Hunting the Fairy Tale

Chapter 57 - The Worst Stalkers Ever

Molly

Willow brushes the eraser traces from her paper and smiles happily, looking from me to Joe and back. I was pleasantly surprised when Joe decided to pull his drawing table next to ours, and we rearranged ourselves so that he and Willow now faced each other, with me between them, facing the windows. The perfect set-up for some companionable afternoon sketching during the last period of the day.

I'm not entirely sure what inspired Joe to join us. He's been talking to me a lot more since I joined them at the bench for lunch on Monday. It's almost as if being dragged there by Paisley and hand-fed by Tanner gave me some kind of stamp of approval. Joe and I used to talk to each other in class occasionally or when I ran into him visiting Ronan at his apartment, but I wouldn't have called us friends as such. We've always been comfortable in each other's company, though it just became more so these last couple of days.

It could, of course, also be because I talked with Paisley a lot more in the few classes we had together today, and I never realised before that they sit together in most classes they share and are clearly good friends.

Looking at Willow's smile, I'm once again struck by how wrong first impressions can be. Spending time with her in Design on Monday and yesterday in PE, and now again, I'm starting to really see her and I like her.

I still think she's a bit too tightly wound and overly proper and has clearly watched My Fair Lady one time too many. When she opens her mouth, I always expect her to say: 'The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain' in a high-class British way, and I am a bit disappointed when it doesn't happen.

But she is kind and gentle and can be quite feisty on occasion when it is required; I also suspect that she might hold the trophy in some sarcasm championships. She is very different in the sole company of girls. When they're being rude or bitchy, she speaks her mind clearly and concisely in a very impressive imitation of Nanny McPhee teaching naughty children to say please. 

It works like a charm; it causes even me to behave.

If you want to see a rather accurate rendition of an Armadillo in self-defence mode, you only have to bring an unknown boy into the conversation. Willow doesn't physically roll herself into a ball, but her whole personality does. She becomes very quiet, staring at them as if they're nasty apparitions that require some dissecting before she'll be able to decide how to deal with them. 

She clearly doesn't have a high opinion of boys, well, at least not until she gets to know them a little. She is treating Joe very differently from how she treats the other boys in our Design class. Joe has clearly passed the Willow test. I wonder what happened in her life for her to be so suspicious of all males.

"What do you think?" she asks, lifting her drawing in front of her chest. "Is it better now?"

"I-it looks really... g-great," Joe says, smiling too. I'm glad that he is starting to feel comfortable enough to talk to us spontaneously. When he first moved over, he just smiled and nodded a lot, but he is beginning to warm up more and more. He's never been a talker, and I doubt that it's something that will ever change, and that is just fine. If everybody on this planet were talkers, nobody would ever get a word in. The world would be a very noisy place, and nobody would be listening.

The boy has a habit of fading in and out of existence, often disappearing into a world only he knows about, but when he decides to surface, he is quite witty and interesting to talk to.