Well, Heaven isn’t too far away.
Scott wraps his arm around my shoulders.
“You know what I just learned?”
“Not yet, Scott.”
He snorts in a wild boar way. “I just learned that fucking is one of those fucking words you can fucking put in any fucking where in a fucking sentence and it still makes fucking sense.”
I scoff at him. “Your mouth’s full of shit. You are useless.”
A group of girls from the Art Department pass by us. Each has their own slut of a smile, worn like a Mac make-up. Scott gives them his earth shaking wink and panty dropping smile. I don’t know how that bastard does that. I sure hope he doesn’t do that on my piece of Heaven.
“Useless you say?” Scott turns his attention back to me. I am kind of hoping that he’d just leave me alone. But I have already sparked that interest on him like I’ve dropped a coin into a slot machine and he’s in complete operation. “Dom, nobody is useless. You can always be used as a bad example.”
I shook him off of me, still he follows. Yeah, it’s tested and proven: he can’t live without me.
“You have a very funny way of showing your concern. Thank you very much.”
“I am funny because being hot is not an option. It is part of me.” he taps his man boobs. I made a disgusting face at him.
Scott Orson’s a slut. I am only saying this because I am his best friend and I like to be honest—it’s my specialty. And that is not a typo error because those bitchy words wring with truth. If I probably tell that to his face, he’d hail me as the best saint in Heaven.
Anyways, Scott’s just turned on—every fucking time and he cannot control his testosterones. I think he’ll malfunction if he stops flirting. So while he’s busy “sight seeing” I’d be very much obliged to tell you that today is a special day for the Art Department because they again are commemorating another year of excellence in the academic field of…um… art.
We have our classes all right but Scott makes it a habit to gate crash celebrations. That’s why I am standing in a crowd with him, outside the school’s covered court, holding a cup of mixed face paint.
Why I’m holding a cup of mixed face paint like a punch in my hand? Well, obviously it’s not for drinking, it’s for painting. Yes, painting other people’s faces.
The moment we got inside the covered court, girls started running for Scott. For all I know, they just wanted to touch his glorious face. Within a minute, he looks like a human totem pole. I took pleasure standing away from the crowd with the company of the wall. Great. I’m a human wallpaper—wait—what’s that they call to people who are unattended beside a wall? Wallpaper right?
“Come on, Dom! Don’t be such a wuss!” Scott shouts somewhere. I couldn’t find him. Probably it’s just my head.
“Look at you! You are starting to be a wallflower!”
Fuck! Wallflower not bloody wallpaper!
Now that I see Scott, he’s pointing at me with tons of girls swirling around him. He’s pointing at me and they are coming for me. Wet paint drips from their hands. Oh no. This is bad. My back hits the wall. Sense flew inside my head and so I run into the crowd. I feel sticky all over but I protected my face with my hands. At least to be attached by paint is much better than to be attack by a horde of female genitals. Sheez.
Hidden in a swarm of people I can hear Scott calling for me. And when he finally found me, all I can see in his face is the white of his teeth. I suppress the urge to laugh but never mind. I can’t help it. Stopping laughter would mean farting in the middle of the crowd and that would be very embarrassing.
“Where were you?” he asks.
My eyebrows rise. Should I tell him that I was perfectly running away from female genus?
“I-I was looking for Anna.”
He cocks an eyebrow at my direction; a lopsided smile crosses his face. “You were looking for Heaven.”
“Totally looking for Heaven.” I nod as he does.
What I hate about friends is that they know exactly when you’re lying. They don’t know why but they just know you’re lying. It’s an ironic part of human connection and relation. Is there some invisible Bluetooth concealed inside a human body that connects feelings to other people?
“So, where is she?” he asks the question as if the words are hounds on set for a hunt.
“Whe-where is she?” I stuttered. I looked around me wishing she was truly in the crowd. “Well, she’s hiding from me.” I made a smug shrug. “You know, she-she doesn’t want to get painted.”
“Oh.” Scott smirks at me, that I know he really doesn’t buy it.
“Actually I’m gonna go and look for her.” I tell him. I tried to sound resigned. I made an indication that he should leave. But he doesn’t. I sighed in frustration inside my head. Sometimes, we don’t do things yet others know we want to do things so we don’t do them.
His eyes then flew behind me. A girl might have caught his attention; I saw it in the mischievous way he looks at her.
“What if I find Heaven first?” his eyes flew back to me in a challenging way.
My eyebrows creased. Slowly, I turned to where his eyes flew first. And there, I saw Heaven standing among the others. She wasn’t holding a cup. She was just standing there.
“You wouldn’t mind if I paint her first?” Scott continues.
“No. I can manage.” I retorted as I slice my way through the crowd.
