The Understorey, Book One of The Leaving Series (2 page)

Mrs. Kitt bent to pick up her papers. She was
a short, round woman with short brown hair. Her wardrobe was at
least thirty years old and you could hear her coming from a mile
away by the swish, swish, swish of the friction between her
panty-hosed legs. She was a suspicious woman but, by far, the
nicest teacher in the entire school. She may not have trusted
everyone but she always gave them the benefit of the doubt. Oh, and
she was Jules’ mom’s best friend. Yikes.

I flinched when Jules went to help her but
accidentally stepped on a sheet and went tumbling onto her back.
Her hair tossed around her as she fell flat to the tile floor,
perfectly framing her face. I bent over her.
The Future
Cast
, I mouthed, reading her shirt, a sharp ping resonating in
my chest. They were literally my favorite band.

“You should do shampoo commercials, Jules,” I
teased, holding out my hand.

    “Huh?” She asked,
confused, but keeping her eyes with mine.
    “I said, you should do shampoo commercials,”
teasing her by pronouncing each word with perfect clarity.
    “Yeah. Right.”
She refused my hand. Apparently, she didn’t need my help. When she
stood, her honeysuckle-orange scent drenched my senses and I nearly
fell over Mrs. Kitt.

“Thanks for the compliment, though,” she
contritely conceded, knowing how impolite she had been and trying
to remedy how obviously uncomfortable that had made her.

    She bent to help Mrs. Kitt
while I stood dumb and disabled by her unconscious yet incredible
assault on my senses.
Scrambling, Jules apologized, “I’m
so
sorry Mrs. Kitt! I
wasn’t paying attention and........”
 “Oh darlin’, it’s no big deal,” Mrs. Kitt sang.
Jules’ voice woke me from my catatonic state. I threw myself down
onto the floor next to both women and helped them with the spill,
purposefully reaching for the same paper Jules was in order to
graze her hand. Little did I know the literal and figurative
cataclysmic results of such a touch.

A potent, electric shock raced through us and
we yanked our hands away. Our touch sent a warm blaze of sparkling
flash from our connected fingertips, spreading a tangled mesh of
lit pressure that briefly painted the walls around us. It lasted
only a second yet permanently altered me. Something huge and very
unexplainable had definitely just happened.

When all the worksheets were gathered, Jules
and I straightened our backs but settled softly into our own bodies
once our eyes met again, the anxiety eroding from our chests with
each second that passed. We stayed knelt on the floor just staring
at one another like idiots. We were dumbstruck by the physical
reaction of our very physical touch and bewildered beyond belief at
the lack of reaction from our classmates. What were we supposed to
do though? Ask everyone why their lack of response was about as
dull as watching bread bake?

The entire class was already seated and Mrs.
Kitt had to clear her throat to ask us if we would mind sitting in
our own desks. That was the rest of the class’ cue to laugh
hysterically. I playfully slapped the back of my buddy Matthew
Tanen’s head as I walked by. We chose desks next to one another,
but kept our gazes toward Mrs. Kitt to avoid anymore suspicion. If
Jules’ thoughts had been anything like mine, she had to have been
scared out of her mind.

When class was over, I gathered all of my
things and waited for Jules to gather hers, assuming she and I were
going to talk, but to my surprise she bolted for the door
instead.

I chased after her in the hallway.

“Jules!”

“My name isn’t Jules. It’s Julia,” she said
over her shoulder, picking up her pace.

“Julia, stop running will ya’?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s hard to run and talk.”

“Well, you see, I don’t want to talk. I guess
that means I can run all I want.”

“Wait a minute!”

I pulled her body short by grabbing her arm.
The lightning bolt cracked and whipped its way around us, darkening
the hall, only jagged shards of electricity illuminating our faces.
I pulled my hand away in a slight daze and watched as she fled
toward the lunchroom.
Crap.
   
I walked into the cafeteria, nodding to
those who said hello, never allowing my stare to stray far from
Jules. I sat next to Jesse and the other varsity seniors on the
football team. To my dread, five of the cheerleaders, including
Taylor Williams, shared the line of tables we all sat at but I did
my best to ignore them.

