For the Love of Death (Chapter 2)

The sky outside was a mixture of gray and white, clouds completely covering the sky. I could smell rain slightly, mixed with the wind, promising an afternoon storm, which at least brightened the prospects of the day. Rain was one of the few things I really enjoyed. More than once I had gotten yelled at for wandering aimlessly outside during a downpour until my clothes were soaked through and I was chilled to the bone. There was something pure about rain.1

I was slightly surprised to see that Marcus had slowed down to keep pace with me as I ambled along. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he was watching me. That in itself was making me a little uneasy.2

“So, why didn’t you take the test last night?” I had to break the silence somehow. It was a relatively short walk to the cafeteria, but somehow it seemed longer.3

“Didn’t want to.” He replied with a shrug. “Why didn’t you?”4

“We were back at the hotel by three, and Grandaddy was out of breath. I let him take a nap while I went to look around town.” Well, if you could call it a town. I had been able to walk to the main stores. In Macon it took at least thirty minutes to get to the mall in a car. Here it took five on foot…and that was if you were going slowly. But I didn’t mind it so much. I didn’t like big cities, and small towns had shops I had never heard of before and it was safer to walk around at night. The last one was the main reason I liked towns like this. 5

“Where’d you go?” 6

“Some music store called ‘Music 4 Less’ and a book store in that mall a couple of blocks over from it.” He nodded like he knew better than I did where exactly I was talking about. Come to think of it, maybe he did. I had never seen him drive up in a car the last time I had been at the school with him. “Do you live here?”7

“Just down the road from the college.” He replied smoothly. I mulled that over for a few seconds. So, he was from Alabama. If Alex ever caught wind of it, she’d never let me hear the end of it…wait, we weren’t going out. So what if my best friend found out he was from Alabama? It wasn’t like he was ever going to come into a topic anyways.8

It seemed like we had been walking along forever when we finally reached the cafeteria. I reached for the door handle, but before I could he had it, and pulled it open. I waited for him to go in. He just stared at me, still smirking in that somewhat annoying manner. I sighed and walked in. Even if chivalry wasn’t dead, I wish it was, because I couldn’t tell if he was hitting on me or just messing with my head or just being polite. And I also couldn’t reason to myself why this was bugging me all of a sudden.9

We took the tests from Ms. Natasha and he sat down in a booth seat in the cafeteria. I was about to sit in the seat across from him when I noticed he had already slid his messenger bag and my stuff (which I had set down earlier) onto that bench. That left me the option of sitting in another booth, or sitting next to him. I sat down, but I made sure there was a least half a foot between us.10

We worked silently for a while, until I realized he was just staring aimlessly at his test after the easy part of it was over. “Need help?” Even though he was annoying me, I couldn’t allow him to sit there and be put in the class for six and seven year olds. Plus, I only had a few friends here. I wanted at least two of them in my class. He nodded and I slid my paper over slightly so that he could see some of the answers. ‘If this had actually been at a school where grading counted, I wouldn’t be doing this’, I reasoned with myself. He copied a few things, but once I got done with all that I could do, and he had only done about half of that, he stopped looking at my paper.11

“I don’t want to get you in trouble.” He said quietly. “Wait for me anyways?” It took at least ten more minutes for him to get done with all he could do of the placement test, and I got up, getting my stuff together while he went to turn in our tests. That morning we were supposed to be singing until lunch, and then after lunch we would go to conducting and then on to our regular classes. We walked back to the auditorium in an awkward silence, and I branched off to sit near Katie. He was across the room, but I wasn’t concentrating. I kept glancing over at him, for some reason.12

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“Two weeks of mash potatoes. I don’t think I can stomach it.” I grumbled as I plopped down my lunch tray. Katie grimaced from hers, picking through the food. I noticed Marcus wasn’t eating. He gave me a strange look.14

“The chicken’s pretty good here.” 15

“I don’t eat meat…unless my parents make me. They don’t approve of my choice to become a vegetarian.” I poked at some overdone cabbage in annoyance as he smirked.16

“Is it a health thing or an environmental thing?” 17

“Neither. It’s a Henry thing.”18

Katie looked up from her food. “Henry?” Marcus was giving me the same confused expression. I gave a half laugh (I always got weird looks when I started to tell this story), and started to explain.19

“Okay, my grandparents used to raise chickens for Tyson. They’d get in the chicks and let them rove around free range and then when they got old enough, they sold them for processing. One year they got a batch that had one little black chick in it, and I could pick it out of the crowd, so I caught it and petted it enough that it would follow me around. I didn’t know it was a girl at the time, because I was six, so I named it Henry. One day Henry disappeared.” I said with a shrug. “I asked my sister where he went. She said that he joined the circus as a tiny trapeze artist. Around the same year that I learned the truth, I went to Israel on a Holy Land tour. They leave their meat hanging on hooks in the street and flies are all over that bloody mess. It’s disgusting.” A shudder went through me as I finished, and while Katie looked as if she didn’t really have an appetite any more, Marcus looked amused…even interested. There was something extremely wrong with that guy.20

