ONE
1120 Words
Kayla!", I hear someone yell from down the hallway.
Turning I see Baron, my childhood friend running full speed towards me, zigzagging through the few people in he hallway.
" Kayla!!", he yells again, coming to a halt by my locker.
" Be calm boy", I say to him straightening his upturned collar.
" Come over", he says inhaling short bursts of air.
He's fit, but what's this incompetence? I think letting out a laugh.
" What's wrong? I have not even asked you anything yet and you're laughing already", he says a dismayed look creeping onto his face.
" You exercise don't you?", I ask, although I already know. I join him most days when I can.
Three out of ten times.
" That's stupid. You know I do", he says, " I'm sorry", he immediately corrected, plastering a wide grin on his lips.
Ohhh, he wants something.
" What do you want?"
" Come over. Please", he pleads with a pout on his lips.
" I forgot to ask you when mum told me to. It has been like a week since she asked you over", he says, his eyes slanting like they most times do when he wants something from people close to him.
" Please Kayla", he says tugging gently on a stray strand of hair that had escaped the bun I threw it in about five hours ago.
"Do that one more time and I'd never come over again", I softly whisper to him, locking my locker with an extra padlock.
The rise of theft and vandalism in school lately was disturbing.
Heaven forbid anyone gets to know the content of my locker.
Mouthing a "What!", at the people who looked at me securing my locker with a padlock, I finally gave Baron my full attention.
" She's cooking?"
" Yes."
"What?"
"Spaghetti", he revealed, a sly smile creeping onto his lips.
" I'd tell her you'll be over", he shot off, whipping out his cell phone.
"s**t head, don't do that just yet", I say, grabbing the arm holding his phone, " You know what today is."
" No, no I don't", he said, with a slight shake of his head.
" Okay, mum's buying take out", I say placing the last textbook in my arm inside my sling bag.
" Sorry, sorry", he begged blocking my path with his larger frame.
" Yeah I know what today is, but please. Can't you for once help me out? Mum thinks we have something going on", he said.
"Well, we obviously don't", he quickly said, when I stopped right in my tracks, " we wouldn't ever in a million years work, you're weird and I'm a bit less weird. That's not a good combination."
" Anyway, the girl she has lined up for me to date is not in any way my taste. So, please come", he said, tugging repeatedly on my hand this time around.
"Right, I can do that. Anything for you Bay", I said patting his midriff, laughing as I walked out the school to text mum.
KAYLA: Mum, I can't make it home, for booked tonight. Baron made this stupid mistake and I have to go over to his place to save his ass.
"Well, you're not exactly saving my ass", he muttered from over my shoulder, his breath ruffling my hair and tickling me.
" Piss off Baron", I said tucking my cell phone into my bag.
We were probably the only two in this school who didn't have cars although we knew how to drive. Of our own will of course.
A part of our parents also actually.
My mum would not for any reason see me drive my own car, while Baron's mum threw a fit the last time she caught Baron behind the wheel of a friend's car.
Walking in the streets, the fall wind blew my hair back teasing the elastic I had used to hold it in place.
"Just take it off", Baron said from behind me, his hand reaching up to do just that for me.
" Thanks", I said, holding out my palm for the elastic lest I see it in the hair of his girlfriend.
" Let me have it."
I turned to him, and stared for a bit. He wasn't joking, the fool.
" Hell no", I scoffed, yanking it away from him. " Remember the last one I let you have? "
"'Despite you wondering if you were okay in the head '", he drawled.
"Yes, and guess where I saw it next?"
He shot me a look. " Do we really have to do this?" "Ciara."
" Yeah, Baron.Ciara."
" That was ages ago, Kayla." He mumbled, trying to take my backpack from me. " You should let it go already."
" I will when you stop getting with just anyone Baron."
Then, I'd let a lot of things go.
The boy had had not less than three 'babies' since we began the new school year.
Seven months ago.
" That'll never happen." They both became silent, the honk of cars piercing the bubble they walked in.
Baron, surprisingly had always wanted to wait for the right one. Me on the other hand, I wasn't content to wait for the right one. I looked for the right one. I would dig through rubble to find the right one.
In fact, I was doing that already. The only problem was, the right one was shrouded in the somber fabric of black and hidden behind a misty car window. My right one had no name, not even an eyelash that I recognized, and lately, I'd begun to think that my right one was just a figment of my tormented mind.
Someone I made up in the moment the casket was lowered into the ground. Someone to lean on, and expose all painful secrets I couldn't bear to tell a soul.
I glanced at Baron and caught his cheeks the faintest shade of red.
"You want the right one?" I couldn't even tell Baron those secrets, because for the first time in our lives, he wouldn't understand the pain I went through. No one would.
" Yes." His face was stony as he looked ahead to the little square that demarcated our house from his. He always called that place 'The Zone'.
" Then look for her", I told him, squeezing his hand a little as I walked ahead into my own house.
" And don't make her embarrassed when she finally comes by scores of cheap things who had barely just filled a space."
" I'll come pick you up by six, Green."
" I'll be waiting", I grinned at him.
- Writer
