His Saving Grace

Chapter Twenty

Have you ever gotten the feeling like you wanted to eat, but you couldn't bring yorself to do so? Yeah,  my analogy is weird, but that's what it was like. Kissing Garrett was definitely something else, but in a way it was like that; I wanted to kiss him but I couldn't because it felt so wrong and so right at the same time.

Am I even making any sense here?

It had been a week since the kiss. I wasn't so sure who was kissing who and I didn't exactly know what was happenning in those mere moments of my life, but as awkward and alien as it sounds coming from my mouth, it was nice. Or pleasurable. Or probably wonderful. How about delightful? 

I shrugged off the thought as I flipped through the photocopied music sheets of piano pieces that Bianca and I had gathered from the music room that we were planning to turn into a backdrop. The anniversary program was two weeks away and I wanted to get a headstart on things, so I asked Bianca if we could stay behind for two hours everyday at school so we could work on our booth. She didn't seem to mind.

Kennedy had gleefully suggested that they play at our school since I was in charge of the music booth, though I highly doubted that our very strict principal would permit that. But it was worth asking, hence I tried my best to be the good officer that I was supposed to be so that Mr. Shields, our principal, would maybe grant me one wish in exchange for my efforts.

In short, I needed to be a teacher's pet.

"Hey, Bianca, could you hand me that?" I asked, pointing at the pair of scissors that were sitting on a stack of music books beside Bianca. She glanced at me and reluctantly handed me the scissors, her lips pursed shut. For the past few days I'd done practically everything I could to start a decent conversation with her, but none of them proved effective, to my dismay.

"Thanks," I said. She nodded at me, and then got back to applying glue on the music sheets that we were going to stick on the backdrop of our booth. I'd gotten used to the silence that was always in the air whenever we were togther, and it stopped bothering me. If Bianca didn't want to talk, I was fine with that. Well, not really, but what else could I do?

My phone started ringing, the sound echoing in the empty gymnasium. Bianca gave me a skeptical look but said nothing as I searched for my phone in my backpack.

"Hello?" I said, sandwiching the phone in between my ear and my shoulder. 

"Hi Katie," John said, his voice as raspy as ever. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," I said, carefully cutting out a big letter "U" from a sheet of colored cartolina. "Still here at school, as always. You?"

"I'm good," he said. I could hear him eating something crunchy. My stomach started to grumble. I hadn't eaten since breakfast.

"Great," I said, mentally cursing as I tipped over the glue bottle that was sitting on the edge of the work table. "How are the boys?"

"They're fine, too," John said casually. I could hear people shouting and cheering in the background, and I presumed that they were either playing World of Warcraft, Black Ops, or watching another basketball game. "They wanted to talk to you, actually. Here's--"

"HI KATIEEEE!" Pat screeched into the phone. Flinching, I held the phone away from my ears. 

I grinned. "Rat Boy! How are you?" I said, laughing.

"This isn't Rat Boy, this is Patrick," he said, and I could practically hear him frowning from the other end of the line.

"Okay, hello, Patrick."

"This isn't Patrick, this is Michael!" he screeched. I heard them shush Pat from the other end of the line. Pat chuckled. "Okay, Kennedy's turn."

"Katie!" Kennedy said. "How are you?"