Apple Blossoms

Just Like Old Times

Just Like Old Times

The next morning, I made sure to take as much time as I could to get ready so I wouldn’t have to see my father. Just because he didn’t have time to lecture me on the dangers of having ‘gone to jail’ on my permanent record yesterday didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to let the opportunity go today. At 7:38, I ran out of my room yelling, “Sorry Mom woke up late. No time for breakfast,” and scurried straight out the door. There was no doubt in my mind that Dad had told Mom about the entire incident yesterday. And just because Mom wouldn’t give me as long of a lecture as Dad would didn’t mean that she wouldn’t ask a million questions about why I had done such a thing. And quite frankly, I wasn’t in the mood to waste my breath when they weren’t going to listen to me in the first place.

When I got to school, the first person I saw was Ethan. I started walking in his direction so that I could talk to him about how we were never going to be able to finish the project in time, when Collin stopped me.

He stood right in front of me with a huge grin on his face. “Hey, Noelle,” he said.

It took me a few seconds to reply because I was trying to figure out why he was acting so oddly. “Hey, Collin,” I finally replied back.

“So, for Saturday, I was thinking we could go—,” he started talking really fast.

I interrupted him in the middle and said, “Oh, Collin, I’m really sorry about Saturday but it’s just not going to work out.”

“What?” he said with that silly grin still plastered on his face. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Uh, kidding?”

“Yeah, you know. You’re just pulling my leg aren’t you? Just messing with me. You know, you always were a joker, Noelle.”

“What?” I said in disbelief. Why was he acting so weird around me? “No. I’m not ‘pulling your leg’ or ‘messing with you’,” I said as I made quotations with my hands. “I was grounded last night for two weeks. Sorry.”

His face morphed into one of anger.

“What?” he exclaimed. “So you’re standing me up?”

I stared at him in utter confusion. Standing me up? “What are you talking about? I’m not standing you up! First of all, that only happens on dates and Saturday was not a date. Second of all, I’m grounded! It’s not my fault that we can’t hang out.”

He angry look quickly changed to shame. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to burst out at you. Well, at least we can hang out this summer.” He quickly walked away and I had a strange feeling that he wasn’t done yelling at me. But he was doing a good job of hiding it for which I applauded him. He had anger issues. He would make the biggest deal out of something and just didn’t know how to control his emotions.

“What just happened?” I said after a few moments of trying to process the conversation I had just had. It had made no sense to me. What was wrong with Collin? He seemed to be acting really odd and I was hoping that it wasn’t just around me. 

Shaking off what had just happened, I kept walking towards Ethan. He was standing at his locker pulling out some books when I tapped his shoulder.

He spun around quickly dropping his biology textbook. I bent down to pick it up.

“Hey, Noelle! Oh, thanks,” he said I as I handed the book back to him.

“Wow, I scared you? The kid who’s at least 10 inches taller than me? That’s just sad, Ethan.”