Chapter 26- I Know People Can Surprise You But I Never Expected This

As Kristen and I head down the hallway towards her locker I didn’t know if should talk to her or run and hide. I know it was just ridiculous for me to be acting this way but…it was Kristen. The girl I’m sure was back to claim what was hers or, used to be hers, Brody.

That thought alone made me feel a little possessive over him. I really hope I’m wrong and that’s not what she was going to do because I don’t think I would handle that very well. And of course this had to happen when Brody and I were doing so well. Of all the luck.

“This is it.” She says stopping at the red locker on the other side of the hall. “I’ll just be a minute.”

I nod as she begins to put up her things and my eyes can’t help but wonder to the Hello Kitty decorated locker about ten down from hers. Brody is going to kill me if he thinks I had anything to do with this, which technically I guess I did since I didn’t say anything to him. Does that make me an accomplice?

I had to hold in my laughter at the hilarity of it though. I mean come on it’s a guys locker pimped out in Hello Kitty, pink and purple glitter all over it. And let’s not forget about the door she super glued shut.  Who wouldn’t laugh at that? It looks like a locker that would belong to a thirteen year old.

“Someone must have been bored.” She states staring at the locker down the hall.

“Well that’s high school for you.” I reply.

She shrugs and pulls her eyes away from the locker to examine her folded up schedule.

“Looks like I have English with Mrs. White.” She says while still looking it over. “Then Science with Mr. Pine.”

Hold on a minute, this is starting to sound a lot like my schedule.

“After that comes History with Mr.…”

Please don’t say it.

“Black.” She finishes.

I felt relief when she didn’t say Mr. Lawson. I’d kill myself if she was in all of my classes.

“Oh wait that’s gym. It’s Mr. Lawson.” She corrected.

Crap!

Well it looks as if my luck just keep getting better and better. How will I ever survive this? I suppose it could be worse though. All of her classes could have been with Brody.

“Well right this way is-”

I was suddenly cut off by the loud speaker announcing that Kristen Bradley needed to come to the office to pick up her keys she left there. Well I suppose this is where I can lose her.

“That’s me.” She says. “I’ll be back.”

With that she turns from me and marches towards the office and I couldn’t have been happier. This couldn’t have worked out any better if I had planned it myself. Freedom at last!

Well almost. That great feeling diminished once the bell rang ending first period. It was just a sad reminder I still had the whole say left until I can finally leave this place.

As the students poured out of the classrooms I felt a little claustrophobic in these not so big hallways. It was like a heard of antelopes running from a lion. Can someone say uncomfortable? This is why I am usually on the outskirts of the hallway where it is much safer. Lucky for me though I was still in perfect view of Brody’s locker where it was about to become very entertaining.

“There you are. I was beginning to think you were ditching today.” Olivia said grabbing my arm to pull me from the crowd.

“Me, ditch? Not likely. I already missed Friday. I can’t afford to get any further behind.”

“Hey, have I missed it?” Sarah asks coming up behind us, looking a little too excited I might add.

“Nope,” Olivia smiles. “Not yet.”

We continue standing to the sidelines while everyone proceeds to where they are going and look for Brody through the crowd.

“Any minute now.” Sarah says watching his locker, refusing to move a muscle. “Wait for it. Wait for it….”

Hmm… this is weird. He’s not coming. I know he’s here today so what’s the problem? Unless….oh no. What if he somehow ran into Kristen and they ending up kissing and talking about told times.

No, no Farrah. Just calm down, you’re thinking crazy. Brody wouldn’t do that to you.

Right, of course he wouldn’t. Of course I wouldn’t be as worried if she wasn’t so pretty. I can definitely see why Brody liked her.

“Hey, what are we looking at?”

I let out a loud surprising scream at Brody’s voice suddenly behind us. How did he get there?

By this point I had successfully gathered everyone’s attention in this wing of the school. And by attention I mean everyone is staring at me and you can hear a pin drop in this place. Yeah, I don't like that much attention.

“Nothing to see here everyone.” Sarah says in attempt to get the attention off me. "I'm sure you have your own lives to live."

I turn around and slap Brody hard on the shoulder.

“Hey,” he complains.

“You scared me!” I state furiously.

He looks at me in amusement before pulling me to him.

“If I kiss you will that make it better?” He asks.

“No.” I say matter of factly.

Ok so that’s a complete lie. It would totally make it better but I can’t let him know that. He’s already cocky enough as it is.

“Let’s see.” He smirks bring his lips close to mine.

Once they make contact I realize how much I missed this and how much I missed him. Only one evening away and I start to miss him already. I'm pathetic. 

“Um not to interrupt or anything but…eww, please save the PDA for another time.” Olivia says.

In that moment Brody pulls away from me only to give her an amused look.

