I hold my camera up to my eye and look through the lens to see if there is anything I want to take a picture of before heading to the bus stop. Sometimes the best images are the ones that come from unplanned mastery. At least, that is what I have been told.
As I am zooming in to focus on the field where multiple students are gathered for their after school activities, I suddenly notice the familiar figure of Dominic in my field of vision. Surprised, I lower my camera and furrow my brows in confusion, wondering why he exactly it is that he is hiding behind a nearby bush.
My curiosity piqued, I follow his gaze and that's when I see a group of cheerleaders gathered together, forming a pyramid with some of them falling backwards, trusting their teammates to catch them. Pompoms are being waved around, their colours vivid and bright, adding to the excitement of the moment. The cheerleaders' movements are precise and graceful, and I cannot help but feel a sense of admiration for their impressive display of athleticism and teamwork.
It's weird because he's dressed entirely in black, all the way from his beanie to his shoes. His presence strikes me as peculiar—he could either be a secret agent on a mission or a creepy pervert leering at the girls in their short skirts and tight shirts.
I quickly allow my camera to rest back across my abdomen whilst clinging onto the strap around my shoulder and I let my headphones rest around my shoulders too. The sound of my boots echoes softly against the pavement as I approach him with caution.
"Hey," I quickly jog up to him behind the bush he's crouching in. "Why are you hiding behind a bush?"
"You're late. Again," he replies in a banal tone without even glancing at me. "What? Does promptness not matter to you?"
For a second, I almost apologise to him for being late but then I catch myself and question what he's talking about. Did he tell me to meet up with him after school? If he did, I must have zoned him out because I was prepared to leave the premises and catch the earliest bus back home.
Flicking my wrist swiftly, slowly my face drops when I catch the time on my wristwatch. Then I glance back at him flatly, wondering if he is actually being serious. Rolling my eyes, I choose not to even get into an argument with him about two minutes of promptness. Arguing with him is the equivalent of scolding a two year old who just keeps screaming in your face for hours and hours on end. Trust me, I have been there with Chu Hua and it is not an enjoyable experience.
"Are you spying on Jodie?" I ask him instead.
"Hide!" He tugs on my arm and pulls me behind the bush, causing me to slam into him painfully.
"Ow!"
I glower up at him, but this son's a bitch doesn't even have the decency to look at me and maybe check if I'm okay after the whole mishap. He does not even have to apologise because, let's be honest with ourselves, I cannot imagine him being physically capable of ever uttering the word sorry, but at the least show some remorse.
As usual, he just keeps that darn dreary gaze in his drab eyes and says, "To answer your previous question, yeah. Cheerleading practice."
I peek over at the girl he is pointing at and see Jodie shoving her tongue down some guy's throat. He looks like one of the football players. Imagining the sound of the sloppy kiss they are sharing has my nose wrinkling in disgust and a sound of being repulsed escaping my throat. When the his hand decides to push up her skirt, I immediately decide that is my cue to look away.
"Yeah, that is some cheerleading practice alright," I whisper lowly under my breath, hoping that he does not hear me muttering that.
Taking a closer look at him, I realise that he doesn't appear jealous in the least. He looks like he doesn't care that his crush is shoving her tongue down another guy's throat. Is that normal? Then again, what about Dominic is normal?
Crinkling my eyebrows in curiosity, I muse my thoughts out to him, "Weirdly enough, you don't look jealous."
As I watch him drag his eyes away from the public display of affection, I cannot help but feel a sense of sadness at the emptiness in his gaze. I find myself longing to see a spark, any sign of life, in those beautiful browns of his. Perhaps a flash of anger, a hint of annoyance, or even a glimmer of slight happiness—anything to make him appear more human. I remain optimistic, but I cannot help wondering: is it too much to ask for? Surely, this space alien can show some humanity and emotion.
"What happened to your face?" he muses instead.
"The same thing that happened to your personality. He-yo!" I hold up my hand for a high five and he obviously ignores my awaiting hand, so I just end up high fiving myself like the pathetic loser I am.
