• CHAPTER 3

    I peeked outside my window, and Ian wasn’t there, like he usually was. I sat down on my bed again, depressed. I sighed, and wiped away the tears from last night. He couldn’t be still mad at me! But, of course, it seemed he was.
    I walked onto the schoolyard, and straight to my friends group. I expected to see Ian, but I didn’t. This worried me, all of his friends were in this little circle, where was he? My friends asked me where he was, and I just said I didn’t know. They peeked at me from the corner of their eyes every couple of seconds. I guess that would be the cause of the fact that I probably looked like my mom had just died.
    I didn’t see Ian until the first class we had together, and in his usual seat. That didn’t surprise me, because we had assigned seats, and we couldn’t move from them. I sat down, looked at his face, and looked down again. He looked like he was being tortured, and that he was extremely angry about something.
    I didn’t realize that I was crying until the tears splashed on my binder. I tried to rub them out before Ian could see, and it didn’t work. He reached over and tapped each teardrop on my binder and when his finger left, it was dry. Then he ran his hand across my face, and left it dry. Then he went back to staring at the front of the class.
    “What did I do?” I asked brokenheartedly. He peaked over at my distorted face, and his softened. He pulled me into him in a hug, and whispered in my ear “you aren’t afraid of me?” and I was so shocked, that I froze. He misinterpreted it. He shoved away, scowled at the white board, and muttered, “Knew you were afraid”.
    “I am not! How could I be! What…” but class had started, and I couldn’t get any more out. He looked at me, saw the trust and truth radiating from my eyes, and relaxed into his chair. From then on, he walked with me and sat next to me, but didn’t talk to me.
    I was fine as long as I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. But he didn’t touch my hand again, or touch my hair, or anything, and this bothered me. So when we were walking home, I reached out to grab his hand. He flinched away, but I kept reaching. I got hold of his left hand, and held it tightly. It was warm as it always was, but it frightened me now, if he didn’t want to hold my hand he could just burn my hand off. But of course Ian wouldn’t do that, so I relaxed and walked right next to him.
    He chuckled, and squeezed my hand. I smiled wide at him, and he smiled back. When it came time for him to go down his street, he just kept walking with me. I’d never had a friend over to my house, especially not one I liked, in all the months that I’d known him. We walked up to my front steps, went in side and dropped our backpacks off in the hallway.
    I had a very small house, and I was an only child with a single mother, so it fit us very well. Ian looked around at my slightly messy house, and looked a little like he was at home. I started walking, not knowing what to do. Then Ian came behind me and whispered, “Where’s the kitchen? I’m hungry” and I laughed. OF CAURSE Ian was hungry and he never stopped eating! I lead him to the kitchen, where he immediately started raiding my refrigerator. I sat down at the small table, and watched him with a small smile on my face.
    He looked up, a slice of ham hanging out of his mouth, saw me smiling, and said “What?’ and the ham fell to the floor. I bursted out laughing and had to hunch over to catch my breath. I looked up when I was done laughing, and he was gone.
    “Ian?” I asked. He wasn’t in the kitchen. Where could he have gone?
    “In your room!” he called. That’s when I panicked. I hadn’t cleaned my room in a week. I rushed through the house, tripping over stuff on the floor, and finally made it to my room. I stared at him from my bedroom door. He was staring around my room with an amused look on his face. My room represented me; light, calm blue walls, and everything was a shade of either blue or green. You could hardly see that though because most of my walls were covered in posters and crap like that. Besides that, my room was disorganized, messy.
    “Sorry” I apologized, “It’s a little messy in here” and I blushed. He was staring at my walls, filled with my favorite paper items; posters, awards, drawings, cards. He turned toward me, and then sat on my bed.
    “Well, I like it” he said. “It’s got a nice homey feel to it” he sighed. His eyes got a dreamy look in them for a couple of seconds while he was staring at me, but then the expression was wiped from his face, and replaced with a cocky smile. “My room is cleaner,” he mocked.
    “Whatever” I muttered and sat down on my green beanbag. It was pretty big, and I sank in pretty far. I laughed quietly, and sat up a little. “My moms going to be here in about an hour, you can meat her then” I smiled. She’d been pestering me about it, but I doubt she’ll be happy that I had a boy alone in the house, though. My smile faded.
    “Sounds cool” he smiled. Then he saw that I was frowning and asked, “What?”
    “Well” I began; “My mom probably won’t be very happy that you were in the house with me without ‘parent supervision’ and I don’t know what to say to her” I fretted.
    “Oh” was all he said. And then he dropped his eyes before I could read what emotion there that had made him avoid my gaze. What I could see, though, was that he was blushing slightly. That made me think of something, what he would have heard in my sentence, and blushed too.
    “Well, what are we gonna do?” I asked casually. “Homework, talk…” I suggested. I was eager to hear about Friday, but I was trying not to show it.
