by Ali Merci
And it made Asa want to shake her ‘till she spilled whatever she kept bottled up inside.
Asa decided he was losing his mind.
“Please?” He sighed.
“You know this would be so much better if you just liked Carmen instead of Willa.” Isla huffed. “Carmen I think I could put up with.”
Of course Carmen was easier for Isla to put up with—for anyone to put up with really. But there was something about her… something more than just that lack of judgement in her eyes whenever she looked at Asa. Something that appeared more like understanding—like empathy. As if she somehow saw past his award-winning grins.
That was somehow scarier than the possibility that he would never be able to rid Willa’s mind off all the assumptions she had about him. So here Asa was, going along with the choice that didn’t make his heart leap to his throat.
“Just pretend Willa doesn’t exist then.” He offered her his best smile, not bothering to correct the fact that he didn’t like Willa that way. “Come on, you know you like seeing me happy.”
“Never take no for an answer, do you?” Isla muttered, shoulders dropping in defeat.
“You know it.” Asa winked.
Asa was impulsive. Asa was rash. Asa didn’t know how to take no for an answer and couldn’t back down from a challenge.
Maybe it’ll end up breaking him. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll end up making him.
•••
With a very, very reluctant Isla by his side, Asa strode confidently towards the table where Carmen, Willa, a girl with dark hair and a purple — good lord, was that Joyce from history? — and another girl with earphones dangling around her neck, were seated.
“Mind if we join you?” Asa asked, feeling completely in his element, the words flowing from his mouth with ease.
Joyce looked like she wanted to cry again. The girl with the earphones seemed to find the ketchup stain on the table top interesting all of a sudden and Willa just full-on gaped at his arrival.
Carmen beamed at both Isla and Asa, her cheeks glowing faintly, and pulled out the empty chair next to her and patted it in a welcoming manner. Isla practically jumped at the offer, obviously not wanting to be stuck on the other vacant seat which was next to Willa.
“Why ask if you’re going to join anyway?” Willa asked Asa, raising a brow at Isla who had just made herself comfortable next to Carmen.
“I’m sorry, were you speaking to me? I couldn’t tell.” Isla shot Willa a sickeningly sweet smile. Too sweet.
Oh boy, Asa couldn’t help but think.
“I don’t know.” Willa smiled back with that same over-the-top sugary niceness. “Do you even have the required intellectual capacity to have a conversation with another human being, let alone me?”
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Asa found himself shooting a glance at Carmen for unknown reasons. When he found her eyes already fixed on him, there was a jolt in his chest, right at the centre. Asa decided, again, that he was losing his mind.
“Considering you have an IQ the size of your boobs, I’d say even a squirrel can have a conversation with you,” Isla shot back.
“Um…” Asa wanted to say something. He knew he was supposed to because they were starting to gain attention from amused students. But damn Carmen and the thunderclouds in her eyes. It felt like they were shooting lightning bolts into his eyes as they maintained the eye contact.
Willa’s face went red at Isla’s remark about her body, touching on a sensitive spot. “Where’d you rip off that comeback from? How-to-pull-off-not-being-a-total-blonde dot com?” She sneered, throwing Isla a meaningful look over her blonde mane for emphasis.
“You got a haircut.” Carmen’s voice snapped both Isla and Willa out of their heated exchange. Meanwhile, Asa was stuck, wondering why Carmen’s voice reminded him of his cousin Mirabelle’s violin recitals during the family bonfires—serene and out of this world.
Asa was losing his godforsaken mind.
“What?” all four girls asked in unison, wearing identical expressions of have-you-lost-your-goddamn-mind on their faces.
“Your hair.” Carmen smiled, nodding at Isla. “It’s different now. Did you get a new cut?”
To Asa’s amazement, Isla’s cold demeanour seemed to soften a bit. She actually looked mildly flattered at Carmen’s observation.
“Yeah,” Isla said. “You noticed?”
Carmen nodded, that same effortless smile ever-present on her face. “It falls around your face differently now, makes your cheekbones look more prominent.”
Isla’s eyes widened, and she turned her body around to completely face Carmen. “It does, doesn’t it?!” She smiled widely, looking excited, and Asa felt himself relax now that her mind was diverted from having a spat with Willa. “I thought the exact same thing when getting the haircut. But nobody else mentioned it, so I figured it must not have made that much of a difference at all.”
Carmen opened her mouth to respond, but Asa didn’t catch what she said because Willa had turned to speak to him.
“You planning on standing there for the rest of lunch?” She smirked, raising her brows at him.
Asa grinned back, dragging out the chair next to her and flopping down on it. “If you wanted me seated next to you, you could’ve just said so,” he said.
Willa scoffed. “Please. Take that ego down a few notches. I’d sooner inhale polluted air than willingly have you close to me.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, mi amor.”
Asa felt Carmen’s eyes flicker towards him at that and then look away.
“Is that my nickname now?” Willa’s hazel eyes lit up with amusement. “Mi amor?” she said, testing it out on her tongue. Asa couldn’t help but notice how plump her lips were, coated in a coral pink colour.
