❝she was the girl, who bit the horizon, who peeled the stars from the sky and put them on her tongue, the girl who was hungry for the universe, who craved magic and saw the broken boy for who he truly was- a broken boy.❞
Beca...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Chapter 43
Before Things Went To Hell
Ellis
"I still can't believe you decided to go to New York," I was rambling as Jem pried off some ridiculously smelly socks from his duffel bag and sniffed it up to his nose, grimaced and stuffed it back into his bag.
"Yeah, well, I bet it's time to tell Mommy Dearest what a bitch she's been."
I couldn't stop my cheeks from stretching into a smile and admired him in his uniform from the corner of my eye. Jem in his football uniform is so pictured postcard with his white and red padded form and his all-American good looks. Suddenly, he appeared like such a stereotype. The good-looking white boy, with his low David Bowie hairstyle, his helmet by his side, bearing the patriotic Americana shades. If you take a picture now and add some filters, Jem looked like he was straight out of a 50s film.
"Seriously?"
There was that childlike laugh, highlighting the asymmetry of his four front incisors. "Have I always been serious?"
I rolled my eyes. "Anyway," I stood from the bench. The locker room was noticeably empty as Jem was actually early, arriving an hour before his game started, so the rows of benches that were usually mired with duffel bags and sweaty gym clothes were clear. "I got to go."
"Why don't you stay?"
I stopped in my tracks, halfway out the door, and turned, facing Jem. I was kind of weirded out he had asked me that. He had never asked me to stay to watch him play football. I could tell he had never asked a girl to stay to watch him play football. It felt like he was giving me a nuclear reactor and was asking me whether I would like to diffuse it or set it ablaze. "Sure."
Despite not knowing shit about football, I proceeded to the bleachers where the school was already filling in the seats. I had to zig-zagged the place in order to avoid being trampled under everybody's snow boots as they snuggled in on the cold metal bleachers by the school field, walking across the slippery and wet grass, which sprayed jarringly cold water onto the bare skin of our unprotected ankles. I had to grab my extra sweater, which I kept for emergency purposes in my locker, and went back out.
I spotted Tabitha and her cheerleaders decked out in the school's colours- gold and green- as I exited back into the school's yard. I didn't understand how they weren't freezing in those tiny tops and skirts, especially since they didn't look like they had enough meat to insulate their bodies. Astrid's dyed brunette hair distinguished her from the rest of the blonde girls that were following Tabitha's lead in stretches, bending down by the sidelines, warming up. Astrid's dark hair contoured her in highlights that I never see her in before, making her seem alien in that cheerleading outfit of her. Back in her natural blonde hair, Astrid was perky and basic but beautifully so. Now with that dark hair of hers, she seemed more hipster, laidback and the definition of cool, as if she should be smoking cigars by the alternative music store and picking out obscure records from bands in the 1970s that nobody ever heard about.
