The Trials of November

Chapter Three

The next day at school, Victoria found herself looking at the clock at least fifteen times each hour, just waiting for the school day to be over. However, that seemed to only drag the day on more. Before the last class, Victoria was at her locker. Rebecca came up and started talking to her, but Victoria really was not in the mood. She wanted only for her ditching friend to leave her alone so that she could keep daydreaming and avoid reality.
"Hey, Vic!" Rebecca said cheerfully. She always seemed to be super happy, even if she had no reason to be. In fact, her happiness nauseated Victoria.
Who had that much to be happy for? Or at least that is what Victoria constantly thought. She had never felt purely happy enough to be cheerful all of the time, and she certainly would not be that happy and shameless if Victoria had been the one to leave Rebecca at the coffee shop the night earlier. Victoria's parents were convinced that she was depressed, and they took every opportunity possible to try to make Victoria feel like she was an outsider. Rebecca's constant happiness also made Victoria feel like an outsider.
Victoria looked at her and then directed her attention back to her locker, suddenly uninterested in what Rebecca wanted. She did not feel like Rebecca deserved any of her attention considering how little of attention Rebecca gave to Victoria. However, Rebecca came and stood next to her, smiling as though there was nothing wrong at all. It was obvious that she was not going to leave until Victoria gave in and gave her the satisfaction of a conversation.
"Hey, ditcher." Victoria replied with a huff, referring to the situation the night earlier when Rebecca failed to show up for their study date. Not that Victoria could complain, of course. She saw the guy of her dreams the day earlier. She could not possibly be upset. Suddenly, her brain started floating back to him again. She was abruptly snapped out of her trance when Rebecca began to speak again. Victoria rolled her eyes.
"Oh yeah... about that..." Rebecca began, with a glance at the ceiling and a flip of her silky hair over her shoulder. "I am really sorry, Vic. Something... important... came up." She smiled at Victoria with her perfectly straight and perfectly white teeth. Rebecca always seemed to be ditching Victoria for the next best offer, which, coincidentally, was almost always a guy. Victoria had no patience for another painstaking conversation with her friend.
Usually Victoria had the patience for those kinds of things, but that day, she did not want to waste her time thinking about all of the fake relationships that Rebecca either has or has not taken part in, and she only wanted to go off into her dream land again and think of the coffee shop guy forever. Even thinking about him created a joy inside of Victoria that she had never known before. It was the strangest feeling that Victoria had ever experienced.
The last hour of the day seemed to drag on for so long that it was almost like she could feel herself aging right there in her English class. She brushed a lock of her blonde hair out of her face, and kept her eyes on the clock. She rolled her eyes at how slow the time seemed to be going. Ugh.
Once the final bell rang, Victoria leapt out of her seat and practically skipped through the hallways and down the street. The wind chilled her to her bones, but she didn't care, and it certainly did not slow her down.
Once she arrived at the small coffee shop, she ordered a hot chocolate and sat down, looking around eagerly.
He was not there yet, but she knew that the night was very young and there were infinite opportunities for the man to walk through the doors and back into her life, so she was not worried. Victoria took a sip of her drink and smiled.
There were many couples and groups of friends on dates or doing homework. There were several baristas bringing out coffee and clearing dirty dishes off of the empty tables. Everyone there seemed to be in their designated place. However, much to her dismay, she did not see the man that she had come to see. She decided that she would wait. At least an hour. She had to.
One hour passed. Then two. But no sign of the man she was looking for. She had retired her first cup of hot chocolate, and was nearly finished with her second when her mind started running wild. Where was he? Their interaction had apparently not meant as much to him as it did to her.
People came and went. Victoria just sat there, watching the people and the door, but her man did not come through it.
With every passing minute, her heart sank lower in her chest. Soon three hours had past and Victoria had given up hope. She finished her second hot chocolate and walked out the door into the cold November air. She wrapped her scarf around her face.
Victoria glanced desperately up and down the street, hoping to see him, but he was not there. She was devastated. On her slow, agonizing walk home, Victoria felt as though she was six hundred feet under the surface of Lake Michigan, being crushed by the weight of the water. Her feet dragged, and the chilly air soaked into her skin, causing an internal numbness.
She got home and was very relieved to see that her mother was out already. Victoria walked up her stairs and into her room, and she went right to bed, not even bothering to change out of her school clothes. She climbed into her bed and curled up into a little ball under her blankets, trying to fight back the tears. Victoria was crushed, and she did not understand why. She didn't even know the man. Why was she feeling such a huge desire to be next to him all of a sudden? She couldn't explain it, and she doubted that anyone else would be able to explain it either.
No scientist, mathematician, psychic, or philosopher would ever be able to explain all of the strong feelings she had for that complete stranger.
Victoria went to bed that night, feeling hopeless and lost. She knew that building up her hopes would result in the feeling she was experiencing, but she also knew that she put herself in that position because she didn't care. She thought that it would be an honor, a triumph even, to have her heart broken by that man.