Topic 19: Et Tu Brute?
Mar. 18th, 2012 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
java_fiendWow, it feels really weird to be posting my piece this early. I mean, I have a whole day until it's due! What's come over me???
Nevertheless... Here is my entry for the week, laid upon the altar of the mighty Idol gods. May the Ides of March not rear up to bite me in the ass.
I sit on the hilltop watching the fire below me. The way the flames dance and paint the nighttime sky in oranges and reds is mesmerizing. It’s beautiful in a way.
I was happy for two weeks.
But then like everything else in my life seems to do, it fell to complete shit. I watch the flames dance higher and burn brighter.
At least I had those two weeks, I suppose.
*******
“You know she’s only using you, right?”
“She is not.” I said.
He’s been kind of a jerk about it since I started hanging out with her. We sat on the stage of the school auditorium painting the sets for the drama department’s upcoming production of Julius Caesar. I’d signed up for the drama club because extracurriculars always look good on a college application but I never knew it would entail doing slop work like this.
“Dude seriously,” Austin went on. “No offense or anything but you’re not exactly in Whitney Sullivan’s league.”
I slapped the paintbrush against the column I was working on a little too hard and felt the droplets of paint splatter against my face.
”What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what that means,” Austin said. “She dates jocks. Always has. And you’re not exactly the athletic type.”
“You make her sound so shallow.”
He shrugged. “If the shoe fits.”
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” I said. “You don’t know her.”
“Oh and you do?” Austin laughed.
“Better than you do,” I replied. “Better than you ever will.”
The last week and a half had been the best time of my life and it had all started with a coincidence really. Though I prefer to call it the intervention of the hand of fate. Mr. Keplinger, my teacher for AP Chemistry had held me after class one day to ask if I’d tutor one of the students in his basic chem class who was failing. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea but told him I would. But when I walked into the library that first day, my whole world shifted because Whitney Sullivan, the girl I’d been in love with since the sixth grade, was sitting there waiting for me.
She gave me the kind of polite smile you’d give somebody you’d never seen in your life before. Despite the fact that we’d had many classes together over the years. But we didn’t move in the same circles and I figured that was to be expected. That first day proved the roughest. Chemistry wasn’t exactly her fort but she hung with it and I think we eventually made some progress. It was something. It was a start.
“You say that like I should be jealous or something,” Austin said.
“I think you are.”
He snorted. “Yeah, that’s it,” he replied. “For your information, I prefer a girl with some brains.”
“See? That’s what I’m talking about. If you actually knew her, you’d see that she’s actually pretty bright.”
“I think you’re blinded by her tits,” he replied. “They’re nice and all, don’t get me wrong but a perky set doesn’t make her smart.”
I threw my paintbrush back into the can and stood up.
“Screw you, man,” I said. “You don’t know shit.”
“I know that she is that shallow and that she is one of them,” he replied calmly. “And when the chips are down, you wait and see which side she’s going to be on. Wait and see if she even remembers your name. You’re deluding yourself if you think she’s actually into you.”
I opened my mouth to say something but decided against it. It wasn’t worth it. He didn’t know her. He didn’t see the way she looked at me, feel the way she hugged me or see the way she smiled at me. I did though and I knew that I wasn’t deluding myself. I simply turned and walked off of our mock Roman set feeling a little like Caesar must have. Instead of being happy for me, my best friend in the world instead shoved a dagger into me.
I walked into the coffee house to find Whitney already there waiting for me. Her smile could melt my heart and make even the worst day that much better. I smiled and waved to her and went to the counter to order our drinks.
“Hey, you okay?” She asked as I set her drink in front of her and took a seat.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You look at little down.”
I shrugged. “Austin and I had an argument. Nothing big.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s your best friend, right?”
I nodded and took a sip of my drink.
“What was the fight about?”
I didn’t want to tell her that it was about her or the ugly things he said about her. This is what Austin didn’t understand. She wasn’t using me for a grade. Yeah, I was teaching her and helping her but we spent a lot of time getting to know each other, talking about our lives and our dreams. We’d spent time talking about our problems and issues and helping one another find some peace if not some solutions. Over the week and a half I’d spent with her, I like to think we’d grown somewhat closer and that maybe she was even starting to develop some feelings for me despite our different social orbits. She laid her hand over mine and a feeling like an electrical current raced through my body. She smiled at me and suddenly, I didn’t have a care in the world.
“It’s nothing,” I said and smiled back. “Really.”
I slid my books out of my backpack and set them on the table.
“Ready?”
“Totally,” she said.
A couple of days later, Austin finally apologized and told me that if I was happy, he was happy for me. It felt good to have my best friend back. We figured Caesar could do without us for a day so we skipped out on set painting and decided to go hang out and play some video games. We cut through the quad and were taking the shortcut home across the athletic fields when I spotted her walking with another one of her friends.
