Love Chronicles of a Sixteen Year Old HS Student

Disclaimer: Uh…no but I own a pair of pants and two pairs of shoes made by Candies. Does that count?

Chapter 3: Looking At Stars


Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul
But I do love thee! And when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again.
~Othello Act 3: Scene 3; Lines 100-102


A couple days later I was after school waiting in the counseling office. I had had a really hard day with some other students in a class I was taking, and ended up bursting into tears and running from the room. They were the heads of the class and always made sure to obnoxiously yell out the answers and then make fun of me for not saying them quicker.

That day I decided that I just didn’t want to listen anymore so I left. It was at the end of the day, I didn’t have to worry about any other classes. I fell asleep in my counselor’s room until school ended and then lay down on the couch in the reception room. There wasn’t any theater practice that day but my mom couldn’t pick me up until five for her own reasons. So I continued to lay there and waited for six to come.

As I did, Sesshomaru walked in and began to use the photocopier. Because of the way the room was situated, he didn’t see me but I could see him. For some reason, I just watched him, afraid of saying hello. He stayed for all of three minutes before leaving, and seconds later I still sat there debating about going after him or not. A thousand thoughts flooded my mind. Should I let him go? What would I say if I caught up to him? Was he busy? Would he get angry if I followed him?

Finally, I got up and ran through the door, looking down the hallway to see where he’d turned. He wasn’t there, and saddened, I slowly began to walk down the empty hall. When I got to the end I stood there - no shoes on, just socks - my hair limp around my shoulders as I gloomily looked around for him.

He wasn’t there.

I felt like a lost puppy who had no hope of finding its owner and sadly, I turned and began my walk back up the hallway to the counseling room. I was almost to the corner when I heard someone’s footsteps down the hall.

Turning, I saw Sesshomaru.

Shyly, I waved, and he answered with a nod. I waited for him to catch up then glanced around at anything but him, trying to think of what to say.

“Um…can I hang out with you? My mom wont be here until five…” I said quietly, timidly brushing my long dark hair behind me.

He shrugged, a neutral smile on his face.

“I guess. I’m heading for the Ao Kutsurogi now.”

I looked up at him, my face flushing excitedly.

“Oh okay! I’ll meet you down there. I gotta’ get my stuff.”

He nodded and we went our separate ways.

Grabbing my bag and shoes, I hurried down to meet him in the hallway where we ended up relocating to another building outside. It was our schools hockey rink, sometimes used for graduation if the weather was to bad to have it outside.

As we walked, my hands dug themselves into my pockets, my head bowing down to keep the wind from my eyes. When we had walked the short distance there and got inside, we stared at the ice where a couple people were busy skating around with their children. I smiled at them, laughing when one of the adults rather then their children fell on the slick ice.

“I was always horrible at sports in middle school…people used to make fun of me because I could never run as fast or keep a goal from being scored…”

He nodded and settled his shoulder against the glass doors that led into the rink and looked behind him at the skating people.

“Yes. I never excelled at them either. I simply practiced more then others.”

“You were horrible weren’t you?”

He looked at me with a mocking expression of deeply seated insult.

“I never said that.”

I laughed, my body feeling like it had just landed on cloud nine being there with him, alone, away from the other people who made me feel like simple trash.

‘I’m glad I went after him.’

“I’ve had a bad past with sports.” I said regretfully, watching one of the mothers tentatively push away from the thick plastic wall to try and skate in the middle of the ice.

“In fifth grade my coach openly shunned me when I was on the basketball team. She’d point me out as an example of what everyone didn’t want to do. In eighth, I did track and someone accidentally let loose a discus into the middle of my back.” I grinned.

“The doctor said it would have broken it had it hit any harder about a quarter of an inch down. Then freshman year, I decided I wanted to do something different and started doing the dance squad, and it’s worked pretty well.”

“When I first started Hockey…” He started, pausing and looking out over the ice again. “…they never let me play I was so inadequate. The same was for soccer, and the other sports I tried doing. They said that I was not competitive enough to be a good athlete.”

I frowned in confusion.

“But your good now.”

He smiled and laughed.

“By your standards, yes.”

“Oh…but I think you’re-”

“SESSHOMARU NII-CHAN!”

Seeing Sesshomaru suddenly crouch down, his arms opening as if to receive something, I turned, watching as a little girl no older then six ran past me into them. Surprised, I watched in amazement as he easily lifted her up into the air, making her squeal before he settled her on his shoulders, kissing her forehead as she squealed in delight and leaned forwards over him.

