Devils Roses 01 - Cursed

iTouch, or chess game.
    It was rare for him to make eye contact with other people, except me. Being his best friend and the only person able to beat him in chess, earned me at least a bit of eye contact. Well, me and Mr. Mac, our chem teacher, who held the chess club meetings.
    “ Hey Blake.” The words left my mouth in a low mutter. I thought for certain he hadn’t been able to hear them.
    He smiled at me, barely looking up from his iPhone. “You look like shit today, Aimee. Enough with the black already.”
    He was the only person who could be mean to me and make a smile cross my lips.
    “ I like black.” I tried to be serious. I closed my locker and we started to walk.
    He shook his head, as he looked me straight in the eyes. “No, you don’t and you're starting to look like one of the Goths. It’s hard to hang in the nerd crowd when you scare the nerds. We scare easily.” He walked forward and opened the door to the cafeteria for me.
    I shook my head. “I’m in mourning Blake and it’s a full year before we wear colors again.”
    “ That’s for widows in the eighteen hundreds. I miss you in spring colors and shorts. I miss you having color on your skin. I miss your eyes, how they used to sparkle. Now they’re dull, like fish eyes. When that Aimee comes back, I think I’ll have a party.”
    Us at a party? He was the only boy in the world who I could actually imagine myself with. We matched. The idea of it made me wonder. Wondering made me forget how sad I was. It was a vicious cycle.
    I walked through the door laughing. “Who will come?”
    “ The chess club, matheletes, obviously us science geeks, and I like the kids at the newspaper. They’re not as smart as we are, but they know politics and a lot of them believe the CT’s, Aimes. I have to respect that.”
    I laughed again, even though it hurt my sides to do so. My laughing muscles had grown soft and weak over the past winter. Blake believed in CT’s, Conspiracy Theories. He believed nothing the media wrote. Well, unless university students or someone working for some low budget paper wrote it. The kind that relied on a mailing list as opposed to general publication for the masses.
    He smacked me in the arm frowning. “Dude, did you see the Facebook posts coming off my mom lately?” I shook my head as he took off on a tangent.
    “ Clearly people don’t get the whole—it's for connecting or reconnecting with people—it's not twitter. My mom has what she ate for lunch yesterday, she has that she went to her yoga class, she has that she bought a new bra, and for her friends to check that store out. What the hell? I told her that from now on, I’m posting everything I do in a day.”
    His face was red as he ranted. I loved his rants.
    “ I told her tomorrow my Facebook status is going to read, 'Blake McGinnis had a great shit today, came out with very little pushing. I just want to thank Kellogg’s for upping the fiber count in the cereal.”
    I started to laugh again as we walked to the nerd table, where the other nerds raised eyebrows at me laughing.
    He continued, “I think then about three hours later I will put, 'Blake McGinnis just held his cat Chuck down and sniffed his neck fur.”
    I couldn’t even stop myself, if I wanted to. The laughing started to get quite painful.
    His arms flailed about now. “Then I think at around seven I will post, ‘Blake McGinnis is questioning his humanity and had a bad thought about his neighbors.’ Then at least my mom will have something to think about. Jesus, I get tired of reading this crap.”
    I enjoyed thinking about something other than myself.
    On that day, in that moment, I felt like the Grinch. My chest expanded and my heart seemed to shake off its icy winter coat and let in the spring sunlight. I didn’t know what to do with the new sense of freedom I was having, but in that instant, the school looked brighter. I noticed the other kids talking and making movements. Before, I would have ignored it to the point of obsession.
    After lunch we walked into class and I felt peaceful. Mr. Mac smiled at the class, explaining how to get ready for the experiment. The sunlight shone in the windows and the air sparkled with dust and inspiration.
    For the first time, without feeling like I had betrayed my mom, I looked forward to something. Chemistry was my favorite class and not for the same reasons as all the other girls. Unfortunately for Mr. Mac, every girl in school had a crush on him.