Garfield stared with a look of annoyance at the pile of clothes he had just taken off in exchange for a plain t-shirt and flannel pajama pants he found near his bed. Though, secretly he knew he couldn't blame her for not reacting the way he had hoped.
It started a week ago, during one of their lectures during his film study course. As Halloween was quickly approaching, his professor had been playing horror movies. The one they watched that day had been particularly scary, as during it many of his peers were squealing or jumping in their seats in complete fear. However, not everyone was shaking, and the professor noticed this.
"Well, the film apparently succeeded to do its job," The professor smiled at everyone's reaction. "It seemed to do its job for everyone...except for you." The professor had pointed to a pale girl in a dark blue hoodie that sat next to Garfield. Everyone turned to look. "Why aren't you quivering in your shoes?"
"I don't get scared. It's pointless. Besides, it's just a movie." She said in a tedious tone. Garfield gawked at her.
"It's not just a movie! It's Wicked Scary!" Garfield proclaimed.
"It's not that scary. Half the things that happened in the movie only happened because the characters decided to make retarded choices. Karma sucks." That was the last sentence that was said before the bell rang, signaling the end of class. Garfield wasn't surprised. The pale girl, whose name was Raven, seemed to be the Goth type. Always wearing dark clothing which goes with her pin straight black hair and usually is seen hanging out in the corner of the library or some depressing cafe, it'd probably make more sense believing she liked the movie.
Anyway, that wasn't the end of it. It was only the beginning, according to Garfield. She represented a challenge. Garfield's most important mission as of right now was to scare the living crap out of her.
He tried to do so for the past week. Her roommate- Kori Anders -willfully became an accomplice as she too has never seen Raven express emotion other than anger for when Kori invites her boyfriend over and they get a little too loud. Kori would text Raven's schedule so he could plan the perfect costume and the perfect time to come over and try to get her to scream. Obviously, it hasn't been working. Halloween was now only three days away and so far, Garfield is getting nowhere, so he decides to step his game up.
The next day, he takes Kori out for breakfast.
"I honestly don't know if she is the afraid of anything," Kori says groggily. Going out to eat at IHOP at seven in the morning wasn't part of her schedule, as she only was able to throw on a light pink jacket over her pajama tank to match her pink sweatpants and flip flops she had hastily stumbled into before Garfield pulled her out the door. She ran her fingers through her messy red hair for the seventh time to keep it out of her face. "Raven has never shown any indication."
"Everyone is afraid of something," Garfield said thoughtfully. After a gap of silence between them, the only sound coming from Kori eating the breakfast Garfield offered to pay for, Garfield dropped his unruly blonde head on the wooden table.
"I've been a clown, a polar bear, even that chick from the grudge, and each time she just raised her eyebrow and shut the door in my face."
"How were you able to be the girl from the grudge?"
"It was very difficult, let's just say." Another gap of silence. Kori nudged Garfield's head and smiled down at him when he glanced up at her from his side.
"Is it the possible you could perhaps scare her in a more progressive way? Like maybe do the mind-messing for a little?" Kori suggested lightly. Garfield picked his head up from off the table.
"I'm listening."
"I was suggesting more of a haunting type thing. Like move some of her stuff around our dorm, or maybe wake her up by opening doors and the like, and if she goes up to investigate, the nobody is there." Kori opened her eyes wide and wiggled her fingers for emphasis.
"I can give you my spare key, as long as you give it back. May I also suggest scaring her on the night of Halloween? I will be with my boyfriend, and she is staying in. All by herself." Kori snickered as she slid the spare key across the table into Garfield's hands.
Kori's idea was perfect. As soon as they got back from IHOP, Garfield followed Kori inside her dorm, now with the knowledge that Raven usually left early in the morning and often did not return until mid-day, he got started on his intentions immediately.
He took one Raven's coffee mug that had been placed neatly next to a kettle on the stove and placed it on a windowsill. He then sauntered into Raven's room, took a book from the organized bookcase, and placed it between the mattresses of her huge bed. After that, he went into Raven's closet, snatched one of her many blue hoodies, and put it on the glass table located in the living room. Satisfied with himself, he left Kori's and Raven's dorm for that day.