I continued to try and stomach the abominable food, and somehow we got on the subject of relationships. I had had one…it didn’t even count, but it was still a story I found ironically funny. Katie had already told about her thing with being hit on by a lesbian, so I went ahead.21

“I’ve dated one guy. His name was Austin. I asked him out, though I’m not entirely sure what I saw in him to begin with. He was a complete coward. He agreed with everything I ever said, even if he didn’t know what I was talking about, and it took him two months to work up an ‘I love you’, I had to initiate the first hand hold, the second, and every one after that, and  in six months he never once tried to kiss me. So I broke up with him. Then two months later I find out he started a rumor that I had fucked him.” When Katie looked ready to protest at my language, I apologized and continued. “After threatening to castrate him if he ever said anything like that again, he began stalking my best friend Alex, and really freaking her out. So it goes. I attract the stalkers, it seems.”22

Marcus shrugged. “I get cheated on. My last girlfriend fucked a guy three hours before we were supposed to get married.” Katie didn’t even protest this time. Both of us were kind of left shocked. He just went really quiet and then looked up at me again. “So, I take it you don’t have any guys after you at the moment?”23

I laughed sarcastically, still trying to shake off my horror at trying to picture him in that situation. People can be real assholes. “Let me put it this way: every guy I’ve ever liked, I have asked out first after mentally preparing myself for weeks. The last one that I asked, about three months ago, screamed ‘Hell no’ in my face and then proceeded to talk about me loudly whenever I was within earshot.” My face got red as I thought about it. Kenny was such an asshole. Another one that I couldn’t think of exactly what I saw in him to begin with. “Guys don’t want to date me.”24

Marcus gave me a very odd look. “Really?” His eyes were boring into me. “I don’t see why not…”25

“You must not be looking hard enough.”26

Katie at this time decided to break in with a nervous half laugh. “Okay, so, do you guys know what class your in yet? I’m in Toller’s, and…”27

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Becky Walker was a cool teacher to have for Advanced Conducting. She was creative, insightful, and had a lot of energy. Still, I couldn’t pay attention to her. I tried to read ‘Interview with a Vampire’ until I heard Marcus clear his throat next to me. Thinking he just was trying to get me to pay attention, I glared at him, but then I saw his eyes dart to the table as he slid a notebook over to me. There was a messy print in red ink on the page.29

[M: The reason I said that about guys dating you, is because, to be honest, I would date you!]30

‘Flattery will get you nothing if not killed.’ I thought to myself before borrowing the red pen and deciding to go for the ‘nice’ approach. [Thanks. I would date you too.] I only said it because I knew he wasn’t serious.31

[M: I was debating on whether to tell you or not because I wasn’t sure what your reaction would be.] Came the reply. My eyebrow lifted slightly…knowing guys, he was still messing with my head, but as long as he was going to say he was being honest, I was really going to be honest and if it turned out he wasn’t being later, I could deny the entire thing as harmless flirting.32

[Kind of surprised, actually, but flattered. To be honest, I had a sort of…infatuation with you in the first year I met you. You may find that creepy.] Down on paper, it looked creepy, but the truth of it was it was one of those little kid crushes back then, sort of like some high school kids do on their teachers. It was time for my private lesson with Eloise Phillips, one of the piano teachers, but right before I left I saw the next reply.33

[M: Not really, same with me.]34

I left the room quickly, just taking my music books. Now I knew he was just messing with my head. No guy in there right mind had crushes on someone like me. We had already proved that with the Austin theory.35

All through the music lesson, though, that note conversation was messing me up. So, what if was serious? What if asked me out? What would I do? Say yes? That seemed debatable. He was a lot older than me, and it wasn’t that I didn’t like him…it was that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to let myself. On one hand it would give me something to brag about to Alex. I could hear it now. ‘I got a boyfriend my first day off in Alabama’. But somehow that seemed a slutty and petty thing to brag about. I knew girls who wore way too much pink that bragged about things like that. And what happened if I turned him down? What happened if he was just messing with my head? 36

He was somewhat attractive, and he had a good sense of humor. He knew about music (good music, that is), and he liked anime, so he wouldn’t think me weird for that, but did I really want to date him and risk getting my heart broken? I had seen what ‘love’ could do to people. My parents were the prime example. They ‘loved’ each other, and my dad sent my mom off in tears at least four days out of seven. She cussed him out about everything and nagged constantly. Love was either dead, or poison in disguise.37

And that entire thought process I had had was what froze me when I came back, sat down, and saw what had been written under his last reply.38

[(So, will you?)  Yes (next to this was a box) No (next to this was another box)]39