I took another step back. “I can’t believe I was going to apologize to you. You’re making it so easy for them to break me. Leave me alone, all right? Just…” The sadness in me deepened, my own self-doubt filling my mind with the words Tori and her friends had tossed my way. They were right. I was pathetic. “Please just leave me alone,” I whispered, feeling defeated.

9 Levi

She was beyond annoyed with me. I felt shitty about it, too. I wasn’t trying to stress her out more, but when Tori came up to me asking me to eat lunch with her and her friends, I thought it was a perfect chance to get them to apologize to Aria.

I didn’t know why I felt a pull toward her. She was emotionally shut off from the world, but every now and then she would give me a small smile that made me think she didn’t want to be so alone.

Plus, I still missed Alabama, and something about her uniqueness reminded me of home.

Our music class headed to Mr. Harper’s classroom with our instruments. I was half surprised to see Aria sitting at her desk. For some reason I figured she would’ve changed classes and moved to Florida to get away from me.

I slid into the desk next to her and pulled out my fact sheet from the day before.

“Sorry…” She scrunched up her nose and turned to face me. “Sorry for flipping out in the hallway, and for calling you a creep yesterday. I was embarrassed and hurt.”

“No offense, Aria, but I think I’m the one who is supposed to be apologizing.”

She disagreed. “My emotions are just all over the place.” Crossing her legs on her seat, she sat like a pretzel. “It’s like, I’m still me, but…different.”

“Different can be good.”

“No. Not this kind of different.” Aria’s voice shook as she tried to control it. “Anyway, we should probably fill out this sheet today.”

I didn’t oppose the idea. Honestly I was just happy she was even speaking to me. I learned quite a bit about her and her family. Her middle name was Lauren. She loved pizza of any kind. Her mom was a doctor and her dad was a plumber. Her favorite type of art was abstract (I thought abstract was weird). When she talked, she had a small dimple in her left cheek. She didn’t tell me that fact, but I couldn’t help but notice.

I told her how I love egg rolls and bacon—not together, but I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea. My middle name was Wesley, football was my favorite sport to watch, and I only drank root beer.

“What does the tattoo on your hand mean?” she asked, looking at the eye sitting between my thumb and pointer finger.

“Oh, it’s for one of my favorite songs, ‘These Eyes’, by The Guess Who. My mom let me get this one and this one,” I pointed to the quill pen tattoo on my forearm, “for my birthday. The quill is a reminder of how much words mean to me. If there’s anything I love as much as the sound of music, it’s the words that come along with the songs.”

“That’s so cool. My parents would never let me get a tattoo.”

“Yeah…my mom’s a little bit different than most parents.” I bit into my bottom lip, not wanting to talk about Mom too much. She must have noticed my need for a switch in conversation, so she continued onto the next topic.

“Okay,” she said, glancing down at her sheet. “Special skills?”

“I’m a professional at the air guitar and lip syncing,” I said.

She snickered and placed her pencil down on the desk. “I’m not writing that.”

Arching an eyebrow, I asked why not.

“Because people aren’t professionals at air guitar and lip syncing.”

I smiled. “I definitely am a professional air guitarist and lip syncer.”

“Bull crap.”

It sounded like a challenge to me. I went digging through my backpack, which had at least a dozen of my favorite CDs inside. I pulled one out, walked over to Mr. Harper and asked if I could perform it. He agreed, allowing me to play the song on his computer. I stood in front of the classroom, tuning my invisible guitar.

Aria stared as if she thought I was insane, but that was no different from how she normally looked at me.

“10 A.M. Automatic,” by The Black Keys started playing, and I sat on top of Mr. Harper’s messy desk, and started to strum along. My fingers moved franticly, never missing an invisible string. When I started silently singing toward Aria, her cheeks blushed and her feet tapped against the floor to the music.

I hopped off of the desk and started moving around the room, singing to random girls, who giggled and twirled their hair. I lost myself in the music, feeling as if I was on stage playing in front of a real audience, strumming the guitar.

I felt everyone’s eyes on me, but only one pair of brown eyes really mattered. For the final verse of the song, I stood in front of Aria, playing the last chords, taking in the small grin on her lips.

Once I finished, the final bell of the day rang and everyone packed up their bags. A few girls walked up to me, telling me that I was great, and Connor made sure to mention the amount of chicks we were going to bang because of the air guitar, but I didn’t care what they were saying.

I wanted to know what Aria thought.

She picked up her pencil and wrote the words air guitarist and lip syncing under my special skills.

We were the last ones to leave the classroom, and we walked down the hallway quietly. She hugged a couple of books to her chest and when we walked outside, waiting in line for our turn to climb onto the bus, she stared at the sidewalk.