“Oh really?” he smirks. “Maybe you should be taking your own advice. I have eyes to you know.”

Olivia’s eyes practically bug out of her head while her cheeks flame in an all new shade of red I've never seen before. I bet she didn’t see that coming.

“W-when-” She squeaks covering her cheeks.

He simply laughs at her failure to speak which only proves to irritate her. If it’s one thing I know not to do it’s laugh at Olivia.  She doesn’t take it so lightly.

“Oh yeah, you think this is funny? Well look at this!” she says pointing over to the locker that has now seemed to gather quite a lot of attention.

A bunch of guys are standing around pointing and joking about the glammed up locker and I have a feeling this is where the atmosphere is about to change.

Brody’s silence was enough to know what was coming. You know that saying that it’s always the calmest before the storm? Well that was Brody. It is the start of the same reaction he had to his car.

Suddenly Brody’s laughter erupted through the hallway causing all of us to share a look of confusion. Is he high on something? Normally he’d be killing us right now.

“I think he has gone off the deep end,” Sarah states staring at him with a worried look on her face.

“You do know whose locker that is, don’t you?” Olivia asks.

“I should say so. I only had it for three years,” he calms down enough to answer her.

“Had?” we all say in unison.

“Yeah," he nods. “I Made the new foreign exchange student switch with me about two months ago.”

“What?” Sarah asks in clear panic before guilt takes over her features.

“Yeah I told him it was an American custom for a senior to give up his locker for a new student. It’s the American way to make him feel more welcome,” he laughs.

“That’s awful. You just made up that lie to get a better locker?” Olivia says.

Before he can answer her Sarah turns to him looking furious. “I can’t believe it! That was a complete waste of fifteen bucks.”

“You should be more concerned about the poor guy who has to clean this off his locker. This isn’t going to help him very much in the friend department,” he says.

Aw poor guy. I feel so bad now.

“I’ll get you back on way or another Brody Bauer. You hear me,” she warns before stomping off in a furious manor.

You just have to love Sarah. Who knows what else she has planned for him now that this has fallen through.

“Oh no here he comes.” Olivia says pitifully. “Now he’s going to think no one likes him.”

I watch as he makes his way around the crowd of people at his locker and stars at Sarah’s art work. His unreadable expression is only visible for a moment until he opens the locker next to it.

Wait. He opened the wrong locker. If that’s not his locker then….noooo! Brody lied.

I quickly turn to him to as he starts dying with laughter. "Did I forget to mention he also switched out the locker for another one?"

“Who does that locker really belong to?” I demand.

“What the hell?” A deep voice booms.

All three of us turn towards the person the voice belongs and that’s when I really have to hold in my laughter. It was Hunters locker! And justice couldn’t have been sweeter. He totally deserved this after what he pulled before. Teach him to mess with me.

You didn’t do it, remember?

Oh yeah. Well….still. That’s Karma for him.

“Alright who did it?” he yells, looking completely furious. Some people begin to look arounf in panic waiting for someone to confess before he goes off on a random person. 

First let me explain Hunter. He is about six foot four dark hair, green eyes and…oh yeah built. And when I say built I mean he take almost anyone in this school he wanted to and win. And yes he was attractive with his dark skin and all but because he was friends with Blake I never thought about him that way.

“And that’s our cue to leave,” Olivia says pulling me along.

Yep we are chicken and I wasn’t afraid to admit it, and I'm about to fess up to it, even if I was just an accomplice. He might squish me like a bug. He wouldn't. But he could if he really wanted to.  

“Attention Students,” the secretary announces over the intercom. “School will be canceled for the rest of the day due to unscheduled waterline maintenance and will resume tomorrow on regular schedule. Anyone riding the busses will have to remain here until the drivers arrive to load.”

Cheers erupted from the students as everyone began heading towards the doors in a rush. Thank goodness for water problems. Perhaps we will live after all. I hope Hunter doesn’t figure out it was us who did the vandalism or we are sure to pay the consequences.

“No,” Olivia complains. “Why me? Why today?”

I raise a questioning eyebrow to her in confusion.“You wanted to stay here?”

“When it comes to having to babysit my sister until my aunt gets home then yes, I choose school.”

Well I guess I can’t blame here there. Putting it nicely, her sister can be somewhat of a brat. She’s eight years old and still gets everything she wants. So I guess you could say spoiled as well. Another thing I forgot to mention, the middle school down the street was on the same waterlines as us so that meant they would be out as well.

“Please don’t leave me alone with her.” She begs. “Come to the park with us.”

“Uh no,” I say quickly.

“Please? I promise to make it up to you.”

Not that she could but I was curious. “How?”

“I don’t know. Just name your price. Anything besides leaving me alone with the devil.”

