A Certain Romance || Ashton Irwin

Trifecta and Trouble

Senior year. That awkward stage in our lives where we weren't completely adults, but we weren't completely children either. We were expected to have social lives, but also make it home before curfew. We were expected to have fun, but only if it was the kind of fun our parents approved of. So much should not be expected out of people who had only had 17 to 18 years of life experience. It was contradicting and maddening.

I had observed and learned all of this with only 2 months of 12th grade under my belt. Now, you were probably scoffing and snorting and screaming at me that 2 months wasn't that bad! I could totally understand your anger. But try to see things from the perspective of a 17-year-old girl who has had the sad pleasure of going to Catholic school her entire life. That was me, I was the 17-year-old girl who goes by the name of Sage Sirois, who was sick of restrictions that her family and school had put on her.

There was my sidekick Michael, we hadbeen friends since the first grade where we bonded over the fact that we hated our school uniforms.

While most girls were going through their icky boy phase, I was fascinated by how I could convince Michael to do whatever I said. If I wanted his peanut butter crackers for snack, he'd hand them over. If I wanted to watch a certain cartoon, Michael would watch it with me. Things were like this until the 8th grade, when Luke lingered his way into our dynamic duo, thus turning it into The Trifecta. I could say that it had been that way since then, but that made us sound like anti-social, over-angsty teens who spent their weekends doing Satanic rituals. We had a few friends outside of our trio, but we weren't close with them. It felt like a sin to be close to people that weren't Michael or Luke.

I took my usual seat in the cafeteria for lunch, poking at the horrid "pizza" sitting on my tray. To everyone's surprise the cafeteria was serving pizza for lunch today, meaning everyone in the school was waiting in line to get a slice.

Once upon a time all the Catholic school principal's in the district dictated any food that contained grease that was consumed by a student was allowing the devil to enter their body. I didn't understand the logic behind that either.

Luke slid into the spot next to me, his tray sounding his arrival, "Michael will be over here gossiping in 3...2..."

"Did you guys see the new douche lord?" Luke's marvelous clockwork never failed when it came to Michael and his gossip. Michael ignored the glares from students and a few faculty members that were all appalled by his new lilac locks. We technically weren't supposed to do any sort of dyeing to our hair (it was in the student handbook), but Michael could not be tamed.

Michael was that person who "accidentally" knew everything about everyone in the school and he could not keep everything contained, so Luke and I were typically the people who would hear about it. Sometimes he would even force his own mother to listen to the terrible fucked up things that people did. Poor Karen.

Sophomore year Michael invited Luke and I over for pizza after school one Friday. He invited his mom to sit with us while he told us the taboo story of how the head of the chemistry department, Mr. Preston, was caught getting a blowjob from the self-acclaimed Virgin Mary, Cassie Wolfe, by the painted portrait of Abraham Lincoln in the history wing. Not even Honest Abe could admit that Cassie would do something like that. Ultimately, Karen was upset that Michael would tell her a story like that, saying other people's sexual rendezvous's were not Michael's business. Michael responded with some statement that our parents were signing their kids to become these "kinky motherfuckers" by enrolling us to Catholic school. I couldn't confirm nor deny the truth behind that statement.

"Who?" I forced a chuckle.

"I think his name is Aaron." Michael shrugged, opening his chocolate pudding.

"What makes Aaron such a douche lord?" Luke asked with a mouth full of pizza he probably waited 15 minutes in line for.

"Oh," Michael perked up. "There he is!" Michael nodded his head towards the entrance of the cafeteria.

So Luke and I turned, seeing a curly-haired boy walking next to the guy most people here thought was a God, Calum Hood.

"So...he hangs out with Calum, what's the big deal?" Luke was already annoyed with Michael's intense hatred for Calum. If there was anyone Michael could bad mouth without feeling awful about, it was Calum and anyone who was apart of Calum's inner circle. There wasn't a particular reason Michael hated Calum or there wasn't one to my knowledge because he hadn't been very vocal about his reasoning for the hatred as he was with his comments towards Calum. I've assumed that Michael disliked Calum because Calum was athletic while Michael was the president of the video game club (all holy video games of course).

"Right," Michael scoffed. "You sucked Calum's dick for boneless buffalo wings."

"I helped him with his English paper and he repaid me with buffalo wings." Luke defended. I nodded to confirm his argument because I was there in the library when the whole thing went down. I was only there because Luke was "too nervous" to be around Calum by himself and because he didn't want to walk home alone after school. The whole thing resulted in me walking home alone because Calum took Luke out for buffalo wings. That was where being a nice friend got me.

"Shut up, Luke." Michael snatched Luke's slice of pizza, claiming it as his own now.

Continuing my streak of being a nice friend, I gave Luke my pizza, deciding to live off the bowl of fruit I got in the lunch line in case I didn't want the pizza.

"Don't be nice to him, Sage!" Michael scowled.

"You're sitting at our table." Calum interrupted. His posse scattered behind him, all giving us a glare.

Michael lifted his lunch tray, looked under the table, lifted my backpack from the table, looked at the spot he was sitting on, and looked under Luke's water bottle, "Sorry, I don't see 'ass wipes' written anywhere on this table."

I was the first to sit down, so it was my fault that we were sitting at the football table instead of any other table in the cafeteria. To me, it was just a table. It wasn't a piece of land that could be traded or bought. I didn't think it matter were we sat.

Calum broke out into laughter, cuing his crew (everyone but the new kid) to laugh as well. Calum's abrupt calmness silenced his circle.

"There are, like, five other empty tables." Michael pointed.

"We'll just join you." Calum grunted, sitting beside Michael.

All the other pigs followed suit. There were 10 of us crammed at a table made for 6. I bumped my head on Luke's shoulder as one of Calum's friends pushed the new kid closer to me. I never imagined my cause of death would be smothered by boys during lunch.

"Sorry for invading your personal space." Aaron The New Kid murmured. "I'm Ashton."

"Oh," I snorted. "It's fine, Ashton." I emphasized his name towards Michael. "I'm Sage."

"It's nice to meet you." Ashton nodded. "So is this, like, an everyday for you guys?"

"What? Being squashed?" Pft. I asked rhetorically. "It's not lunchtime unless we're being smothered to death by a few football players." I felt a sharp pain bolt through my toes from none other than Michael who was sending me daggers from across the table. I took notice that him and Luke were already gathering their belongings to contribute to our second lunch activity: walking the open halls until the bell rang for the next class to start.

"Well," I stood, smoothing out my black skirt and slipping my backpack on. "It was nice meeting you, Aaron!" My voice lost its strength as I was yanked away from the table.

Lets take a moment to imagine Luke, Michael, and Calum being American and Calum playing American football. Because that'll basically be this fic.