two
1608 Words
"What have you done?!" Tanya screamed, getting up abruptly and startling the people who sat near us. A few heads turned to look at our empty lunch table. Like always, it was just us two.
Tanya Gupta was one of the few people who were unaffected by my rumored iciness. And she was also one of the few that remained indifferent to a lot of other things.
She could be in a burning building and not lose her cool.
Let's say I was the trigger that made her lose her composure on a regular basis. I could be frustrating.
"What have you done, crazy head?" she repeated in toned down low voice, sitting down and smiling apologetically to the ones who were looking our way. "Are you out of your mind?"
"I didn't know what I was thinking!" I sunk my head in the lunch table. It was dirty and unhygienic, but I barely cared about that right now. "It just flew out of my mouth!"
"You need to learn how to keep that over talkative cynical mouth shut, Ivy," she sighed.
"It's as stubborn as I am," I whined. My stomach growled. In the heat of it all, I had forgotten to get my lunch plate. But I felt too lazy to walk all the way to the counter and wait in line for food.
"No," she rejected the thought immediately as if she had read my mind. "I'm not getting your plate for you. Not this time."
Lazily, I tore myself away from the lunch table and fighting gravitational pull, I made my way to the counter.
The thing about being a complete anti social entity, is that when you make your way to anywhere- people clear up the space for you.
I felt like Godzilla in New York. Oh people fear me! I'm the scary Ice Girl coming here to freeze you to death.
Yeah right.
But even Nikki and her bees didn't get that sort of treatment.
Being an anti social entity had its perks.
"Lunch A with Coke, please," I recited my order to the lunch lady, who, I could make out, was scared of me. It showed. Her hands trembled whenever she handed me my plate.
Did the people here really think that I was capable of freezing them to death?
That sort of a thing only happened in the Marvel universe. Or DC Comics, if you preferred Batman to Ironman.
"H-here you are," she stammered, handing me my lunch with the usual trembling. Drops of coke splattered on the plate.
"Thank you," I muttered, trying not sound offended. I hardly looked scary.
I wasn't extremely tall or short that I would attract attention. Nor did I have snake eyes like this other girl in my science class. I barely intimidated the kids who came to Carl's Ice Cream Parlor.
I sighed. Making my way back to the table, I felt like I lived in a sphere. Not a bubble, but an impenetrable sphere of a five feet radius.
No one entered.
"Was the lunch lady petrified again?" Tanya asked softly as soon as I sat down. I nodded, putting a piece of French fries in my mouth. "Let them be, Ivy. Things get better."
"It'll get worse when Nikki and the bees find out about my little lie," I glanced at their table. Nikki was glued to her arm candy, Kevin- who was as dumb as she was. He failed his senior year twice and is repeating. Again. Which is how Cody was in the same year as him.
Cody. Sigh. His perfect brown locks framed his boyish face perfectly. His eyes were as blue as the brightest summer sky. If you looked long enough, you'd see the hint of dark blue encircling his iris.
I had spoken to him once. And that's when I had decided that I would be the future Mrs. Cody Mathers.
So did some other girls.
Cody worked in Suzzane's Books, the bookstore next to Carl's. On Tuesdays and Fridays, I got to see him. On days, the owner's daughter worked at Suzzane's, she would stop by at the ice cream parlor and Cody would be the one to come and leave with her.
We would exchange a few words, and with his irresistible kissable smile he'd say- "catch ya later."
He was also one of the very few who was unfazed by my monster status.
Cody caught me staring and smiled. Being the awkward dork I was, I quickly looked away.
"You need to work on your smile, Ivy," Tanya observed, taking a sip of my coke. "You can't just look away every time Prince Charming smiles at you."
"Rather be an awkward teenager than a bee's prey," I returned. Cody Mathers was dating Chanel Rodney. They'd been going steady for three months, twenty days, and six hours. I knew because I insta-stalk him.
"Cody Mathers isn't the end of the world, you know," she shrugged. Tanya was a straight-A, violin playing, debate club president and chess master student. Despite all that logic and brains, what didn't work was the limbic system in her amygdala. Or was it the other way round?
Regardless, Tanya was what you would call a hot Indian beauty. Perfectly tanned skin, slender body, fats where it should be and coffee-like doe eyes. She got the looks, she got the brains. She just lacked feelings for any guy.
Last Valentine's, in spite of the fear that she hung out with the Human Blizzard and was in the bad books of Queen Bee, guys filled her locker with cards and roses.
I, on the other hand, got a cigarette lighter, and I didn't smoke. "To melt your iciness," Nikki had commented when she passed by. I took it in good humor.
"Now you're just drooling," she said, nonchalant. "Do you even get dreams at night? Or do you use them all up during the day?"
"Very funny, Tanya," I grumbled, getting up. I was done with my food and Tanya was done with her food and my Coke. "Where do these thoughts come from anyway?"
I turned around, still talking to her. "I just hope Mr. Reed gives us a day-"
I bumped into someone and my plate plastered on to a white shirt, right in front of me. Uh oh.
"Would you like to apologize or should I shove my plate on your shirt?" A slightly, okay- majorly accented male voice snapped.
I looked up to meet a pair of intensely weird grey eyes, like a brewing storm. The lips curled in a smug and mischievous way. Hair as dark as coal. Skin as white as snow. Hell, he could be Snow White's brother, if she ever had one.
A tiny silver stud shone from his left ear. And his eyebrows arched up in surprise and annoyance. I didn't know which feeling was more dominating.
His muscular hands (Ivy, stop noticing!) pushed aside my fingers that rested on the plate. Peeling the plate off of his shirt, he held it like it was an old Egyptian totem.
"Uh my bad?" I managed to say, pulling the plate back from him but he held it in a firm grip.
"Is that an apology?" he asked. His voice filled with sarcasm. "Things here are quite different from England."
I could hear that accent for the rest of my life.
"Come on now, Hunter," one of the guys standing beside him, spoke. "Get over your England already. It's been two years."
"In the process, mate," he turned to look at him. Tilting his head back to me, he smirked. "Haven't seen you around lately, blizzard. Things were getting warmer without you around."
Heck. Even he knew about that. Then again- Who didn't?
"Yeah," my usual contemptuous tone came back. "UNESCO called, they needed help with global warming."
He let out a little chuckle. I wanted to leave at that moment and give in to the light tugs Tanya kept giving me. But something about his eyes made me stay.
It's like you could get hypnotized in them.
"You're quite the human blizzard I've heard," he mused, interested. "Amusing."
And the reality shatters your fantasy. He was taunting me. Who did he think he was?
Wait.
Who was he, in the first place?
"Who are you, anyway?" I stared him down. I mean, up. He was really tall. Smirking, he looked down as if feigning sheepishness.
A series of gasps were emitted from the people who could hear us. And a chuckle from the guy who stood beside him.
"She doesn't know who Hunter McCarthy is?" I heard one astonished voice gasp.
Yes. I don't.
"I think the human blizzard has been away for too long."
Everyone needs a break once in a while, don't they?
"Here goes the thought that Hunter's hotness could melt the Ice Queen."
Who was to say who could melt my heart? Hunter McCarthy- oh my god. He was-
He was-
"There's this guy in school," Tanya had said once. "From England. Accent and all."
"What's so special about him?" I had asked.
What was so special about him was-
Why everyone was making a big deal out of him was-
He was the player.
The one guy who broke the hearts of half the school's girls population. He was, currently, working on the other half.
"You're the player," I blurted out. My stupid mouth, stay shut. "The serial dater."
He chuckled again, leaning in so I had a much clearer view of his handsome face. "The serial dater, you say?"
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- Writer