“I’m thinking about asking Whitney to the dance next week.”
I heard Austin sigh but he didn’t say anything. “What?”
“Nothing.”
The tension that had existed between us for the past few days flared to life again leaving us in an awkward silence.
“You still think I’m being an idiot about her, don’t you?” I asked. “You still think I’m wrong about her? Is it really so hard to think that she might actually like me?”
He kicked a rock. “Yes, yes,” he said. “And yes.”
I stopped walking and turned to him. “Why? Why is it so hard for you to believe?”
He sighed again. “Look, man, she’s part of the in crowd, the jocks and the cheerleaders You’re not. She’s part of one group, you’re part of another and the two don’t mix. It’s just the way things are and always have been. You know that. You’re my best friend and I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I suppose I don’t.”
I walked away from him and quickened my step to catch up with her. I’d show him that the way things were didn’t mean that was the way things always had to be. I wasn’t wrong about Whitney. I knew it and I’d show him.
“Hey, Whit,” I said.
She and her friend stopped and turned around. She gave me a warm smile.
“Hey there,” she said. “I didn’t think we were meeting today.”
“Oh, we weren’t supposed to. I- I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”
“This is my friend Deena,” she said. “Deena, this is Jonathan. He’s helping me pass Keplinger’s chem class.”
Her friend smiled and nodded but looked at me like I was something alien or perhaps like something stuck to the bottom of her shoe. I was used to looks like that from girls like her so I just let it roll off my back.
“Yeah,” I said as butterflies swarmed in my stomach. “So anyway, I was- I wanted to—”
Whitney smiled again. “Wanted to what?”
I took a deep breath and focused on her smile. “I was hoping you’d want to go to the dance with me next week.”
Deena turned away and covered her mouth but it didn’t stifle her giggling. Whitney’s smile faltered and her eyes widened slightly but she said nothing.
“That’s just so sweet.”
I stiffened at the sound of the voice behind me. I turned to find Brent Gibson and a couple of his friends from the football team standing there.
“Seriously, man,” Brent said. “That’s really sweet but I don’t think she wants to go with you.”
I turned and looked at Whitney but she lowered her gaze to the ground, refused to look me in the eye. I felt my cheeks flush and a heat creeping into my face. But underneath my embarrassment, a current of anger began to seep in.
“She can answer for herself,” I said.
Brent and his friends laughed. “She doesn’t need to. She’s already going to the dance. With me.”
I could feel the tears of my anger and frustration burning my eyes but did my best to choke them back. Showing that kind of weakness in front of guys like this was like waving red meat in front of a hungry lion. I looked at Whitney again but she still refused to look at me, refused to say something, refused to even acknowledge me.
“You should run along now,” Brent said. “Go on back to your comic books or Star Trek reruns or whatever it is you do.”
I don’t know what came over me but I felt something snap. I rushed at Brett and threw a punch that caught him square in the nose. For a moment we all froze in place, nobody speaking and nobody moving. I watched a thin trail of blood seeping from his nose and felt a momentary rush of power. Much of what happened next is a blur. I remember Brent and his friends pummeling me as a crowd of faceless people gathered. I remember feeling the air rushing out of my body as I was repeatedly punched and kicked in the stomach. After that, I was stripped naked and tied to the goalpost on the football field. Though it seems like hundreds of people were there, watching this all unfold, nobody moved to stop it and nobody moved to help me. They instead cheered and laughed and egged Brent and his friends on. And through it all, I kept my eyes on Whitney who stood off to the side beneath a banner announcing the upcoming school production. She watched but didn’t say anything, didn’t try to help me. She watched with a look of contempt and pity on her face. I briefly wondered if Brutus had a look like that on his face as he slid his knife into Caeser.
*******
I sit on the hilltop watching the fire below me. The flames dancing higher and higher, the lights of the emergency vehicles adding to the riot of color in the nighttime sky.
The thing about holding school dances in the school gymnasium is that there are no windows and so few exit points. Doors at either end of the building and a set of doors that lead to the locker room. With nothing but chains and a few padlocks, you can make the gym just about inescapable. And if you’ve got a strong aptitude in a subject like chemistry, you can probably cook up some really nasty gases that are just about undetectable until people start dropping around you. Somebody good with chemicals, if they wanted to, can also likely figure out what sort of accelerants burn the fastest and most intensely. It’s a recipe for disaster. Or salvation depending on how you choose to look at it.
I was happy for two weeks. And as I sit watching the gymnasium burn, I wonder if I ever will be again.
This has been my entry for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
therealljidol Season 8, Topic 19: "Et Tue Brute". As always, thank you for your support and encouragement through all of these weeks. I truly do appreciate it with all my heart, guys. Don't forget to swing on by the polls when they open, read some of the other fantastic work and spread a little voting-love around. Thanks, guys!!!