She’s in her school uniform of course, just like everybody else. I’m wearing mine too with a bit of paint. Although I am so not making some sense out of this paragraph, Heaven wears her hair in a tight, neat braid behind her back and when I got close to her, close enough to touch her, I felt my cheeks flush. The intensity of my gravitational pull bonded through her or she might have noticed my arrival behind her with my reflection on her classmate’s eyes. I tapped her shoulder and she turns to me.
I plastered a nervous smile. “I’m sorry about this.”
She gives me a puzzled look. But that’s bound to change when I raise my hand and my fingers graze her cheek with wet paint. She gasps loudly, just enough to attract attention. Feeling her fury, I took stupid steps backward. Just as I did, she grabs a cup of face paint from someone beside her. She spills its content on her hand and slams it to my face.
There were a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” in the crowd.
I stood there as shock as a petrified git. In my peripheral vision, I can see Scott laughing at me. I look at Anna who looks like she wanted to apologize but suddenly changed her mind as her blue eyes thinned into slits. The crowd was overshadowed with silence. A needle could fall in the crowd and everyone would hear it.
“Paint fight!” someone shouts somewhere and paint started to rain down the covered court. At first I covered my face to protect it from another paint apocalypse but just when I uncovered it with my hands, Anna threw another cup of paint at me. It hit my uniform and it bled in rainbow colors. I retaliated by throwing my own cup at her. She tried to dodge the cup with her hands but the contents spilled enough amount of paint on her hair.
Colors were everywhere like the sky was awake and it decided to pour down colors of the earth. Uniforms were ruined and faces were unrecognizable. I bet I look worse than a totem pole right now. But seeing the people having fun, seeing Anna smile despite her ruined poise, it was a priceless, colorful canvas to behold. A Picasso masterpiece.
It was a moment of sheer bliss where everybody didn’t care about anything. A moment of pure ecstasy and recklessness. But moments don’t stay forever. They can only happen once and they sure have an ending.
The teachers started to arrive and Scott and I got caught which ended our young, wild and free moment. Yeah, they kind of got us across their knees. But that’s a joke. We got detention but the fun was all worth it.
***
Heaven was all cleaned up and beautiful.
She was no longer wearing her button up shirt but a navy blue sweater. She carries her sling bag like she’s playing a yo-yo in the air. Back and forth, back and forth it went in the air on her grip.
She looks up and notices me. There’s no smile on her fresh face but I can see the softness building in her eyes. I assume she has allowed me to keep her company.
“I’m sorry I ruined your face,” I said and Anna raises her eyebrows at me. “I mean… your uniform—um, I mean,” I made my hand gesture the mess that took over her earlier.
She snorts. “It was fun but I was very sticky.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I wrinkled my nose and she smiles. I like the way she smiles like that. That shy, girlish, petite smile she does that reveals the iridescence of her uncovered self. I like the way her eyes glitter with her smile. Their blueness are like frozen fractals in the light.
She takes her handkerchief out of her skirt’s pocket and she wipes away the remnants of paint on my face.
“The better. It’s nice to see you all cleaned up.”
“You still got paint in your hair.”
She twitches her lips to the side. “Well, it’s all your fault.”
I arched my lips to make a sad face and she laughs.
“Oh, look. She knows how to laugh.” I tease her and she stops laughing.
She sneers at me. “Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone knows how to laugh.”
I scoff. “Really? Thank God then. I thought I have to teach how to be human.”
She gapes at me. “You think I’m inhuman?”
I shrug but I smile at her.
“I’m Anna. Anna Marie Heaven.”
“I know.” I then stopped myself. “I mean… not that I already know. Well, I do know. I know because Scott told me.”
“Are you always this queasy?” she asks.
I laugh at her stupidly. “No. How ‘bout you? Are you always this taciturn?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. I should have expected that. It’s true though. But of course, I meant that. In a good way.”
She licks her lower lip and bites it. I think it’s her quirk.
“So, can I… walk you home?” I ask her. I wanted to close my eyes and see the rejection coming like a hit of a truck. But all I could do physically now is to suck in my breath and wait for her answer.
“If I refuse, you will still follow.” It was a statement but she sounded like she’s asking me a question.
She chews on her lower lip while I listen to my heart beat like a minute hand ticking.
“Is it an affirmative answer?” I ask.
She takes a deep breath before answering. “Yes. But it will just be a walk and nothing else.”
I nod and she raises her eyebrows at me.
“The truth is, I want to ask you out. It’s just snacks in a diner nearby.”
Her face crumples a little. “I can’t.”
I look down at my shoes. The paint made them multicolored and I hated them.
“But we can be friends.” She says and my heart leaps to my head. I opened my mouth to say something but she holds out a hand to stop me.
“If you promise—you know how promises work right?”
Confuse, I nodded.
“I’ll agree to be friends with you only if you promise that is all we’ll ever be.”
I draw my head inches away from her.
“If you can’t, then I’m afraid I can’t be your friend.”
How can you be just friends with someone you’ve been in love with in the first place? But—
“Okay. I promise.” Is all I got.502Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNXeVcblup2