A shock of something I’d never felt before passed through my entire body at the sight, and a wave of the emotion I felt for him rolled me over like a bowling ball through all the pins.

“Rin-chan! Where is mom?”

The little girl laughed and pointed past me to a shorter version of Sesshomaru just as she walked inside.

“This is my little sister.” Sesshomaru said with a smile, adjusting the girl slightly before putting her down on the ground.

I blushed and said hi to her and she looked at me before abruptly turning and running to her mother. Embarrassed, I looked away and shouldered my backpack.

“I gotta go…it’s close to six probably.”

“All right. I will see you in theatre then.”

“Yep!” And with a grin that I didn’t quite feel, I left the rink and entered out into the cold windy air to sure enough see my mom parked out in the school parking lot.

‘I’m really glad I went after him.’ Was all I could think of as I walked towards her, looking over my shoulder and seeing Sesshomaru’s outline as he lifted his little sister up in the air once more.

*****

I looked out the window of my Geometry class and instantly began daydreaming about our last performance for the play we’d been working on for the past two months. As stressful at times as it had been, we’d all had such a great time…all of us that was except me because-

“HIGURASHI!”

“The Quadratic formula.” I said despondently, glancing at my geometry teacher simply because I would have been berated otherwise before looking back outside. Huffing, my teacher whacked the board with an erasable marker, irritated but unable to properly chastise me since I had answered the question corrctly.

I sighed, once again loosing myself in the memories of theatre. Everything about it was wonderful-the costumes, the people, the sounds, the laughter, the late nights, all of it…but nothing had been as great as when we had done the performance and the actors had walked out after the curtain call to get congratulated by everyone they knew who’d came. For three nights, I made sure everyone had everything they needed, made sure things were clean, organized, and kept on track…and every performance, I would come out and no one would say a thing to me. Either it was because no one recognized me because of my past unsocial behavior or just because it was hell week and everyone was just stressed I didn’t know…but made me feel so unfulfilled either way. It made me want to scream out so that someone would at least look at me. But I didn’t, because in the real world that’s wasn’t how things were done, and so no one did.

I sighed again, looking back at my teacher in her colorful red sweater, waving a ruler like it was some kind of mace as she tapped an smacked and pointed at different equations on the dry-erase board. I answered another one of her questions without any difficulty at all and looked out once more at the snow covered grounds.

I remembered sitting out on the stage and stared out and watching as everyone got their praise.

I didn’t begrudge them that…couldn’t. They deserved it. All of them deserved it. And I was able to rise out of my sadness to at least be the better person for knowing it even if in the long run it did nothing for me but leave me feeling hollow, the sour taste of “you’re a good person” and “good guys finish last” echoing through my mind.

And so I’d clapped for them and when everyone continued to ignore me, I simply went backstage, cleaned everything up and left. I had done my duty and now it was no longer my place to stay.

Getting up from my seat, I wrote a complex equation on the board about how obtuse triangles differed from acute triangles and then sat back down, my chin resting on my folded arms.

The first two nights of our performance had been like that, and when the third night came, I’d expected only the same to happen. I only staid for a few moments after the curtain closed before slowly trudging back to the makeup room. But what I hadn’t known was that someone had followed.

My eyes became glassy, losing focus as I thought about what had happened next.

“Hey. We did it, we’re alive.” Sesshomaru had said jokingly, walking in to get his street clothes from the clothing racks. I hadn’t been able to look at him more then a second before my gaze had crashed down to the floor.

I had never had a healthy amount of self-confidence, and right then, I’d nearly none. And then, he stepped in front of me, and without even thinking about it, I put my arms up and hugged him. I buried my face into his shoulder, closing my eyes with the soothing sensation the action brought me. He smelled like peppermint.

But the thing that made me become still was realized only after we had broken away.

I hadn’t felt any fear with the gesture; with the closeness we had just shared. I had always felt fear when touching the opposite sex… every single one ever since I was twelve. Except him. Except Sesshomaru.

“You did great tonight.” He said softly to me. And that was all he said because after that he turned and was gone, me staring after him with my senses still tingling in wonderment at the smell of peppermint and the comfort it had brought me.

The sudden obnoxious sound of the bell singing the end of class made me jump and standing, I quickly grabbed my books and left, easily maneuvering my way through the crowded hallways to my next class.