Conversations erupted around me but I was in
my own world. Jules sat on her own. She looked relaxed but I knew
it had to be an act. Her legs rested on the chair next to her and
she was reading a book. A tiny, rapid bounce in her right knee
exposed her true feelings.

Anxiety. That’s what it is.
Jules
shakes her head.
Are you sure about that? No, not anxiety, she
hates you dude. Can you blame her? You never bothered talking to
her before. Why now?........Wait, wait, wait. Whatever that was in
the hallway and classroom definitely meant something. Stupid, she’s
just scared, frightened is all. It’s an amazing thing, our shared
zap.

Be honest with yourself, you’re not really
that alarmed by it. It feels natural. Maybe she’s concerned about
what it means. Yeah, shaken up. It’s got nothing to do with you
personally.

Did you see how quickly she ran away from
you though? She genuinely can’t stand you man. Every chance she got
she pushed you away. She hates you.
I sighed out loud.
I
need her not to hate me. What can I do to get her not to hate me?
How can I get her to stop detesting me and start listening to me?
How should I approach her?

Jules looked up and caught me staring. I
smiled crookedly and raised a weary hand but she rolled her eyes at
me and returned to her book. She shifted her chair so her back
would face me.
Wait a minute. Wait just a gosh darn minute! What
is wrong with you dummy? Why do you need
her
not to hate
you
? Why should
you
care?........Yeah. I don’t care! She
doesn’t want to talk to me? I don’t want to talk to her!

I folded my arms in resolution. She leaned
her elbow on the table beside her and started looping a strand of
hair through her finger. She sighed and sat up straight. Her hair
slid across the top of the chair and fell across her lovely
back
............I really,
really
need to talk to
her.

I confirmed it was all an act when I took
note that she hadn’t turned a page in ten minutes. I would have
given anything to know what she was thinking. I readied myself for
the rebuff I’d get when I walked over to her in three, two,
one......

“Dude? Where are you?” Jesse asked, wrapping
his knuckles on my head.

I tossed my head back from his reach and
looked his way. He was really starting to annoy me lately. Maybe I
was spending too much time with him. The difference between
medicine and poison is in the dose right?
    “I’m here,” I said.
    “No, you’re not. What is up with you?”
    “Nothing,” I said, turning my stare back to
where Jules sat.
She wasn’t there and I got up in a panic.
    “Uh, see you later. I gotta’ go.”
    “What? What’s up with you!” He shouted as I
escaped the cafeteria.

I pounced through the double doors, peering
down the center hall, the left, and then the right. She was gone.
My shoulders slumped at the loss.
Until tomorrow Julia
Jacobs.

    The following day I found out that I shared
neither my first nor second class with Jules. I wanted to see her
so badly that I was seriously considering ditching third period of
the second day of school just to search for her. I decided against
it though. Mainly, I chickened out. No sense in getting detention
unless Jules was going to be there right? I compromised with reason
and decided that right after lunch I would convince Millie in the
office to let me look at Jules’ schedule, bribe her if I had
to.

I walked into the cafeteria resigned to my
plan but those plans promptly fizzled once I saw Jules sitting at
her table all by herself again. She had a sack of carrots on her
lap and her feet, once again, rested on the chair beside her. I got
a small kick out of the fact that it was how she liked to sit, sort
of unashamed. That’s what it was. She was brazen. She had her nose
buried in yet another book. When I got closer I noticed it was
George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. I loved that book. Boy, was
she exasperating to me.
That’s it. No more,
I thought. I
walked to her table and sat in the chair across from her.

“I love that book,” I said.

Look at me,
I wordlessly demanded,
swallowing hard.
I’m sweating. Oh no. I’m nervous. Very, very
nervous.
I wiped sweat from my forehead and felt my longish
hair stick to it. She didn’t even look at me, let alone respond.
So, it was going to be like that.
    “Carrots, huh?” I asked, obviously
reaching.
She rolled her eyes.
    “Those are good for the eyes, I’ve heard. I see
they’ve done wonders for your teeth too. Texas A&M did that
study a few years ago. Did you hear about it?”

She didn’t respond.

