“Hey, Chris. Have you seen the new girl?” Ryan asked as I sat down beside him. “No, I haven’t. Where?” I asked and Ryan pointed to a girl sitting at the corner of the cafeteria, far from the noise of the school population. Her long, dark, wavy hair was covering half of her face and she wore an oversized black cardigan over an old-looking white dress and a pair of beaten sneakers. Just looking at her, I already felt sorry for her, she seemed like she didn’t even want to be in this place.
Interrupting my thoughts, Ryan said, “Looks miserable, doesn’t she?” I nodded, “She looks ready to die.” Ryan snickered and we resumed om eating our lunch and our routine conversation about how he hated his calculus professor and how hot Shane Watson, who happens to be the captain of the cheerleading squad, looked during Biology class. As I listened and laughed to his never-ending stories, my eyes would steal a glance at the new girl. I noticed that she wasn’t eating anything; there wasn’t even a tray on her table. She was just holding a pen over her notebook but she wasn’t writing – she held it as if stopped functioning.
“What’s her name?” I suddenly asked Ryan. He looked at the direction that I was looking at and said, “Samantha.”
“Samantha who?”
Ryan shrugged, “I don’t know. That’s all she said during Bio.” So, Samantha. What’s up with Samantha? She worries me, or probably just weirds me out. But still, what’s up with Samantha?
The bell finally rang, signaling us to get up our asses and head to next period. I was still looking at Samantha as I rose from my seat. She finally moved and closed the notebook and put it inside her bag. She rose, too, but instead of heading to the direction of the classrooms, shse proceeded to the parking lot. She was obviously going to cut class.
Ryan patted my back as we approached the hallway, “I’ll see you later.” I headed for History class, still bothered by where Samantha was going.
I didn’t see Samantha the whole afternoon. And I eventually forgot about her, too. I was hanging out with Ryan and a few of the cheerleaders, Shane Watson included, at the field before practice when one of the girls told us about her encounter with Samantha that morning. “So I was in the bathroom,” the girl said, I didn’t even know her name. “And then comes in this weirdo chick. I didn’t even minded her at first because I was too busy putting on my mascara but then she suddenly knelt in front of the sink and put coke on the sink and sniffed it in with a one dollar bill. I mean, I know a lot of people who do drugs but couldn’t she at least be discreet about it?”
All the cheerleaders agreed. They said that they should’ve done it in her car or whatever. “We’d probably see her doing weed next time,” said the girl.
I immediately headed home after a tiring practice. I was starving and all that I could think of was the pizza in the fridge. My mom welcomed me home and said, “Dress up quickly. We’re going to have dinner with our neighbors.”
“Neighbors?” I asked. “We have neighbors?”
My mom just looked at me and said, “’Course we do. Now get dressed!”
She ordered me to do it quickly as she clasped a pearl necklace on her neck but I protested, “Can’t I lay down just for a little while? My whole body is sore from training.” But she wouldn’t have it. I knew I couldn’t persuade my mom so I went up to my room and changed into a crisp white shirt and a pair of black jeans. When I went down, I saw my mom dressed in a simple white dress that she used whenever she had important meeting with clients.
“So, which celebrity are we going to meet?” I jokingly asked my mom.
She just smiled at me while she combed her hair, “Oh, the Lawrences are not celebrities, but I just wanted to be a nice neighbor, you know? They haven’t really been welcomed in our neighborhood so I would like to make the first step.”
That seemed really weird. My mother wasn’t really the neighborhood woman type. She would smile at neighbors and stuff but she would mostly avoid any kind of interaction with them.
After mom finished her preparations, we went down to the Lawrences’ next door. My mom was kind enough to make them an apple pecan pie and blueberry cheesecake. When we reached the door, it immediately opened, as if the person behind it was peeking through the windows waiting for us to approach their front porch.
”Hi, Susan!” my mom greeted the woman in the front door. Susan had on a simple dress with no embellishments and her hair was tied in a neat bun at the base of her neck. “This is my son, Chris.”
“Oh, hello Chris,’’ Susan said as she shook my hand with her pale, boney fingers. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’m sure my daughter would like to meet you.”
I just smiled at her and there was an awkward silence between the three of us before Susan Lawrence remembered to let us in. The interior of the house was half bare with only pale beige walls and the essential furniture. Susan lead us to the dining room as she apologized for the lack of interior decorations, which my mom just dismissed, and we placed the cakes on the kitchen counter.
“Uhm, Diane, I’m sorry but my husband can’t make it here tonight,” Susan told my mom. “He said he has an important deadline to meet so we would have to stay at the office until late.”
My mother didn’t seem very disappointed but she just consoled Susan, “Oh that’s alright. Maybe next time he’d be able to join us.”
Susan seemed to be please with her reaction so she let us sit on the stools by the counter and excused herself to fetch her daughter upstairs.
My mom and I were simply admiring the place in silence when Susan appeared with a girl who I did not expect.
“This is my daughter, Samantha,” Susan told us and I couldn’t hide the surprise my face. Samantha looked nothing like her mother. Her mother looked a bit weathered probably because of aging but she still looked fresh but Samantha looked like the child of depression itself. She was still wearing the same outfit that she wore at school but her hair was carelessly braided on the side of her head. My mom was quick to react and immediately rose from her seat and greeted Samantha. Samantha didn’t react as my mother talked to her as if she was void of human emotions.