Nevertheless... Here is my entry for the week, laid upon the altar of the mighty Idol gods. May the Ides of March not rear up to bite me in the ass.
I sit on the hilltop watching the fire below me. The way the flames dance and paint the nighttime sky in oranges and reds is mesmerizing. It’s beautiful in a way.
I was happy for two weeks.
But then like everything else in my life seems to do, it fell to complete shit. I watch the flames dance higher and burn brighter.
At least I had those two weeks, I suppose.
“You know she’s only using you, right?”
“She is not.” I said.
He’s been kind of a jerk about it since I started hanging out with her. We sat on the stage of the school auditorium painting the sets for the drama department’s upcoming production of Julius Caesar. I’d signed up for the drama club because extracurriculars always look good on a college application but I never knew it would entail doing slop work like this.
“Dude seriously,” Austin went on. “No offense or anything but you’re not exactly in Whitney Sullivan’s league.”
I slapped the paintbrush against the column I was working on a little too hard and felt the droplets of paint splatter against my face.
”What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what that means,” Austin said. “She dates jocks. Always has. And you’re not exactly the athletic type.”
“You make her sound so shallow.”
He shrugged. “If the shoe fits.”
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” I said. “You don’t know her.”
“Oh and you do?” Austin laughed.
“Better than you do,” I replied. “Better than you ever will.”
The last week and a half had been the best time of my life and it had all started with a coincidence really. Though I prefer to call it the intervention of the hand of fate. Mr. Keplinger, my teacher for AP Chemistry had held me after class one day to ask if I’d tutor one of the students in his basic chem class who was failing. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea but told him I would. But when I walked into the library that first day, my whole world shifted because Whitney Sullivan, the girl I’d been in love with since the sixth grade, was sitting there waiting for me.
She gave me the kind of polite smile you’d give somebody you’d never seen in your life before. Despite the fact that we’d had many classes together over the years. But we didn’t move in the same circles and I figured that was to be expected. That first day proved the roughest. Chemistry wasn’t exactly her fort but she hung with it and I think we eventually made some progress. It was something. It was a start.
“You say that like I should be jealous or something,” Austin said.
“I think you are.”
He snorted. “Yeah, that’s it,” he replied. “For your information, I prefer a girl with some brains.”
“See? That’s what I’m talking about. If you actually knew her, you’d see that she’s actually pretty bright.”
“I think you’re blinded by her tits,” he replied. “They’re nice and all, don’t get me wrong but a perky set doesn’t make her smart.”
I threw my paintbrush back into the can and stood up.
“Screw you, man,” I said. “You don’t know shit.”
“I know that she is that shallow and that she is one of them,” he replied calmly. “And when the chips are down, you wait and see which side she’s going to be on. Wait and see if she even remembers your name. You’re deluding yourself if you think she’s actually into you.”
I opened my mouth to say something but decided against it. It wasn’t worth it. He didn’t know her. He didn’t see the way she looked at me, feel the way she hugged me or see the way she smiled at me. I did though and I knew that I wasn’t deluding myself. I simply turned and walked off of our mock Roman set feeling a little like Caesar must have. Instead of being happy for me, my best friend in the world instead shoved a dagger into me.
I walked into the coffee house to find Whitney already there waiting for me. Her smile could melt my heart and make even the worst day that much better. I smiled and waved to her and went to the counter to order our drinks.
“Hey, you okay?” She asked as I set her drink in front of her and took a seat.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You look at little down.”
I shrugged. “Austin and I had an argument. Nothing big.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s your best friend, right?”
I nodded and took a sip of my drink.
“What was the fight about?”
I didn’t want to tell her that it was about her or the ugly things he said about her. This is what Austin didn’t understand. She wasn’t using me for a grade. Yeah, I was teaching her and helping her but we spent a lot of time getting to know each other, talking about our lives and our dreams. We’d spent time talking about our problems and issues and helping one another find some peace if not some solutions. Over the week and a half I’d spent with her, I like to think we’d grown somewhat closer and that maybe she was even starting to develop some feelings for me despite our different social orbits. She laid her hand over mine and a feeling like an electrical current raced through my body. She smiled at me and suddenly, I didn’t have a care in the world.
“It’s nothing,” I said and smiled back. “Really.”
I slid my books out of my backpack and set them on the table.
“Ready?”
“Totally,” she said.
A couple of days later, Austin finally apologized and told me that if I was happy, he was happy for me. It felt good to have my best friend back. We figured Caesar could do without us for a day so we skipped out on set painting and decided to go hang out and play some video games. We cut through the quad and were taking the shortcut home across the athletic fields when I spotted her walking with another one of her friends.