He shook his head. “You don’t really say it that way, like they’re two separate words,” he told her. “It kind of just rolls off as one word, like miyamor. You know, just naturally.”
“Well, duh, coming from you, it naturally would.”
“True, my first language is Spanish.”
“I wasn’t talking about that.” Willa smiled slyly. “I was thinking more along the lines of how many girls you have already addressed as mi amor for it to become second nature to you.”
Asa rolled his eyes. “Shut up,” he muttered, thinking of the girls he’d whispered sweet nothings to. The girls he’d made giggle with his terms of endearment. He’d just wanted to make them feel beautiful, the way they made him.
But those words never meant anything, did they? He’d always grinned at them when he called them something sweet; he’d always said it with that teasing edge to his voice so that they knew he wasn’t leading them on. For a brief moment, Asa wondered what it’d be like to actually mean those sweet nothings. What would it feel like to call a girl mi amor like he truly meant it? Like she was the love of his life?
A laugh broke Asa out of his haze and his eyes landed on a laughing Isla—a laughing Isla. Because of Carmen. She’d made the ice queen laugh.
Warmth flooded him at the realisation that Carmen had gone out of her way to make Isla feel comfortable there, despite the clear hostility displayed by Willa. She didn’t have to do that, Asa knew. Carmen didn’t have to do anything but pave the path to Willa for him, and yet she’d gone that extra mile.
Her kindness was a rarity, he had to admit, especially given the common misconceptions surrounding Isla’s character.
His mind went back to what he’d been thinking of all through history period, about what he knew should be the right thing to do. Right now, he was surer than ever.
As soon as school is over then, he made a mental note. Lord knew Carmen deserved some of her kindness back.
16.
An Act of Kindness
“I think you were being a little harsh on Isla today, Willa,” Carmen said as the last bell rang, ending school for the day.
Willa snorted as she stuffed her books in her bag. But before sh
e could say anything, Joyce spoke up.
“You must be the only girl in this school that thinks that,” Joyce said, shaking her head disbelievingly. “You’re too nice, that’s what you are. Who the heck could like a bitchy queen bee like Isla?” She shuddered.
“I do,” Carmen replied, smiling. “I like her.”
Willa threw her an exasperated glance. “Maybe you dig the whole I-will-destroy-anyone-who-gets-in-the-way-of-claiming-my-man vibe, but as for me, I think she’s delusional and needs a reality check.”
Carmen slipped the strap of her bag over her shoulder, standing up. “What on earth are you on about?” She looked confused. “Who is Isla claiming as her man?”
Willa looked at Carmen like she’d just grown another head. “Well, isn’t it obvious? Asa! She thinks she’s entitled to him, or something like that—”
“No, no, no.” Carmen shook her head, her long hair swishing against her back. “Isla sees Asa as her best friend and nothing else. It’s easy to tell by just the way they interact. There’s nothing intimate there—at least, not in a way that’s not platonic.”
“Oh, come on, Carmen.” Joyce huffed. “It’s the typical queen bee staking her claim on the hottie of the school. I mean, why else would she be so hostile towards Willa in the first place? Because she knows Willa’s caught Asa’s attention! She’s insecure about it, just like any girl with zero self-esteem would be.”
Carmen wanted to say she believed Isla had a pretty strong sense of dignity and self-esteem. She wanted to say that perhaps Isla was so cold towards Willa because this new girl had just barged into her territory and was marching about with an air of superiority after having already decided what kind of girl Isla was just because she was a pretty and popular cheerleader who liked her fair share of boys.
Carmen wanted to say that maybe the reason Isla couldn’t stand Willa’s presence was because the latter let the former be defined by all those things mentioned.
But Carmen was tired. And she was beginning to think that no amount of reasonable argument was going to change the mind-set of people like Willa. Sometimes society drilled the stereotypes so deep inside one’s head that there was just no other way for them to look at life except through a narrow-minded perspective.
She would know. It was society and its delusional sense to exercise a “right” to slap a label on anyone, that tore apart her life into shreds.
Carmen simply offered the two of them a smile and a wave, then walked out of the classroom towards the main doors of the school.
She’d made a promise to value kindness above everything, and she’d honour that promise ‘till her last breath. And so she defended Isla, because God knew the girl didn’t deserve being looked down on like a piece of gum stuck under someone’s shoes.
No. That was Carmen. She was the one who was supposed to be looked down on. She was the one who’d ruined lives with her own. And Lord knew Carmen didn’t deserve even an atom of the kindness she’d shown to anyone throughout her entire life.
•••
“Carmen.”
She stopped in her tracks across the parking lot and looked over her shoulder to see Asa jogging towards her.
God, he made her name sound beautiful, like there was a constellation waiting to be named after her. Or maybe his voice was just music to her ears, and it beautified every word that left his mouth.
“Yes, Asa?” Did she make his name sound as beautiful too? Did the way “Asa” fall past her lips let him know she saw him in shades of brown and gold?
Asa slowed down his pace as he drew closer, casually slipping his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He kept his thumbs out, using them to draw circles on the dark grey material of his pants.
