Calyx

Amidst all my cleaning, I barely noticed Bia Dellnor, one of the teenagers that live on my street, walking by in the halls. My head rose, and I made my best attempt at greeting her. In the end, all I managed was the flick of my wrist, in what I hoped looked like a respectable hand wave.
However, Bia didn’t wave back.
She simply dropped her head and continued walking.

Sometimes I wonder about her. She and I, we used to be in the same class back in grades one through four. I remember in those day, she was very social. She used to walk around and chat up every kid in the class in what I assume was her best attempt at avoiding school work.
She was a lot more creative then most of the other kids in my class, I’ll give her that. When the others attempted to avoid work, they sat there drawing strange looking pencil etchings all over the sides of their work.
I believe I can safely say I was the only kid in grade three who actually did the work.
Of course, that’s just my belief. I could be wrong.

Just minutes after Bia left, I found myself standing in the middle of the room with an empty feeling jamming itself into my head. I hurriedly finished cleaning the office area and packed up my book bag.

On my way back home from school I decided I’d think up a subject for the extra column I had to work on.
There were easily a few topics I could write about. For example, I could write about cell phones in class, or the rising ricks of drugs and alcohol influence in teenagers. But then again, those seemed a tad too, serious.
High school students prefer to read about subjects that would interest them. Like, installing televisions in all the school class rooms
Of course, that would seem immature. I could always go for the classic ‘summer is here’ column that some kid always ends up writing around the end of the year, but that is too predictable, too boring and way too cheesy.
If I want to impress anyone, I’m going to have to come up with something different.

When I was about a block away from home, my cell phone began to buzz. I waited for a moment to pick up, just in case it was a wrong number [ I loath getting calls from people I don’t know ], but when it kept ringing, my curiosity got the better of me.

“ Hello?” My voice sounded strange, unlike in my head, and I realized that I was probably getting some form of a cold.
“Calyx? Hi, it’s me, Marcy.” There was a momentary pause where it sounded like that phone that dropped, but my ears were soon immersed in her voice again.
“Yeah. I’m just calling to tell you that you don’t have to write that extra column after all.”
“Oh?” I smiled, “ and why is that?”
On the other line, I could hear Marcy was just drying to tell me why. I could tell by the noise she made before she talked.
“Well,” she began. “You know Jason Tucker? He does the entertainment column for the paper, and he says that there’s this fair thing in town this week. He said if we needed another column that he’d be glad to go and write one about the fair.”
Marcy attempted to stifle a laugh.
“That’s great,” I answered.
“I know right?” Marcy giggled a bit, then stopped. Rather than asking what was so amusing, I waited for her to tell me on her own.
“Oh My God! Guess what I just saw?”
Her voice was drenched in excitement.
“What?” I asked.
“I was just walking home-“
“I thought you said you had to babysit or something.” I didn’t want to be rude, but she had said her mother wanted her to babysit. That is why she left, after all.
“Yeah, I’m on my way home to babysit. But anyway, I was just walking back and Matt Dawkins-You know Matt Dawkins right?” She stopped to make sure I as following. Which I was.
“Of course I know Matt Dawkins.” I smirked secretly to myself.
Matt Dawkins was one of the big ‘Jocks’ at our school. And despite our schools high academic requirements, Matt had always seemed to be on everyone’s good side.

“Whew. As I was saying, Matt Dawkins was mowing a lawn, and he looked over and saw me staring.”
In Marcy terms, this means he’s into her. In anyone elses terms, she might come off as slightly creepy.
“On no,” I consoled.
“On no?” Here I imagined her smiling and shaking her head like I’ve made a joke of some sort.
“You’ve got it all wrong. It’s more like OH YES!” Marcy was getting her worked up and I could just picture the saliva forming at the sides of her mouth as it sometimes does.
“He looked M way! He SAW me!” Marcy’s voice was getting louder.
I decided to play into her story. She’s want to keep going, but as usual, she wa waiting for me to push her to tell more.
“And..?”
“And then he waved at me. He WAVED!” Marcy sounded slightly over excited. I wanted to pat her on the head and give her a gold star for enthusiasm.
“Wow,” I commented, pretending to be as fazed by her story as she wanted me to be.
“I know.”
There was a pause on her end of the phone where it sounded like a voice was calling to Marcy. The voice sounded male. Older, almost. But I knew better than to play into the Jock’s over developed voice. Marcy’s voice came back on the phone.
“Hey, um, I’ve got to go now, but I’ll talk to you later, ‘kay?”
“Alright. Bye.” I hung up quickly

As soon as I reached my porch, my phone began to buzz. Again. Wonderful.

“Hello?” I tried to sound pleased to be getting a call, bu the truth was, I had a lot of studying to get done, and if people kept calling me, I’d never even get inside my house, let alone get to studying.
“Hey, um, it’s Jason. Jason Tucker? I write the entertainment column for the school newspaper.”
Silence.
“Oh, Jason, hi.”
“Is this a bad time?”
Yes.
“Not at all. What’s up?”
“Oh, well I was just calling to let you know that I’m going to do that last column for the newspaper because there’s this fair in town and-” He stopped talking for a while and I listened to his breathing.
“Did Marcy already tell you?” He sounded slightly embarrassed.
“Sort of yes.”
“Oh.”
More silence.
“Um, is that all? Because I sort of have to study for exams. No offence. I mean, I’d love to keep talking and all, but..” I trailed off.
Jason understood. He was an overachiever too.
“Yeah no I understand. Um, actually, I wanted to ask, do you maybe wanna go to the fair with me? I hear it’s a load of fun. They even have fortune tellers there.” Jason sounded really excited.
“Mm, I don’t know. The whole fair isn’t really my thing. Plus I’m probably going to be studying during that time, so, yeah.” I mentally kicked myself for being to rude about this. I probably just broke Jason’s heart. I am aware he has a bit of a crush on me. Even if he is a year older than me…

“Ah, well, next time.” I could tell her was smiling on the other end, so I didn’t feel as guilty for turning him down.
“Yeah. Next time. Maybe we can see a movie in the summer or something.” I did my best to sound inviting, which wasn’t difficult seeing as I was a fairly good actress.
“Yeah, a movie sounds nice. Maybe I’ll call you in the summer then.”
“Mmkay. I’ll talk to you then.”
“Alright, good luck studying, bye.”

The phone went dead and I smiled to myself. Now I could get home and relax. Well, sort of. I still had to study for my math exams-which were on Monday- and my English exam-on Tuesday- but other than that, I was in the clear.
Although, I still had a few extra credit projects to work on, and I was going to get a head start on my studying for my Language Arts exams which was on Friday… ugh. Never mind.
No relaxing for Calyx.
I have work to accomplish. And there is no way on this earth that I will slack off until everything is done. And I mean absolutely everything.