“I’m thinking about asking Whitney to the dance next week.”
I heard Austin sigh but he didn’t say anything. “What?”
“Nothing.”
The tension that had existed between us for the past few days flared to life again leaving us in an awkward silence.
“You still think I’m being an idiot about her, don’t you?” I asked. “You still think I’m wrong about her? Is it really so hard to think that she might actually like me?”
He kicked a rock. “Yes, yes,” he said. “And yes.”
I stopped walking and turned to him. “Why? Why is it so hard for you to believe?”
He sighed again. “Look, man, she’s part of the in crowd, the jocks and the cheerleaders You’re not. She’s part of one group, you’re part of another and the two don’t mix. It’s just the way things are and always have been. You know that. You’re my best friend and I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I suppose I don’t.”
I walked away from him and quickened my step to catch up with her. I’d show him that the way things were didn’t mean that was the way things always had to be. I wasn’t wrong about Whitney. I knew it and I’d show him.
“Hey, Whit,” I said.
She and her friend stopped and turned around. She gave me a warm smile.
“Hey there,” she said. “I didn’t think we were meeting today.”
“Oh, we weren’t supposed to. I- I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”
“This is my friend Deena,” she said. “Deena, this is Jonathan. He’s helping me pass Keplinger’s chem class.”
Her friend smiled and nodded but looked at me like I was something alien or perhaps like something stuck to the bottom of her shoe. I was used to looks like that from girls like her so I just let it roll off my back.
“Yeah,” I said as butterflies swarmed in my stomach. “So anyway, I was- I wanted to—”
Whitney smiled again. “Wanted to what?”
I took a deep breath and focused on her smile. “I was hoping you’d want to go to the dance with me next week.”
Deena turned away and covered her mouth but it didn’t stifle her giggling. Whitney’s smile faltered and her eyes widened slightly but she said nothing.
“That’s just so sweet.”
I stiffened at the sound of the voice behind me. I turned to find Brent Gibson and a couple of his friends from the football team standing there.
“Seriously, man,” Brent said. “That’s really sweet but I don’t think she wants to go with you.”
I turned and looked at Whitney but she lowered her gaze to the ground, refused to look me in the eye. I felt my cheeks flush and a heat creeping into my face. But underneath my embarrassment, a current of anger began to seep in.
“She can answer for herself,” I said.
Brent and his friends laughed. “She doesn’t need to. She’s already going to the dance. With me.”
I could feel the tears of my anger and frustration burning my eyes but did my best to choke them back. Showing that kind of weakness in front of guys like this was like waving red meat in front of a hungry lion. I looked at Whitney again but she still refused to look at me, refused to say something, refused to even acknowledge me.
“You should run along now,” Brent said. “Go on back to your comic books or Star Trek reruns or whatever it is you do.”
I don’t know what came over me but I felt something snap. I rushed at Brett and threw a punch that caught him square in the nose. For a moment we all froze in place, nobody speaking and nobody moving. I watched a thin trail of blood seeping from his nose and felt a momentary rush of power. Much of what happened next is a blur. I remember Brent and his friends pummeling me as a crowd of faceless people gathered. I remember feeling the air rushing out of my body as I was repeatedly punched and kicked in the stomach. After that, I was stripped naked and tied to the goalpost on the football field. Though it seems like hundreds of people were there, watching this all unfold, nobody moved to stop it and nobody moved to help me. They instead cheered and laughed and egged Brent and his friends on. And through it all, I kept my eyes on Whitney who stood off to the side beneath a banner announcing the upcoming school production. She watched but didn’t say anything, didn’t try to help me. She watched with a look of contempt and pity on her face. I briefly wondered if Brutus had a look like that on his face as he slid his knife into Caeser.
I sit on the hilltop watching the fire below me. The flames dancing higher and higher, the lights of the emergency vehicles adding to the riot of color in the nighttime sky.
The thing about holding school dances in the school gymnasium is that there are no windows and so few exit points. Doors at either end of the building and a set of doors that lead to the locker room. With nothing but chains and a few padlocks, you can make the gym just about inescapable. And if you’ve got a strong aptitude in a subject like chemistry, you can probably cook up some really nasty gases that are just about undetectable until people start dropping around you. Somebody good with chemicals, if they wanted to, can also likely figure out what sort of accelerants burn the fastest and most intensely. It’s a recipe for disaster. Or salvation depending on how you choose to look at it.
I was happy for two weeks. And as I sit watching the gymnasium burn, I wonder if I ever will be again.
This has been my entry for
therealljidol Season 8, Topic 19: "Et Tue Brute". As always, thank you for your support and encouragement through all of these weeks. I truly do appreciate it with all my heart, guys. Don't forget to swing on by the polls when they open, read some of the other fantastic work and spread a little voting-love around. Thanks, guys!!!
