Our Little Secret

2. Encounters And The Jerk Named Jaxon

As mentioned previously I am a giant band nerd. Specifically, I am a clarinetist. I originally wanted to play the saxophone but my director gave me a clarinet and said that I could switch to sax later on if I wanted to. But I ended up getting hooked on the clarinet. The band room is one of the places that seriously fueled my admiration for Jaxon.

He was a trumpet. A fantastic trumpet at that. But he was an awful student. I think even Mr. Shults, our band director was disappointed in him. Honestly, anybody with half a brain or ounce of maturity knew that Jaxon had more potential than what he showed. The guy didn't take his instrument home once to practice. If you don't practice your instrument, you don't get better. That's the end of the story. I thought that he could be the best player in the entire band if he would just try even a little bit harder. The thing was that I never thought that would happen. As stated before he was a slacker and a loser without a life.

The thing is I don't think it's quite possible for you to understand just how awful Jaxon was unless if I give you some examples of the stunts he pulled my eighth-grade year. Ugh, he was such a jerk.

One of the first instances I can recall was a day when our director was gone for some reason. He wasn't gone often but when he was it annoyed everybody. Or at least everybody who likes peace and order.

I walked into the band room that day with everything in an awful ruckus. Chairs were flying all over the place, guys were roughhousing, and girls were doing their hair. I needed to get my 'work' from the substitute. It was just a stupid instrument word search and might I mention the same word search that he gave us every single year. At first, I couldn't find whoever was watching us. Just another way I knew that the substitutes didn't care what we did as long as it wasn't murdering each other. It turned out she had stepped out of the room for a second and our word searches were in his office.

No problem right? All I had to do was walk into the office and grab the word search and do it.

No many problems! Jaxon Harris existed- don't be so stupid of course it wasn't easy. He was standing in the middle of the doorway like a heathen. He couldn't just step into the office at all. But I had a crush on him so I had to be polite.

"Excuse me," I said as kindly as possible to the boy. He kept doing whatever the heck it was that he was doing. I rolled my eyes in slight annoyance. But at the same time, I thought his lack of focus was kind of adorable. So I decided to be kind again.

"Excuse me, Jaxon!" I yelled. He still didn't even budge. My annoyance began to outweigh his cuteness. I even tapped on his shoulder a few times and he kept talking or whatever.

"OH MY GOD JAXON, MOVE IT!" I shouted angrily. Nothing. Zilch. Zero. No reaction whatsoever. I didn't get mad very often. At least not angry enough to start a conflict with other people. But he was making me angry. Ignoring people who have things to do is not very kind at all.

I was about to scream and go into a rage but before I could start Brandon started yelling.

"Hey Jaxon, come catch this!" he shouted throwing a green football through the middle of the band room-of all places to throw a football. Nonetheless, Jaxon responded immediately and turned to walk towards Brandon and catch the ball. Which might I add he, surprisingly, caught perfectly.

To just about anybody else it wouldn't have been too big a deal but it made my blood boil. I hated it when people acted like I didn't exist. I mean it's one thing when those emo kids did it. But they didn't act like anyone existed which made it much more okay than Jaxon ignoring me. Especially when I was trying to get to my busy work!

Another instance occurred around two months later but this time not in the band room. This situation just happened to be when I was on the bus route to school. By some weird coincidence, we rode the same bus and on that particular day I had a strange feeling

It was Jaxon. I could feel him glaring at the back of my head. It really freaked me out so I turned around just a little so I could be sure that's what was happening. He averted his eyes away the second he saw me and immediately the strange feeling went away. He literally glared at me for the rest of the week. I'm not going to lie. I was, to say the least, disturbed.

The final instance I can recall was the day I wore my favorite skirt. I'll admit it wasn't the longest skirt but it wasn't short it either. Most of my skirts ended right below my knee but this one ended right above it. So it was still school appropriate. I even checked with my Mom and she was cool with it and trust me if it was too short she would have told me.

I kind of tripped in the hall and dropped all my stuff and had to pick it all up. Jaxon and his friends were standing right there and didn't even offer to help me! But as soon as I bent down he started murmuring stuff to his dude friends. It made me so angry. So I picked up my stuff and stormed off to the bathroom. But Morgan noticed quickly.

"What a jerk!" Morgan, as expected, exclaimed loud enough to where he could hear from all the way across the hallway.

"Yeah, I know," I said rolling my eyes.

"Did ya notice how he was actin' so self-centered," she said smacking on her gum.

"If I hadn't noticed I'd be a lot less mad right now," I told her.

"I don't understand how you could have a crush on a guy like that," she said since she figured it out a few months earlier.

"The thing is he's super hot and smart. I just can't help myself." I told her with a heavy sigh.

"He might be hot. Actually, he isn't very hot but whatever. He might be smart but that doesn't change what an awful personality he has." she said referring to recent events.

"That's the thing though. He has a great and goofy personality but only acts like a jerk towards me and me alone," I said.

"Ugh, I don't get his problem. But I bet Miranda told him about the fact you have a giant crush on him as she did with your last crush," Morgan said leaning on the bathroom walls.

"The last time that happened I ended up embarrassing my self so bad," I said cringing at those stupid seventh grade memories. Truthfully, I hated middle school.

"Let's get to class before we're late," I groaned.

"Oh, we're already late." Morgan winked and that's all that my eight grade year had in store for me. I thought that was the end of the Emily and Jaxon story. But, I was wrong.