#Chapter3
---The headless-chicken mentality of Ryder Quin-03
Just as she was about to put on her headphones a voice called.
/"Hi!/"
Turning her head towards the direction the voice came from, Ryder was blinded by the handsome smirk on the young man’s carefree face. Behind him were two of his friends that in order to give Aiden some privacy, had turned their backs to him and chatted among each other while looking at an angry girl walking away. They seemed to be mocking her, shaking their heads as if tired.
Ryder furrowed her eyebrows at Aiden confused as to why would he talk to her. At the same time, her brain couldn’t help but go blank for a second. If it wasn’t Jasmine, no one else would take the initiative to talk to her. Maybe it was because of the passive and cold glance Ryder would usually have when walking down the hallways of the school alone or maybe it was because Jasmine was her friend that nobody dared to talk to her, for Jasmine even though having that mommy attitude, happened to be quite the aggressive little muffin who thanks to her father’s boxing gym that she frequently used, the girl knew how to fight and fought like a hawk when provoked. After breaking a guy’s nose from the basketball team after school, it seemed that people either were scared of her, disgusted by her or just simply hated her. Given the fact that Jasmine also had two bigger brothers and her father looked quite terrifying, the number of people daring to approach her were almost zero. Ryder didn’t mind. She didn’t like having too many people around. It was quite tiresome.
Seeing that Aiden was approaching her, Ryder couldn’t help but think… Is he talking to me because of what happened earlier?
Aiden’s expression, if the smirk was left aside, was quite gentle, yet Ryder tensed a bit, be it because of embarrassment or because of fear of saying something she shouldn’t.
/"Hi./" Her voice came out somewhat shaky. Thank God it was just a short word or she wouldn't know how to handle the embarrassment of looking and sounding like a fool.
His hand rose up to the back of his neck as he spoke, his eyes avoiding eye contact. Is he being shy? /"So I was talking with my friends earlier and… none of them knew your name… so I thought I would ask you myself./"
Wait a minute…. He wants to know… he wants to know my name?! Not knowing how to feel, flattered that he was interested or annoyed that he didn’t know since they had been in the same class for quite a while, Ryder struggled to answer. It was a simple question. Answer the damned thing.
/"Ryder King./" And just like that, Ryder signed her death contract. What the fuck? Her eyes widened. God, I messed up my own name. /"I mean Ryder Quin./" Great job Ryder. Well done.
Aiden laughed lightly at her and /"The scarlet baboon ass face/" had a sequel. He looked sweet, so cute, so perfect and the laughter didn’t sound like mockery at all, but embarrassment doesn’t care and strikes mercilessly.
I am a mess.
/"Nice to meet you Ryder, I’m Aiden Caley. I like your name./" He sounded rather polite and gentle… surprisingly the prince charming didn’t turn into a frog yet. It was such thought that stirred up a warmth in her stomach and Ryder found herself paling in her heart. Oh no! I’m catching feelings. That’s when things went downhill and shit got worse and worse. If she was a mess earlier, now she was a total catastrophe.
/"Your name is pretty too. No, I mean it is beautiful. I mean I like your name too. No... I.../" The urge to slap herself for rambling like this was overwhelming. Now he will think I am stupid and laugh his ass off at me, Ryder thought sighing in her heart. Socializing is very difficult. It was as if this idiot had forgotten how to be human.
/"Cute./" Aiden murmured to himself as the corner of his lips lifted, finding the girl in front of him interesting. /"Well, see you tomorrow./" He chuckled and left or something like that, Ryder wasn't really paying attention after he called her cute. Her whole body froze and she forgot how to breath. This was a first… someone who wasn’t her one hundred years old grandmother, and a guy her own age at that… called her cute.
For someone like Ryder, who lacked in human interactions… dealing with compliments felt like someone had thrown a grenade in her hands, being blown away from the overwhelming feeling of panic from not knowing what to do.
In the end Ryder.exe stopped working again.
He thinks I'm cute.
With that sentence playing like a broken record in her head the whole time, which should have gotten quite irritating after a while, but it didn’t seem to happen anytime soon with Ryder, the headless chicken walked back to her house. With every time that sentenced repeated, a monkey like grin would appear on her face scaring people out of her way or at best just made them worry she might have hit her head so hard the brain probably flew out of her skull. Poor girl. At such a young age. Very pitiful.
The house was empty and a deadly silence hung in the air. Her parents had gone at her grandmother’s house since she had been feeling under the weather lately, and being old she was convinced she was dying. With no other option left her parents had left Ryder home alone for a couple of days. They would be back the day after tomorrow. Ryder didn’t mind. Actually, quite the contrary… she was enjoying it to her hearts content! The whole house only for her for two days… Aah! Just like Ryder liked it, quiet and with no signs of humans around. Throwing her backpack on the floor of her room, Ryder headed out to the backyard.
There were a lot of things that fascinated this young lady. Most of the time, internet took the blame from it. Maybe because there weren’t many people she could hang out with and there was even less desire to hang out, Ryder loved to spend her free time by undertaking new projects, some left unfinished, some forgotten or just labeled as failures and many others started in a whim because of a spark of inspiration.
At the moment she was dead set on making herself a drafting table because she thought it was cool and it would be pretty useful on those rare occasions when she felt like drawing. And so, much to her mother’s displeasure, the backyard resembled more of a messy garage than the messy garage. There were saws and hammers, clay and cement, iron rods, brushes, paint, random scraps and pieces of wood or plastics, and God knows what else all around the place. It was a nightmare. The lovely green grass had been stomped to that degree of ceasing to exist, the flowers her mother had planted with so much love either had faded colors or were crippled due to accidents during work. Even though both her parents took pride in their daughter being skillful, they both were pained, one because of the unsightly condition of the once lovely backyard and the other because a lot of money would be spent on this odd hobbies of their asocial child.