When we remain in an awkward silence after that, he opens his mouth to say, "That didn't really answer my question."
I briefly recount to him, "Riley kicked a football in my face because of a challenging comment I made inevitably giving me a nosebleed and a bruise. Fortunately, my friend Damien was there to take me to the infirmary."
"Honestly, I think he did you a favour. Now, you don't have that stupid, baby face look which is cool."
"You think I look cool?" I grin happily.
"I think you look less like a loser."
My face drops until I think his words over in my head and I shrug nonchalantly. "You know what? I'll take it. Now you haven't answered my question. Why do you look so unfazed after catching the girl that you like tonguing some random neek?"
"Well, if you haven't noticed, Jodie changes guys like she changes underwear" —she actually does not wear any underwear since it apparently makes her feel uncomfortable and restricted, but let's not tell him that— "and so that random neek is just someone she is using to scratch her itch for now. He will be discarded and forgotten by the end of her practice."
My brows quirk up.
The fact that his crush is busy sucking face with some random guy, and he doesn't see the necessity to feel jealous is impressive.
At the same time, I wonder how he is able to keep his composure with such calculative efficiency. How is he not the least bit envious at the scene? I mean, I'm obviously not the jealous type who goes around threatening the people hanging around my crush or smashing my fists through the walls, but whenever I would catch Michael standing with and kissing other girls, Savannah mostly, I would normally curl my lip down in distaste and puncture her with subtle, scathing stares that I made sure she was not aware of.
"Okay," I exclaim, glancing up at him readily, I clap us out of the silence and rub my hands together in preparation, "so what should I do? Please don't tell me I have to try and befriend her again because if you do then I swear I am walking out of here faster than you can say befriend Jodie."
He pulls his eyes away from the disgusting scene yet again and looks at me with a frown of confusion. "Do you have short-term memory or something?"
"What?" I muse, wondering why he would ask me that of all things.
"I already explained this to you in class. Just go over there and try to say a few good words about me, see if she is the least bit interested in me or if she even knows who I am."
"Oh, okay. Good things about you… good things about you," I murmur out and blink up in thought, trying to recall if I have ever come across any quality in him which could be deemed good. "So basically nothing?"
"Just go!" he hisses, pushing me out of our hideout.
I stumble a bit and the strap of my camera slips off my shoulder slightly, pulling my flannel down a bit and exposing my collar bone. With another deathly glare thrown at him, I aggressively pull my flannel back in place.
He is awfully handsy today, no?
When he impatiently shoos me away, I indignantly approach the cheerleading squad with a petulant scowl portraying my irritation at being coerced like this.
"Hey, Jodie, got a second? Cool," I deadpan quickly and basically grab her hand to rip her away from her makeout session.
The guy with her complains and mutters a few unrepeatable cuss words at me, but Jodie prompts him to calm down. She will be coming back to continue with their public snogging. It immediately shuts him up but the venomous daggers which are being tossed my way still prevail.
"What is it?" she asks, crossing her arms over chest which seems quite constricted in her shirt. "I have cheerleading practice right now and you're disturbing me."
"Yeah," I murmur out, nodding slowly. I throw a look over her shoulder and look at the guy she was practising cheerleading with. And he's still glaring at me. "I could totally see that you were practising."
She arches her brows up expectantly, almost like she is silently telling me to get on with it already. I take a quick glance over my shoulder at the bush that Dominic is hiding behind and try to think of how I should say this to her, how I should make it seem like I'm not trying to hook them up. Which is exactly what this is. I am being used as the mediator for Dominic and Jodie, but she has no idea I am.
Heaving a breath out through my lips, I turn back to face her and smile brightly at the curious look she is now also giving the bush.
"First of all," I start with an exclaim, causing her eyes to abruptly flicker back to make contact with mine again, her curious gaze neglecting the bush, "you look really good in those. Where did you get that shirt from?"