I don’t know if it was the desperation in her voice or the fact that I might actually need a favor from her sometime soon, but I couldn’t leave her in her time of need. So I gave in.

“Fine. But if she starts acting like a spoiled brat, I’m out.”

“Thank you.” She sighs gripping my arm. “I owe you.”

“Yes. You do.” I smile in agreement. “Now if you’ll excuse me. I have to go explain to my boyfriend why I won’t be spending the day with him.”

The air of an unsually warm day in October day blows past Olivia and I as we sit on the small swings watching the children running, playing. It is a busy day for toddlers. There are very few kids over the age of five here today. 

The kids on the swings remind me of the the third grade when Justin Thompson pushed me off the swings and I cried because everyone laughed at me. It was a hard year for me. I was more of a loner and didn’t have very many friends, well until I met Olivia and Grace. And it was pretty much just us until middle school when we met Megan and she asked if she could sit with us at lunch. And that’s how we formed and we’ve been inseparable since then, reccent backstabbing aside.

“This sucks. We've been here for an hour and it feels like two."

“Yeah. it's been painfully long. I could be with Brody right now.”

“I know," she says shamefully. "Thanks again for coming with me."

"I'm just curious, why didn't you ask Thomas to come with you?" I ask her. 

"The last time we saw each other it ended in a fight. We're kind of taking a break from each other right now.”

Immediately I feel like a bad friend. "I'm sorry. I didn't even know anything was wrong."

She shrugs, but doesn't answer. I take it from her silence she didn't want to talk about it. We both continue to stare at the palyground and my mind starts coming up with question of how she and Thomas became so close so quickly. I mean it was kind of sudden, right? I'd meant to ask her before, but the time never seemed right. 

“You two have certainly hit it off fast. You know since you two barely even knew each other.”

“I wouldn’t say barely.” She states. “We knew each other a little better than that.”

“You did?” I say, unable to hide my surprise. 

“Yeah, he is my partner in Food1. Remember me telling you that I accidentally spilled tomato sauce all over my new shirt and ended up wearing a guys shirt all day?” She explains.

I nod. “That was Thomas?” I say in disbelief.

She nods with a goofy grin on her face. No doubt reliving the memory. "We cook together."

I smirk. "Well, you know what they say. A couple that cooks together, stays together. Why didn’t you mention it before?” I ask.

“He took the class for his dad when his mom left them so he could learn the basics of cooking. It kind of felt personal so I never told anyone about it.”

That’s understandable. I guess I would have done the same thing if I were her. In a way it’s kind of sweet though because they were sort of friends before. I remember her saying that he was hot but I never would have imagined it was Thomas she was talking about. I guess sometimes people can surprise you.

“Ok we’ve been here long enough and I’m getting hungry.” She says changing the subject. “Let’s find Cynthia and leave.”

“Isn’t that her over there?” I say pointing to a seesaw. 

“See I’m already glad I brought you along.” She smiles getting up and heading in the direction of her sister.

I get up and follow along behind her until we reach Cynthia. Olivia has obviously reached her limit of screaming kids for the day and she wasn’t wasting anymore time there. I’m honestly surprised she’s lasted as long as she has. It must be to prevent her sister from throwing a fit.

“Come on, we’re leaving,” she says to her sister.

She huffs at Olivia and turns towards her new friends. “Ok, you can all go now.” She says shooing them off and honestly most of them looked happy to leave.

“Let me guess, you forced them to play with you.” Olivia says with a hint of annoyance.

“So," she shugs.

"You can't force someone to be your friend or they're not really your friend," I try to explain to Cynthia."

"I'm okay with that," she says.

Nothing surprising there. She likes bossing people around so it would make since she likes forcing her firends. I feel sorry for those poor kids though.

As we turn and began walking out of the park a sweet little voice screams loudly with so much excitement I have to look. But what I see next is not what I expected at all.

“Is that Kristen?” Olivia asks pointing to her smoothering a little boy with kisses. There was enough disbelief in her voice for the both of us. 

“Yeah,” I nod. “But who’s the kid?”

“Mama, swings.” He laughs running away from her while she followed closely behind him.

“Her son,” Olivia says.

Wait, that can’t be right, can it? Kristen doesn’t have a child. I didn’t see him on her Facebook. But I guess it’s possible that she didn’t want anyone to know about him since apparently she’s a teen mom. But how? I mean, I know how but, who is the dad?

The little boy looks about two years old so that would explain why she left three years ago. So that would most likely mean it was someone from our school. Or more specifically someone that I used to date.

“Do you think the kid belogs to someone at our school? Do you think we know them?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I reply still watching the scene before me. “We know him well?”

“Then know?” she asks. "How? Who is it?"

“Blake,” I answer in a whisper. "It's Blake's kid."

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