Louder than Words | I'm Not Okay with This Fanfiction

The Longest Day...and the the worst(part one)

Luke let Phoebe take the day off so after school, the rest of the day was, once again, dedicated to hanging out with Stanley. She sat in the bowling alley as he almost finished his shift working at the bowling shoe stand. 

"Have you ever bowled before?", he asked her.

"Only once", she signed.

"Well, maybe I can teach you sometime"

"I might suck at it"

"Come on, I'd highly doubt it", he chuckled.

"Well, you obviously haven't seen me use my arm to roll a ball like a spastic robot"

"Trust me, I've seen plenty of spastic robots around here"

Phoebe chuckled. She continued to watch him spray and organize the bowling shoes. Now is your chance. Ask him, she thought. She fiddled with her golden sun necklace as the thought of asking Stanley to homecoming continue to linger through her mind until it threatened to slip out of her mouth. Before she could say anything, Syd quickly walked over to the desk.

"Hey, Syd", she greeted her.

"Hey", she greeted back before turning to Stan. "I need to borrow your car. Not for long, just like an hour"

"Are you kidding? My dad would kill me. He doesn't even know that I drive that piece of shit around", he slightly laughed. From the expression on Syd's face, Phoebe could tell that it might've been something urgent. "Do you even have a license?"

"Of course I do"

It was obvious that she was lying. "Ok, let me see it", he said.

"You know what, forget it", Syd mumbled before she walked away. Stanley quickly rushed over to her before she could make it to the door. "Wait, wait, wait! It's fine, totally fine. I've got this, but I'm driving", he said to her. He told his boss Gladys that he was getting off, but she was asleep in a chair. 

~~~~~~~~~

Phoebe sat comfortably in the back seat while Syd rode in the front. From reading Stanley's lips and body language, she knew that he was talking about the old tower that they drove past. He talking about how his great-great-great-great grandfather was one of the hundred men that built the tower. Phoebe would always come across that tower and even heard spooky myths about it as a kid, which she grew to not believe. "Now that I think about it, every Barber male tends to be a shithead, so I guess that it's up to me to redeem the family name", he said. Even though she never met any of the other members of Stanley's family, she was sure that he was more decent than them, especially compared to his dad. She had never seen his mother, but according to Stanley, she was on a business trip in Santa Monica. "I've never met your dad, like ever", Syd said.

"He drives an eighteenth driver like twenty-eight days a month. My life is better when he's not around", said Stanley. "I wish he'd stay gone, you know?". Than, he paused, realizing what he just said might've been insensitive to Syd since she lost her dad that spring. "I-I didn't mean-", he began.

"It doesn't bother me", mumbled Syd, cutting him off.

They made a stop at a vacant lot where a man was working on a car. When Stanley got out of the car, he took a small bag of weed out of his pocket and handed it to him before getting back in the car. He did mention before that he had clients, but she had never seen him actually sell the weed to them. Syd didn't know about it and she knew him longer than Phoebe had. "So are you like a drug dealer or something?", Syd chortled as they continued to drive.

 "Let's just say have clients", he glanced at her. 

"How many?"

"Four, technically one's my cousin"

Syd took out her notebook, wrote in it, and held it up to Phoebe. "Did you know anything about this?", she wrote. Phoebe nodded with a grin. 

Stanley, Syd, and Phoebe arrived at the grocery store and shopped for the groceries that were needed by Syd's mother. Phoebe even helped give some suggestions. Then, they placed the items on the counter and the cashier scanned each of them. "It's going to be sixty-seven, ninety-nine", the cashier said. For a moment, Syd froze like a deer in headlights. "Could you ring it up again? I think you over charged me", she said.

"Which idiom hun?"

"All of them"

"Yeah, it's going to be the same. Are you gonna pay or what?"

The cashier was clearly becoming annoyed at this point. "Do you want me to spot you?", asked Stanley.

"No, Stan, I'll just put it all back. It's fine", Syd replied, quickly grabbing the items and walking away. Stanley and Phoebe were left standing in awkward silence at the cash register. "Stanley Barber, nice to meet you", Stanley made eye contact with the cashier and shook her hand. Phoebe also gave a small smile to her. At one point, she started to sway her body side to side until she found her hand swiftly brushing against Stanley's. She quickly moved it away and tried to hide her blushing. He looked back and smiled. She managed to looked back and smile back. She fully caught his attention and made eye contact. "Stanley, I was wondering if maybe you want to-", she was cut off by the sudden loud sound of items falling to the floor(which she sensed from her cochlear implants). 

She turned around and both her and Stanley slowly made their way to the aisle from where the sound was coming from. Tons of items, including cans and jars, covered the entire aisle floor as if a tornado happened. Syd stood all the way at the end with a shocked and embarrassed look on her face. "Syd?", Stanley asked. She abruptly rushed out of the store. It was presumed that she knocked down those items in a fit of frustration, but how could one person knocked down all of those grocery items simultaneously?