“No? Well a few years ago they developed a
carrot that helps people absorb forty one percent more calcium than
when they consume a regular carrot. Interesting right? Genetically
altered vegetables?”
No reply.
“I certainly found that interesting,” I said, laughing nervously.
“You may not, or maybe you did, I’m not sure. It’s certainly
something a braniac should find interesting. You’re a braniac,
right? I mean, you’re always reading, so I assume. Not that I claim
to be a braniac or anything. I’m of pretty average intelligence, I
think.”
I was drowning.

“Yeah, so,” I continued, digging my
embarrassment hole deeper. Hell, it was so deep I could bury myself
in it. Good thing, too. I wanted to be buried. “I heard they
collaborated with Baylor’s College of Medicine in Houston.”
Nothing. I was beginning to think the book was attached to her
nose. “Houston’s a pretty crazy town or so I’ve heard. Supposedly
the humidity is heck on girls’ hair. Your hair doesn’t seem to take
on that much humidity. I’ve never seen it frizz anyway.”

I drummed my fingertips on the table.
    “As I was saying,” I said digging my grave
further than needed, might as well go for gold here, “it’s
obviously done wonders for your teeth.”
She stopped her reading and scanned my eyes.
Stop talking!
I
commanded myself.
    “Yeah, your teeth are big and a pretty white.”
See, that wasn’t so bad.
“You could mistake them for a
horse’s.”
Nice, very nice.
I nervously laughed. She didn’t. When I was nervous, I resorted to
inadvertent insults.

She looked at me but turned her focus back on
her book. Sweat was dripping down my neck. I carried my fingers
through my hair and down the nape to remove any evidence of my
impending social death. No sense in letting her see the physical
evidence as well as the emotional proof that I was drowning.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to compare your
teeth to a horse’s. I was only trying to point out how large they
were. That is, I mean to say, that they are larger than most
people’s. But! Perfectly proportionate to your face. Your face
isn’t huge or anything! Your face seems pretty average in its
proportions. Yes, very well proportioned.” I sighed deeply. “What I
meant to say is that you have very beautiful teeth.”

And, scene. Very good job Mr. Gray. Your
audience has accepted you for the idiot that you are. Look forward
to being typecast as the bumbling fool from this point on.

My throat was dryer than a bone. I yanked my
bottled water from my bag and downed half of it. She refused to
even look at me.

    “Jules,” I said, catching
my breath.
    “Julia,” she corrected me.
    “
Julia
, obviously I’m an idiot. All I
want to do is talk to you. It’s extremely hard for me to talk to
you.”
    “Then you should stop.”
    “But I can’t.”
    “But you should.”
She sat up and sighed loudly, collected her belongings and left the
cafeteria.

I sat back in my chair. I had no idea what
had just happened. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Nothing
came out how I’d planned them. I couldn’t stop vomiting the worst
conversation I had ever had. I didn’t understand. I
never
had trouble talking to girls, ever. Granted, I never shared a
literal lightning bolt with one of them or was ever really
interested in one but, just the same, I never had trouble speaking
with them. I knew Jules was going to be trouble. She was going to
give me the fight of my life but I decided right then and there
that I was not going to give up. The next time I saw her, I knew
exactly how I was going to talk to her.

Third period I had band and it gave me a
chance to calm down a little bit, for which I was grateful and
allowed me to go to my last class of the day, chemistry, a little
bit more relaxed until I walked through the door to the classroom.
I was immediately crushed with borderline hysteria. I gulped a
breath and slid past Julia who sat at a lab table in the center of
class. I chose a table in the very back and sat with Sawyer Tuttle,
whom everyone just called Tut. He nodded a hello and I nodded back.
I set all my stuff down and just watched her.

She reached for her bag on the ground and her
hair gracefully slid across her shoulders and back as she pulled it
onto the table. She opened the bag’s flap and felt around inside
for her notebook and pen and pencil. She closed the flap and laid
the bag back onto the floor but as she let the bag slide off her
arm and fall to the linoleum she glanced behind her to see if I was
watching. I smiled and she quickly turned her head back to the
front of the classroom. She looked. That was enough for me.