Lyrik
What is he doing here and why is he saying my name? This is not part of our friendship. At school, we’re strangers and I like it that way. He’s popular, everyone wants to be him and if they can’t they want to be something to him. They have to surround him all the time and just watching his goons float around him suffocates me. I don’t want to be a part of it, I never have and he knows this. I just never told him why I didn’t want anyone to know that we’re friends. He’d be offended and probably get pissed like I’m saying I don’t like him when he damn well knows that I do.
I love him. He’s my best friend and the only person who actually knows me, but I didn’t sign up to be in the popular crowd. That’s not why we’re friends and beyond not wanting to smother in with the other high schoolers who idolize him, I don’t ever want him to second guess why I love him. I don’t want him to think I’m just here because I need to be a part of that crowd, that I’m using him like everyone else. I don’t have to be seen with him or to be talked about with him to be his friend. I’m friends with him because I want to be and there’s no other reason, but I see how fake everyone else is.
They don’t know him.
They don’t know that he doesn’t want to go to an Ivy League college, he doesn’t want to play sports or drive some fancy expensive car. They don’t know that he hates corn and loves broccoli, or that his favorite color is teal. Not green or blue, but both mixed. They don’t know that he wants to be a musician and that he sees words as music notes. That he is afraid to tell his parents who he wants to be because they might disown him and then he’ll have no family like me.
They don’t know that every night he climbs a tree to spend time with me. That he writes me letters and has since he was five. That he loves me too, and not because I follow him around like some groupie, but because he is himself.
They know nothing and I want it left that way.
High school is just something we have to do to get ahead in the world. If we want a job that’s worth our time we have to graduate, if we want to succeed, college would be a good start. I never want to struggle like I do now. If I ever have children I don’t want them to live the life I’ve had to. I want better.
I want more.
And I don’t want any of these people to know me. No one except Anson. I want to get by high school as fast as I can without any distractions. I don’t want to be seen. I want to remain in the shadows and Anson talking to me during school hours pulls me from those shadows.
I could hurt him right now.
“Excuse me?” I reply to him.
I hope I heard him wrong and maybe he’s talking to someone else.
He grins, “I said Lyk.”
Yeah, I got that. I was hoping you’d change your mind.
I scrunch my eyebrows and hope like hell he can read my face that says, don’t be doing this to me right now Anson Blake!
“Sit with me at lunch?”
What? No! What is he playing at?
Before I reply his idiotic friends do. “Yeah, Lyk-me he wants to know if you’ll join him for a pity lunch.” I forget his name, because well, he’s a moron and I don’t pay attention to the guys that follow him around. Only the girls. I know all of their names.
Anson ignores his friends, “Lyk just join me for lunch please?” He gives me those puppy eyes. Eyes that he knows I find hard to resist which is why he uses them all the time.
I give in, “Fine,” I huff.
One time. I can do this once. For him.
“Ha! She really thinks you want to eat lunch with her Anson,” his foolish friend nudges his arm, “Too bad she doesn’t know that you choose one person a month to have a pity lunch with, that you’re doing her a favor.”
My smile drops.
His friend continues, “Anson has lunch with a nerd once a month, different one every time, once you’re seen with him everyone wants to be your friend. He’s helping you so you should be saying thank you. After today everyone will want to be your friend. You might even get a date out of it if you’re lucky. Normally I would say you’d have no chance at getting a date, but there’s got to be someone around here who likes fat, brown haired boring nerds.”
My mouth drops open. I have never claimed to be some Barbie princess in the looks department. My hair is a dull brown, my eyes are the same, puberty has given me curves in places most girls here don’t have, and yeah, I might have some weight on these bones, but I have never pretended I was beautiful. I’m me. I love who I am, but I am honest with myself. One day someone will appreciate me for the me that I am. I don’t need some fool spouting off to me how I’m fat and a nobody who should be oh so thankful to the popular kid, Anson for extending his touch to me.
Fuck that.
Anson says nothing.
“You know what? I don’t need Golden Boys touch to get a date or to make friends,” I turn my head to glare at Anson, “I’m fine having no friends. A real friend would have your back all the time not let some dickhead sheep insult said best friend.” The bell rings for the next class and knowing Anson he’s going to be running to that room.
I’m not important enough to skip a class for or to be late for. Not when it comes to his grades and his parents and what they expect from him. No matter how much he and his friend just hurt me.
He might not have said those words, but he didn’t say anything either. That’s the problem. He decided it would be a great idea to talk to me, I didn’t. That’s why I put the rules in place, I knew what would happen. Instead he thinks he knows better, like always, and tries doing me a favor only to find out he does this often and this month he tried to bestow his touch to me in front of the entire school.
No fucking thanks.
“I’ve got to get to class,” Anson says.
“Go. Just go!” I yell then run away.
I stop at my locker, grab my backpack and run out the school doors without looking back.
Fuck Anson Blake.
I don’t need him to be my friend.