The Dating Game

Chapter Twenty-Five

Justin

During the week before the Christmas Fair, Juliet had been as reserved as ever.

My first proposition was that it must have been our statuses at school with myself being high up in the hierarchy – despite wanting some sort of modification to it – whilst she was lower down. But that didn't bother me at all and she hasn't been worrying about it recently. So then it had to be something else.

My second guess was that something had happened at home and it was affecting her emotionally and she was bottling it all up. If she maintains the bottling up, she'll explode one day or she might be ill if she's too preoccupied with frantically worrying about it and letting it stay in her mind.

But then there was my third suggestion was that Rachel and her band of baboons had said something to her and it was evidently about me. On second thought, I probably shouldn't call them that, but their group wasn't the brightest when you put them together. But needless to say, this seemed like the most reasonable occurrence so I set forth and made it my objective to find out what she had said to Juliet.

Just as I was walking down the corridor, Michelle and Beth stopped me from emerging from either sides of me. Ceasing wandering aimlessly around school in search for either Rachel or Juliet (although, I hoped more it would be the latter), I stared at them quizzically.

"It's Juliet's birthday soon," Beth declared unpredictably. "But she'll kill us if you tell her we told you that, alright?"

"When?" I was intent upon trying to fathom as much of Juliet as I could before having to query her and find these things out for myself for future references, too. Will there be a future reference? I'd like to think so, yes. But this still was a distraction from my mission.

"December twenty-eight," Michelle interjected, ruffling with her hair, "just a week after the Christmas Fair."

"My lips are sealed." To enhance the mere figure of speech, I did the mundane performance of swiping my lips with my forefinger and thumb, and pretending to throw away the imaginary key to the empty space next to me.

I had already been down to the bank in town and got myself a new card. They made a special request for me and I managed to get my card there and then rather than receiving it in the mail and let Mom cut it up again. They gave me to me and told me all I had to do to activate it was start using it again. I withdrew some money and kept that for safe keeping at home in my room exclusively for the Christmas Fair with Juliet.

"By the way," I mused aloud, "has Juliet seemed a bit off recently?" This was a long shot, but I was equipped to bite the bullet.

Michelle turned to Beth and in the silence both were speculating whether to answer candidly or not. In the end, Michelle settled on, "She's been more quiet than usual. But Juliet is naturally quiet anyway. We've asked her if anything was wrong though and she said there wasn't."

I nodded. "Okay, thanks, girls. But I need to go. I'll see if I can find Juliet and see if there's something bothering her. I also take it I presume I'll be seeing you two again tomorrow for the Christmas Fair?" Tomorrow was Friday, December twenty-first.

Michelle and Beth grinned. "Of course. Will Ryan and Chaz be there too?"

"With you two ladies? Undoubtedly. Anyway, thank you for this. I'll see you two then."

"Bye," they both called out from behind me as I went scurrying up the corridor.

Mercifully, it was only just the beginning of lunch time and I had already departed from my friends to begin the voyage around school. It wasn't long until I came across the toilets and found Rachel hogging the entrance with her followers she deems "friends". Marching up to them, Rachel turned her eyes to me and looked up. A smile spread across her lipstick-tarnished lips.