    “How about homework? That way your mom won’t have anything to complain about” he was still staring down. “Ok” I said complacently. We did homework for a little bit. Turned out that I needed help, I hadn’t paid much attention in class today, and Ian helped me with what I had missed. It seemed that he was getting a kick out of it. When we finished, we just hung out.
    We were sprawled out on the floor surrounded by our homework and books, when I heard my mom’s car pull into the driveway. I was too mentally exhausted to remember why I had to get off the floor, so I just laid there, letting Ian play with my hair. It felt nice, and I was close to falling asleep right there on the carpet.
    “Molly?” my mom called. Ian was still playing with my hair, and that distracted me, and the reason to get off the floor escaped me again, so I yelled “In my room!” and went on laying. “You know you shouldn’t spend all of your afternoon in your room, its not healthy” she was saying, her voice getting closer. Then she was at my door, and I was myself again. I snapped up into a sitting position, and Ian sat up too. Strange, I thought he would have remembered about my mom, but like me, he’d been distracted. I looked at him, and he looked disoriented.
    He recovered himself, and stood up. He held out his hand and my mom took it, eyeing me. “Hello Mrs. Shepherds, my name is Ian Stelps” and then he dropped his hand.
    “Hello Ian” she said, then she looked at me again, her brown eyes startled and a bit crazed. “Molly? Could I see you in the kitchen?” I sighed, squeezed Ian’s hand, and followed her to the kitchen. There, she dropped her purse on the table, and spun around to face me. “Molly Marie Shepherds, who is that?” she demanded. I looked into her eyes, and all I saw was curiosity and surprise, no anger, so I answered.
    “That’s Ian,” I murmured. She pointed to her eyes and mouthed ‘what?’. I sighed. I didn’t want to discus this now. “I don’t know, there like mine, that’s all I know,” I muttered.
    “I can see that” she said quietly. “Why do you have him at our house ALONE” she said louder than before. I looked up at her; I had my story straight for this one.
    “We were doing homework,” I said lightly. “And we finished early so we just waited for you to come home” I said. Then reached for an apple, an excuse not to look at her. I heard her sigh, and I looked up automatically. She was staring at the kitchen doorway, and I said, “Can he stay for dinner?”. Her gaze flitted back to me, and then she caved. “OK” she sighed.
    “YAY!” I screamed. Then I skipped back to my room. “You wanna stay for dinner?” I asked him eagerly. I looked up at his face, and he was staring at me. I could see the answer before the words fall from his mouth.
    “Sure” he said casually, and I hugged him tighter. “What are we having?”
    “Spaghetti!” I squealed, “My moms specialty” and I sat back down on my bed and flopped backwards. That’s when I noticed that Ian wasn’t in the best of moods, and trying to hide it. “What’s wrong?” I asked anxiously. He was staring out my window, and he looked like he was upset about something. “Do you not like spaghetti?” I questioned. No answer. Humph. Well then. I walked over to him slowly, and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned toward me with a blank expression.
    “I can’t talk about you-know-what with your mom here” he murmured. OH. Then I realized it. He wanted to explain. Well that was sweet, but I was a patient girl when I wanted to be.
    “We can talk later” I promised. He searched my eyes for something, and I’m not sure what he found, but he liked what he saw. He sighed with a small smile on his face, and then went over to check what CD’s I had. I had not a lot, so it didn’t take him long to choose one and put it in. Seconds later, Chris Brown started singing out of my music player. I laughed when he turned toward me with one of his eyebrows raised.
    “Chris brown?” he asked. I nodded, still giggling. Then I got crazy and started rocking out to one of his songs. What I hadn’t seen was that my mom had appeared silently at my door, watching me rock out. She cleared her throat, and I spun around, embarrassed.
    “You guys wanna help me make dinner?” she asked. We both nodded and I skipped to the kitchen. She put me in charge of chopping stuff, and Ian in charge of the meat, after asking him if he was a vegetarian. He wasn’t. So I chopped, he simmered meat, and my mom made salad. It smelled wonderful in the tiny room.
    When the meat wasn’t cooking fast enough for Ian, I saw him discretely heat the pan with his hand, then say “Done Shelly”. My mother had asked him to call her by her real name. He looked over at me, and I was smiling and shaking my head. He mouthed ‘you saw that’ and I nodded. He sighed, but seemed happy that I didn’t run screaming out the door.
    After we were done eating, I walked him home. When we got to his road, it was time to say goodbye for the night. He leaned his head down to peck me on the cheek, but I was done with that. When he was near enough, I turned my head and kissed him on the lips. He froze in surprise, and then leaned away.
    It didn’t surprise me; his lips were like the rest of him, extremely warm. But what I didn’t expect was that I wanted to kiss him again, and soon. I reached up on my tippy-toes and pecked him on the lips again. This time he kissed me back. Then I jumped away, smiled wide at him, and skipped home.