I'm Sort of Okay with This

Three: Abby

I walked home from school after the tutoring session, past rows of pine trees layered in moss and faded signs, tarp-covered cars in driveways. The pavement was damp from a rainfall that had ended minutes before, dew dripping from the tree branches and leaking into the bottomless storm drains. The cool, crisp scent of the water wafted through the air.

I didn't have a car yet, even though I could drive. I didn't mind walking, though. It gave me time for contemplation. I relished getting lost in my thoughts and the music I listened to.

I slipped my hands into my pockets and thought about the awkwardness of my encounter with Ian. I was still bewildered by my own decision to tutor him. He hadn't even begun writing his essay, and we were only about halfway through the book. I winced.

"Justin Timberlake kind of guy," I muttered to myself. I turned up the Mitski song flowing through my headphones. "What the fuck does that even mean?"

I strolled until my surroundings grew more and more familiar.

My house was located in the depths of suburbia, in a cup-de-sac, two-stories high with a gable roof and a small patch of lawn. My parents hadn't returned home from work yet. The house was still and desolate, the only audible sound being the creak of the door and my footsteps reverberating off the walls. I hung my backpack on the coat rack by the door and did my homework at the dining table before slipping into my bedroom.

I strode to the record player on my nightstand and stepped over the clusters of unwashed clothes littering my floor. I immediately put on one of my father's old Pink Floyd records, then took my waning pot stash from underneath my bed. I cracked open my window so the smell of the smoke would filter out of the bedroom.

The empty, dull feelings from earlier had returned, or rather intensified, and I needed something to distract me from them.

I sat on the floor and rolled a joint and lit it with my white lighter, smoking it until everything was numb and moved in a sluggish manner.

Music and pot had become the highlights of my existence. It was depressing in a way. I looked forward to little else. I stared at the ceiling. The psychedelic, distorted music crawled up the poster-smothered walls as I basked in the high.

I couldn't help but think about Ian when the pot finally began to wear off. I felt a smidge of guilt whenever I thought of the girls I'd overheard in the bathroom, talking about his girlfriend's supposed cheating. A tiny part of me wanted to tell him, but I knew it was none of my business. It wasn't like we knew each other well. We weren't friends, and it wasn't my duty to tell him.

His persona differed vastly from how I initially perceived him. He wasn't exactly a genius or anything, but he wasn't as arrogant and self-involved as I thought he was. I revered the way he sat patiently while I read to him, cracking his knuckles in his lap. It seemed out of character, compared to how he acted during school. He seemed talkative and rambunctious, play-fighting with his friends in the hallways.

It was curious. I was curious. Deeply, profoundly curious.
***
The list of things I hated was freakishly long.

Sports, action movies, and hot weather were among them. I also despised carbonated water, large crowds, mustard, small children, and guys with mullets, to name a few. I could've written a thousand page novel listing all the things I hated, but I wasn't really in the mood and it would take about ten years.

If I had to choose one thing I loathed more than anything else though, it was physical education.

I found it morally reprehensible to subject young people to the humiliation of being forced to do stupid stretches and play childish games. I was also certain my gym teacher was a sadist. He got some kind of depraved satisfaction from putting all the geeky, slow kids on one team and the athletes on the other, then watching them tear us to shreds.