I rose from my chair, too, and said hello to her but she didn’t bother to say hello to me so Susan just led us to the dinner table to eat. Finally, because I’m starving.
The food that Susan prepared for us was delicious but the whole time that we were eating, only the two mothers conversed. I stuffed my mouth with whatever was on the table while Samantha picked at her food and sipped Sprite. The two adults would sometimes try to direct the conversation at us but only I would reply.
Main course was finally done so I rose up to get the apple pecan pie and blueberry cheesecake and placed them on the dinner table. I was cutting a piece of pie when to my surprise Samantha suddenly spoke, “Can you get me a slice?”
I’m pretty sure that everyone at the table was surprised so Samantha looked away from me but I immediately said sure and sliced a generous amount of apple pecan pie for her.
The conversation of the two mothers continued as we ate dessert. This time, Samantha actually ate. She devoured the slice of pie that I gave her but she didn’t ask for more when she finished it. It sort of made me happy to see her actually eating and enjoying herself. Well, I guess she enjoyed the pie but whatever.
After dessert, the mothers continued their conversation in the living room with some wine. I thought that Samantha and I would have to suffer listening to them talk again but Samantha asked her mom, “Can we go upstairs?” Her mom, too engrossed with my mom, immediately agreed and dismissed us so we went up to her room in another awkward silence.
We reached her room and when she opened the door, it was very dark. The only light came from the full moon shining outside her window. She turned on the Christmas lights wrapped on her bed’s headboard and sat down on her bed. I was just standing by the doorway when she said, “Are you going to come in or what?”
I was surprised by her sudden change of aura. I guess she was comfortable now that we were in her what I consider to be her safe haven. I entered her room and sat down at the very edge of the bed because I didn’t want to seem like I’m trying too hard to make friends. As I sat, I saw that there were pieces of paper strewn all over the place. They were on the bed, on the floor, on the walls, some had drawings, some had writings, and some were crumpled.
There was yet again another silence but this time it wasn’t awkward anymore. Samantha just sat and drank something from a bottle which I saw to be chocolate milk.
“Did you like the apple pecan pie?” I asked to start a conversation.
“Oh, I did. I actually want more,” Samantha told me.
“Then why didn’t you get some more?”
Samantha shrugged, “Just trying to be polite, as the society expects me to be.”
”Oh,” was the only thing that I could reply.
She looked at me intently like a lion ready to attack. “I know what you’re thinking.”
I was surprised by her sudden remark because I wasn’t thinking of anything at that moment. “What?”
“You think I’m really weird, don’t you?”
“I never said that,” I said in defense.
“Yes, you didn’t but that’s what you think of me.”
I just sat there in silence as I stared at her and she stared at me. She took her braids off and her hair went back to its messy wave.
“You know, since we don’t really know each other and I’m not planning on getting to know each other even more, I would like to open up to you,” she said as she moved closer to me.
“Uhm, okay. Go ahead,” I told her.
“Just pretend that nothing ever happened, that we never even talked.”
I nodded, “Yeah, okay.”
She stared at my eyes as if she was trying to detect any sign of dishonesty. When she couldn’t she began talking.
“Have you ever felt like you want to know how it feels like to be dead? Like how it is to be out of this world? Because you know? I always think about that.”
I tried to understand her, “So, you want to die?”
She gave a playful smile, the only smile that I’ve seen her wear, and shrugged, “Oh, I didn’t say that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“It’s just that I don’t have a reason to even be in this world, you know? Like I might as well disappear from the face of this planet and no one would even notice.”
I didn’t know why but I wanted to shout at her. I wanted to scream at her that she was wrong. I was angry that she could even think like that.
But I didn’t do any of that. I wasn’t in the place to do so.
She sighed and moved to rest her back on her pillows. “Just never mind.”
We were silent for a moment when I said, “We should go down.”
She didn’t say anything but we went down.
When we arrived at the living room, the mothers were already up and were probably ready to call us, too.
Susan and my mother were exchanging goodbyes and my mother was saying thank you for the delicious dinner and Susan said thank you for the cake and pie.
We all shook hands and as Samantha shook my hand she said, “Thank you for the pie.”
I just said that she was welcome.
When we got home, my mom and I talked for a little while. She asked me how Samantha was and what we talked about but I just shrugged and said that we talked about school stuff. I was deadly tired so I excused myself to bed.
As I lied on my bed, I thought about what Samantha said and I got angry again. I was just so frustrated that she would even think like that. I tried to understand her and I wanted to give her the benefit of a doubt. And I wanted to prove to her that there were people who actually cared. I promised myself that I would look for her tomorrow at school and that I would invite her to have lunch with me and Ryan. With that in mind, I fell asleep.
It was 3:17 in the morning when I woke up to the sound of sirens.
I thought that there must be a fire so I immediately went downstairs and saw that my mom was already outside holding a crying Susan Lawrence.
There was no fire but there was an ambulance. I approached my mom, “Mom, what’s happening?”
My mom just looked at me and pointed in the distance.
There, strewn all over the concrete road, was blood.
Blood from Samantha’s body.
I guess now she knows how it feels.
ns216.73.217.39da2
and then Add to home screen.