, a pounding ache hurting my eyes, compelling me to force them shut and restore my energies, all of which mysteriously drained within a flash. Where did my stamina disappear? Strength was willing my body to perform actions just a moment ago, otherwise getting up from the bench would've been an impossible task. How the heck had I been capable of doing it?
My exhausted legs as heavy as bottles of filled water, I used all of my reduced power to move, as my eyes bolted open and skimmed through the hordes of gleeful families and chattering friends, desperate to find a particular person. Confusion muddled my thoughts. Who was I looking for? Cassie was somewhere around here, never looking up from her phone, but my instincts warned that she wasn't the one I seeked; instead, it was somebody else who I'd met before. It was a he, a tall, blond-haired boy whose handsome appearance would could make any girl lustful for him within a blink of an eye. I thought that I'd even loved him...
Joel was comfortably perched a black-painted bench a couple of steps away from a streetlight overlooking the can-littered pavement, avidly speaking to a girl of a similar age beside him, his hand willingly grasping hers. The girl, whose natural auburn bob glistened in the sunlight, kept bursting into laughter and nodding her head, gasping at the right moments and playing the perfect role as a friend. Or maybe there was more to her than I initially believed?
Shrugging his shoulders with an I-don't-care aura which would've send thousands of girls into a throbbing swoon, Joel moved closer to the girl, whose gentle smile was firmly planted on her lips, and they shared a Hollywood-style kiss, Joel clutching wisps of the girl's hair, completely unaware of my protruding eyes glued upon their very public act of affection.
A bitter taste immersed with jealously and heartbreak destroyed my previous appetite for ice cream, which resolutely remained in my firmly-shut mouth, and regardless of how much I prayed to release my concealed torment, no tears brimmed to my eyes, making the world look like a watery mess, hopefully blurring the formidable sight beyond me.
After all the agony I'd endured with Joel, one of my resolutions was to no longer experience any feelings for him, yet here I was, witnessing, against my will, the sight I'd always dreaded. Part of myself hadn't disclosed the fact that I still had a hint of emotion for him - or, oh God, even loved him. How could a publicized argument declaring my hatred for Joel be sign of undying love? I didn't believe it at all.
As Joel slowly pulled his face away from the girl, whose cheeks had turned a flushed, ecstatic pink and was grinning wildly, he searched around the park, amazed by the mind-blowing kiss he'd just experienced.
Uh oh, he's
going to see me, I panicked, as I scrambled to move my feet from the spot I was seemingly stuck on. Unlike the rest of the park, there weren't any tall, green bushes to offer me any cover, so I was placed in a dangerous position which would develop in more trouble than I could handle.
Too late.
Joel leaped with a start, dismay jerking him out of his seat, and he grimaced with utmost annoyance as he placed his domineering eyes on me, flashbacks of our last encounter returning to the centre of his mind.
As if I'd give him a chance to remember.
My body jumped into action, no longer numb and powerless to my instructions, and I ran in the opposite direction, heading towards no certain destination in mind. What a freak I am, I contemplated, whilst leaping over empty plastic bags of Skips and getting out of the way of a hard black bin. I had to get out of here fast before Joel was able to give me a piece of his mind, which was likely to be a chunkier slice than the one I gave in the cafe.
Playing With My Heartstrings Page 11