The normal compliment to get through to her softer side is how I start, gesturing at her outfit. Always make sure to compliment Jodie. She likes those.
"Um… from the school?" she answers dubiously, shaking her head at my stupidity.
"Oh, right. The school. Of course."
Uncertainty flashes in her eyes and her mouth parts a bit. Before she speaks again, she blinks that emotion away, "Seong Jin, you are really starting to freak me out. Yesterday you came to me, asking to be friends again which is weird because you had the opportunity to do that years ago when you and Vannah had that falling out and now—"
"Jode," I interrupt her from finishing her sentence about the conflict between me and her current best friend and with a polite smile curling onto my mouth, I muse, "Can I call you Jode?"
"It sounds an awful lot like chode so I would prefer if you did not—"
"I'm gonna call you Jode," I cut her off again while nodding adamantly. "Random questionnaire for the school's newspaper: Would you happen to know uh... Dominic Lachowski?"
A frown of thought mars her face as she taps a rhythm on her cheek with her perfectly manicured pink nails.
"Is he that depressed guy who has zero friends? I think he might be in one of our classes. He's always just doodling little stickmen on the corner of the desk. One day, I arrived late to class and I had to sit next to him, because there was no way I was going to sit next to Christian. He did not say a single word to me."
I realise that she described him perfectly; everyone paints him as the depressed, lone wolf who tends not to talk to anyone or show any emotion at all.
That is the front that he presents, the façade that he wears. It is what he wants people to see him as. Maybe because he doesn't want to appear weak and well, he pulls it off so beautifully, because nobody wants to associate themselves with him at the end of the day. No one except for me.
God, I am such an idiot.
"Yeah, that definitely sounds like Dominic."
"What about him? What do The Moss people have to write about Dominic? What is so important about him that they would need to cover it? I mean, they can just interview the cheerleader's captain who is yours truly." She smiles smugly.
My lips press into a thin line as I try to cook up a convincing lie to feed her. "They are doing some article about the um… different types of students. You see, in our school there are normal students, that's us, and then there is Dominic. He is like the outcast so they have to write about him and educate us about how… people think he operates?"
A silence comes after what I have just said and I worry that she won't believe me.
"Okay..." She slowly bobs her head up and down and from the unconvinced look in her eyes, I am guessing she's a bit bemused. "That makes no sense, by the way."
"Yeah, but it's The Moss. When has anything they have ever written made sense, you know?"
She tilts her head to the side as if to quietly agree with that statement.
I grin widely, relieved that she's just going along with it anyway. I don't even remember half of what I just said. "Okay, the next question is a very important one which should be answered truthfully. Do you think he's hot?"
She chuckles and shrugs her shoulders up with amusement plastered all over her face. "Yeah, why do you think I sat next to him in the first place? I could have easily asked someone to swap seats with me, but I obviously wanted a piece of him."
I beam and show Dominic a thumbs up at my back.
"Great, great. That is great. So, would you consider dating an outcast such as Dominic or does his different and weird personality turn you off completely?"
"Well, I don't do dating."
My thumb points down in a way which says things aren't going as planned.
"Oh, okay. Would you uh... make out with him then?" I suggest, gesturing over to the guy she was tonsil searching with—who is still impatiently waiting for her by the way.
"Uh… no." She shakes her head with her eyes widening in incredulity at my question and she almost looks offended that I even dared to ask her that. Her nose wrinkles in what seems like disgust.
"Why not? He is objectively way hotter than that guy."
"Oh, no doubt about that. I would even place him in my top ten for most attractive guys in our school, but I have this rule where I subjectively try not to snog gay guys, Seong Jin. No offence to you or anything but they are just a let down."
My face lights up in surprise and amusement. "You think Dominic is gay?"
"Any blind fool can see that. I mean, I sat next to the guy and received little to no attention from him no matter how hard I tried," she says, rolling her eyes with an annoyed frown. I don't think he didn't give her attention because he's gay though. "The hoodie look is clearly a deceptive tool to fool people."