“Hey,” he breathed. Why did he breathe out the word?
“Hi.” She didn’t know how she sounded.
“Um.” He stopped. “I…I guess I wanted to say thanks?” He looked away, his thumbs now tapping on the outside of his pockets. His eyes landed back on hers. “Yeah, I wanted to say thanks.”
Carmen could’ve smiled and said it was her pleasure. But it wasn’t her pleasure, was it? She was doing it at the expense of her means to get her emotions out. At the expense of her stress reliever. Her journal.
“There’s really no reason to thank me,” she said. “I did it because I had to.”
He looked away, and guilt flickered in his eyes.
“No, I wasn’t thanking you for that.” He sighed. “Not for having me over at your lunch table.”
Carmen adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “Okay?” She tilted her head, her long hair slanting to the side with the motion. “What else did you want to thank me for, then?”
Asa smiled at her then. At Carmen.
Smiled.
How much that word simplified the gesture Asa offered her. No, his lips curved up at the very corners, lifting the slant in his cheekbones and pooling his eyes with warmth.
That’s what warm coffee should look like, Carmen thought to herself.
“Thank you for sticking up for Isles,” he said. “I think the whole school, except for me and her cheer squad, has a very strongly misguided idea of who she is.”
Carmen’s lips parted, and something close to a sigh but without any sound, left her mouth. Or maybe it was just that she couldn’t breathe in that second. She was always nice to people; she always defended the misjudged. This was the first time someone watched from the side-lines and picked up on it. And definitely the first time that someone had thought she needed to be thanked for it.
It felt…oddly nice.
“Carmen?”
She wondered if he thought of stars when he called her name, because Carmen didn’t know how else to explain the way her name felt special when he uttered it.
“Yes, Asa?”
“Say something?” He cracked a smile, but his eyes looked guarded.
And so she smiled, wiping away the hesitation in his eyes.
“Not the whole school, I hope,” she said softly. “I’m certain there are a lot more who see past the label she’s been given. They just haven’t spoken up yet.”
“You did,” he said and God, did Carmen’s breathing falter.
“Yes.” She averted her gaze. “Yes, I did.”
“Kind of puts you in a whole new light,” he muttered, scratching the back of his head. “Or rather, I’m just seeing you properly only now.”
Asa’s words were paintings Carmen could never create; a drawing she’d never be able to sketch. And yet—yet, she knew in her bones his speech was that: art.
“I’m not following,” she told him.
“Here.” He pulled his hands out of his pocket, using one to hold his backpack, and the other to dig inside for something. Then he pulled out the one thing that made Carmen’s hands throb and ache with longing.
He was holding her art journal.
And then he stretched his hand out towards her. The hand that was holding her journal.
“I don’t understand…” Her voice was quiet, but she reached out and let her fingers touch the familiar hard cover of the book anyway. And God did it feel like coming home again.
Her heart thumping inside her chest, she gingerly curled her fingers around the spiral edge and tugged, wondering if it was a cruel joke and Asa was going to pull it away any moment now.
But he didn’t. Asa didn’t. And Carmen could breathe again.
“I should never have done that to you.” He sounded ashamed, and Carmen let him feel that way. For now, at least. She needed to know he felt guilty. She needed him to know how much the journal meant to her and just what exactly it was that he’d taken away.
“No, you shouldn’t have,” she said to him. Her eyes dropped to the journal, her fingers caressing the surface like a long-lost friend. She lifted her gaze back to him. “But this…this I did not expect. I didn’t…”
He cocked his head to the side, eyebrows furrowed as he waited for her to get the words out.
�
��This is a rare act of kindness,” she finally murmured. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”
“Like I said, it didn’t feel right. I couldn’t go about leisurely chatting up Willa when your journal felt like a ton in my bag.” He chuckled, easing the intense atmosphere that had suddenly wrapped around them. “And speaking about rare acts of kindness… you deserve it. Especially after Isla. Haven’t you heard of the saying what goes around comes around?” He grinned, and it looked like the sun had shone down on Carmen.
“I have heard of that saying,” she eventually said, her chest constricting. That saying had defined Carmen’s life, and would continue to do so. Because the pain that she’d inflicted, the anguish that she’d sent around, was going to come back around to Carmen. It was going to make its way back to her.
And she was just floating, existing, until that wave hits and she’s swept away in the tide forever.
17.
A Touch of Galaxies in Her Veins
When Asa’s eyes followed Carmen’s hands gripping her journal with the air of a mother finally finding her child, he felt guilt claw at his insides.
He’d been rash and had acted on an impulse when he had struck the unfair bargain with her. Now, seeing her reaction and realising how personal an object he’d been keeping away from her, he wished more than ever that he wouldn’t always act in the heat of the moment and instead would actually think things through. His mother would be so ashamed of him.
“I am sorry, Carmen,” he said again, resisting the urge to yank his own hair.
She met his eyes. They weren’t exceptionally pretty like Willa’s hazel ones, but, God, did they send lightning bolts his way.
“I know.” She smiled softly. “Apology accepted.”
He nodded, smiling back at her, before it began to grow awkward again.