"Who is that boy?" I asked, poking at my sandwich with a fork that was left out on our lunch table.
Brooke shifted her weight away from her boyfriend Luke and turned around, looking at the boy I was referring to. He didn't sit with anyone else, or even acknowledge anyone around him. He wasn't eating anything either, just simply staring at the other students surrounding him.
It was the same boy from the bus stop. I would think that after 3 weeks of waiting at the same bus stop as him I would have gotten his name, but we never did more than exchange a few words with each other. I wanted to know his name, and maybe even be his friend. The conversations we had with each other were always interesting, just think of how interesting they might be if I actually knew a little more about this guy. I was so intrigued by him, I wanted to get to know him. And I wasn't used to not getting what I wanted.
"Oh, him. He's in my government class." Brooke nodded.
"I don't think I've ever seen him until just a couple weeks ago." I craned my neck around Luke and Brooke to get a better look at the boy. I don't think he's even moved in the past five minutes.
"Oh, I know him." Luke spoke up, putting his arm around Brooke's waist again and pulling her into him once again. "That's Ashton Irwin."
"What's his deal? He takes the bus with me every morning." I kept staring at him.
"He doesn't really talk to anyone." Brooke shrugged.
"Why? Don't people try to talk to him?" I asked. Despite how annoying and mysterious this boy was, he was insanely attractive. I was surprised that he didn't have more friends, or at least a couple. He seemed like the type that would enjoy girls throwing themselves at him.
"I've never even heard him speak. I didn't even know his name until just now." Brooke sighed. She was notorious for things like this, so I wasn't surprised that she didn't know Ashton's name. It was a miracle that Brooke even remembered her own name on a daily basis. I don't even know how we were friends, we're total opposites.
"He's sort of a loner now, after what happened last summer." Luke answered, running his fingers through his blonde hair.
"What happened last summer?" Brooke asked. Luke looked at her sympathetically and then turned around again to catch a glimpse at Ashton.
"His girlfriend was killed in a car accident." Luke spoke softly, licking his lips.
"Who's girlfriend?" Another person joined our conversation, Calum I think his name was. He was good friends with Luke and only sat with us because of him. I didn't mind Calum, or anyone else who sat at our table for that matter. I was a people person, I always had been.
"Ashton Irwin's." Luke said to him. Calum perked up at the mention of Ashton's name and turned around to stare at him. Hopefully Ashton hadn't realized that noticed all of us staring, I would hate to have him confront us about something as embarrassing as this.
"He's in my gym class! He always walks the mile and smokes instead of running it with everyone else. The teacher yells at him, like, all the time." Calum chuckled.
"He smokes?" Brooke questioned and Calum and I nodded. "That's hot."
"Hey." Luke whined and nudged Brooke's shoulder with his own.
"Sorry." She shrugged, but eventually turned to Luke and kissed him quickly on the lips.
Brooke and Luke had been dating for almost three years, which is a big deal for Brooke. Before Luke she hopped around from guy to guy, not caring who she dated. Finally Luke asked her out in our Sophomore year by serenading her in her backyard or something and broke her continuous steak with guys. I was happy for them, really. But I hated when they started kissing in front of me. It was just a constant reminder that I was always alone.
"That's disgusting." Calum muttered, locking eyes with me.
"Anyway, what about his girlfriend?" Brooke giggled, noticing that Calum and I were disgusted by her and Luke's affection for each other.
"She was in my health class Freshman year! What was her name... Last name Clifford, right? They dated for, like, three years." Calum asked, his dark eyes focusing in on mine as if they held the answer to his question.
"Right." Luke nodded.
"Oh, her! I remember hearing about the accident! It happened this past summer, over by that gas station." Brooke said as she stole a bite of Luke's slice of pizza.
"It was awful." Luke sighed, his head now resting in his hands.
"What, did you see it?" Calum asked. He moved his lunch tray closer to us thus permanently joining us for lunch. Usually he sat at the other end of the table with a few other boys that Luke and Calum knew, away from us.
"What? No, it happened at like four in the morning, what would I be doing out at four in the morning? I saw a picture in the paper." Luke's head shot up.
"Since when do you read the paper?" Brooke scoffed.
"Does it matter?" Luke snapped at her, then quickly apologized.
"So that's why he's so secluded?" I asked. "Because his girlfriend died?"
I thought that there was something Ashton was hiding, but I'd never imagined that something as awful as his girlfriend dying had happened. I didn't blame him for not wanting to associate himself with anyone, if anything like that happened to me I might want to distance myself from everyone else too.
"He doesn't want anything to do with anyone anymore." Calum shrugged. "I heard that he was driving the car when she got killed."
"I heard that her boyfriend had something to do with it too, I just never knew it was him." Brooke added, flicking a piece of her straight red hair off her shoulder.
"Someone told me she was pregnant with his child." Luke added, still looking more upset than he should have been.
"Did I miss something?" I questioned. "I've never heard anything about this."
I'm sure that if a girl from our school died over the summer they would have made an announcement about it, right? I would have heard something about it, I would have known something about this boy that appeared at my bus stop three weeks ago. I didn't even know who this girl was!
"The school didn't want to make a big deal about it, since half of them think Ashton was the one responsible for the crash." Calum said.
"They didn't even have a moment of silence for her, they didn't make any announcements? Nothing?" I asked, my focus still on Ashton across the lunchroom. I had so many questions that couldn't be answered by anyone but him.
"I only heard about it from some girl in my creative writing class at the beginning of the year, I don't think the school did anything." Brooke shook her head. She rested her head on Luke's shoulder, who was still staring straight ahead like we weren't even there.
"This is too weird." I chuckled under my breath. I came to lunch with one question in mind, now I felt like I was getting mixed up in some whole big mystery. This wasn't Scooby Doo, this was high school.
"You should try to talk to him." Brooke suggested.
"I doubt he'll want to open up to me. He's like a robot, he wouldn't even tell me his name." I rolled my eyes.
"Well, I would be pretty torn up inside if I was responsible for someone's death." Calum shrugged.
"He seems so...tough." I sighed. "It's strange to think about him being so upset on the inside."
Luke looked up at us, turning around one last time to look at Ashton. There was something going on between the two of them that I wasn't quite getting yet, and I wasn't sure I ever would.
"Some people are just good at hiding things."
-
LUKE YOU'RE SO SKETCHY.
Anyway yeah so Ashton has a dead girlfriend who is somehow linked to Michael¿ Hmm. (He'll come into the story a little later)
I hope you all like this one!