Is she just not accustomed to rejection?
From her statement, I am once again reminded of the days back in primary school when she and Taylor would agree on almost everything and I would always disagree with their perspectives. Like the fact that Nutella is apparently not the best spread you can find or how they said that chocolate ice cream does not help you when you're having a terrible day. Ice cream definitely helps. Chocolate, to be specific. The only flavour that matters and will always reign supreme above all else. It certainly helped me whenever I got rejected.
Just like this whole being gay theory. Both she and Taylor think that Dominic is hiding his sexuality behind his dark hoodie look, but I have been dead set on that being incorrect. The proof is even standing right in front of me. Jodie Dillon is living proof of Dominic's sexuality and I can bet an arm and a leg that it's not batting for the other team. Or maybe he's bisexual? I don't know, trying to guess isn't going to solve the mystery.
"Maybe you two should get together."
"What?" I thin my eyebrows in confusion, wondering if I misheard her or if she just suggested that Dominic and I should get together.
When she clarifies by adding, "You know, since he just so happens to be gay and you just so happen to be gay also, it just so happens to be like the perfect match."
I blink at her in disbelief, wondering if she was dropped on the head as a baby. Does she not remember that Dominic rejected me in the ninth grade? Why the hell would it just so happen to be the perfect match now?
A silence drags on between us as I just stare at the specimen in front of me while contemplating my very existence at this very moment. I am trying very hard to not let my disagreement show on my face.
"Wow," I whisper loudly, holding a plastic grin on my face as I nod in faux agreement. "Why did I not think of that? It is like totally genius. You know, sometimes I forget how smart you truly are."
She smiles smugly, flipping her ponytail. "Thanks."
"Okay, I am gonna go to that bush over there now. You can carry on… doing whatever it is you were doing."
"Okay, bye." She turns around and sashays to the guy who decides to meet her halfway. When she reaches him, she slings her leg around his waist and begins to make out with him yet again.
"Okay, then," I whisper under my breath, turning around and walking away from her.
Once I reach Dominic, he asks monotonously, "So… what did she say?"
"I think I lost a few brain cells just from talking to her," I muse lowly more to myself than to him. Shaking my head from side to side, I wonder how I never noticed that she sometimes says the most nonsensical things ever only in a convincing tone.
"What are you talking about?"
"She thinks you're gay and that we're the perfect match."
"What is up with people thinking that?" he asks out loud, scowling in annoyance.
"I know, right. We're nowhere close to being the perfect match."
"I was talking about myself," he states flatly.
"Oh," I echo out loud in a tone just as monotonous as his gaze. "Well, I mean in your case, I wouldn't dispute it that much. It's no wonder you've never had a girlfriend before. You are just patiently waiting for the perfect guy to come and sweep you off your feet, aren't you?" I respond with a teasing grin.
He does not seem to catch onto my joking tone and instantly hardens his stare on me.
My smile drops.
I have a strong feeling he actually isn't the least bit gay. I don't even think he's bi. I know my gaydar and it never lets me down, no sir. Except the last three times it has let me down.
It seems that at first it didn't bother him when Taylor assumed that he was gay, because he really does seem like the type to not care about everyone else's opinion, even voicing it out only one hundred and forty three times, but now it's his crush, the love of his life. I understand where his frustrations are coming from.
"Kidding," I exclaim quickly to try and placate his anger. "I was just kidding."
I clarify this before he can do anything brash, like wrapping his thick hands around my neck and strangling me to death. I know that this world sucks hairy balls, but I really want to delay my journey to heaven. I can't go just yet.
"Can't you take a joke, mate?"
To drive home my playfulness, I try to punch his shoulder playfully, but he catches my hand before it can touch him and pushes it away distastefully.
"I'm not your mate."
"Okay," I murmur with my eyes widening awkwardly.
"And why isn't the plan working? It's planned to the very tee. It's perfect," he muses out loud in frustration, gazing around as if the heavens will present him with an answer.
I could just tell him that the heavens don't give you an immediate reply if any, but I instead tell him the answer myself.
"Well, it's just that your plan is a little too perfect. Human beings are a little bit more complicated than what you make them out to be. I told you to let the chips fall on the table and let fate take its course, but no, Starr is an idiot," I say the last part in his deep, monotonous voice.
"No, Starr is an inexperienced boy who thinks he knows everything about dating."
"You say that like you've had a girlfriend," I argue back, narrowing my eyes at him while I cross my arms over my chest and cock my head to the side. A tiny blush tints his ears as he averts his gaze from my unwavering one. "Detailed plans don't work with simple creatures like Jodie."
"That's not funny."
"It wasn't meant to be," I grit out irked by the whole situation all-in-all, watching him earnestly. "Look, I'm tired and I want to get this over and done with so I can have my normal life back. Between spending time and arguing with you and then listening to Jodie saying things like you and I are perfect for each other, I don't know which gives me a bigger headache. We'll need a simpler plan."
"Which is?"
"You finally grow some balls and talk to her," I exclaim, throwing my hands in the air in exasperation. "Okay, this whole making me, someone who is her former best friend and is clearly despised by her, the mediator to fish information out of her is never gonna work. The only thing it's doing is irritating her and myself. Trust me, you don't want two angry people on your arse. One is scary enough."
He stares at me and I'm a bit satisfied with myself when I see the tiny flash of fright in his usually dull eyes before they eventually do return to their soulless, dark brown. "Basically, you want me to do what you do? Walk up to her and just declare my feelings for her?"
"Yes." I nod confidently, relieved that he is finally seeing the whole picture, the better picture with flaws and gaps and nuance. "See, now you're getting it?"
Perfection will never work with the likes of Jodie because fate will never allow us to succeed flawlessly. Fate waits for the opportune moment to catch you with your pants down around your ankles. Unless you are Mossbourne Community Academy's golden boy, because I see no flaw in the boy we all know as Christian Bartell. He is smart, he is freaking adorable, he has somehow managed to get one of the most notorious students at our school wrapped around his pinkie, he is, apparently, a masochist of sorts. He's all powerful.
"You do realise that you've gotten rejected for doing that, right?"
His words immediately pop my bubble and my mouth snaps open and shut like a fish in water. I try to stammer out an excuse which will make him go with my plan instead.
"Uh… well, it is different between heterosexual couples. You don't even know… like what you are even talking about, because like if the guy like makes the first move to a girl then like it's fine, but if the guy makes the first move to another guy then the guy feels like emasculated or something like that."
He frowns and I clear my throat awkwardly when the bemusement painted across his expression also makes me confused at the stuff that I just uttered. Maybe I was not lying about losing a few brain cells from talking to Jodie. Her stupidity has finally rubbed off on me and now I'm saying nonsensical things in a convincing tone. Only that doesn't work with Dominic. He's way smarter than that.
"Are you even listening to yourself?" he asks me, dipping his brows down to spectate the alien that is Seong Jin Lee. "You've just said like about five times or something. I don't think you're very confident about this… this simpler plan."
"Well, I think you're wrong because my simpler plan is not even a plan to begin with so there you have it."
He rolls his eyes when I cross my arms over my chest defiantly, gaining back the little confidence I had. I suggested this to him, so now I'm gonna have to run with it. Backing down now will only bring across my passiveness and Dominic will surely exploit that.
"Oh, God," he mutters under his breath in exasperation.
"Don't worry. We just have to change a few things about you like your fashion sense to kill the gay rumours, organise the perfect meet cute to get Jodie's attention and then voilà, we'll have ourselves a couple after a few weeks or a month of you two bonding and talking and flirting."
He groans lowly, shaking his head in what seems to be exhaustion and defeat.
"Just think about it, Dominic. Your plan has failed twice now. Do you need a third fail before realising that perfection doesn't work?"