Kori had reported that Raven has been her usual self, despite second-guessing herself a little more often than normal. It was now afternoon the next day and Garfield visited their room once again that morning, this time moving her iPod in one of the living room couch cushions from where it rested on her desk, her school books into the corner of her closet instead of the very top of the bookcase, and her small, hand-held mirror underneath the TV stand.
On the morning of Halloween, Garfield had snuck into Raven and Kori's dorm room once again, of course with Kori's permission. Garfield had checked earlier that morning if Raven was in the school library, to which of course she was. Kori had left to the shopping mall and was planning to spend the day and night at her boyfriend's. Figuring that Raven would not be back for a couple hours, he got comfortable. His plan for the day was to hang out in Kori's room, knowing Raven wouldn't go in there, and promptly mess with Raven the entire day. He wasn't sure just how he was going to pull it off, but decided that he best came up with plans and the like when in the heat of the moment, and to just wing it.
However, he did come prepared. He had brought his charger, a tablet and his phone, snacks and drinks, and of course his costume he spent all night working on. Garfield took three more of Raven's things and put them in odd places around the suite. A couple hours after he set up camp in Kori's bedroom, Raven had come back from the library.
When she had first arrived, Garfield spent a whole hour hiding underneath Kori's bed, afraid to make a sound, any indicator that might give Raven a reason to search Kori's bedroom. However, he soon learned to relax and resorted to watching Netflix on his tablet using his earphones. The few times he heard Raven leave the dorm, most likely to use the bathroom at the end of the hallway, he moved something else that she was currently using. For example, the mug she was drinking was moved back next to her kettle, then he went back into Kori's room.
It was a few hours into his mission he realized he hadn't thought it through. He had to go to the bathroom. He did consider climbing out of Kori's window and scaling the building to the student balcony, but concluded he'd look like a fool and it was too much work anyway, so the next time Raven left to go get something from the vending machines, he ran to the bathroom and speedo-pissed. Since it was getting late, he decided to begin his act.
He put on his costume- the monster from Wicked Scary- and hid in the bottom cabinets underneath the kitchen sink. A space he could barely fit in, but if he was quiet enough, he could pull it off. When Raven returned from wherever she got her snack and was in the middle of consuming it, he stuck his hand out from the cabinet and reached up towards the counter, trying to subtly look for the wooden block that held all of the knives. When he came into contact with it, he pushed it over the kitchen counter and coiled quickly back into the cabinet as the knives and the wooden block fell onto the carpet floor.
He swore he could feel Raven's alarm and curiosity peak at the sudden noise. His heart thumped with increasing intensity as he listened to Raven's careful footsteps approach the mess. He heard her pick up the knives and set them back into the wooden block and onto the kitchen counter. His breathing labored carefully because he could picture Raven staring into the kitchen once in a while uneasily, trying to make somewhat of a rational reason to what just happened. If she wasn't aware of her surroundings before, she certainly was now. She had turned up the TV, probably to ease her paranoia. Garfield carefully climbed out of the cabinet and crawled to the edge of the kitchen to peek into the living room. Luckily there was a couch facing away from the kitchen, which was the couch she was sitting on. There was another couch near her bedroom door. He scurried over as quickly as he could and held his breath for a second to see if she noticed any movement. When he concluded that she hadn't, he sat upon his knees and the palms of his hands, leaning towards Raven's slightly open bedroom door. With one swipe of his hand, he slammed it shut and once again, scooted back towards the other end of the couch, awaiting Raven's reaction.
He heard her jump and catch her breath. He knew her eyes were burning into her bedroom door, and all around her. She got up off from the couch and started fumbling with her backpack. He peeked from from around the couch. Raven had put her hair up into a bun and was slipping these metal rings onto her fingers. Sensing what was to come, Garfield decided to go through his final phase for the prank before things got too out of control and quietly stepped up behind her as she swiftly walked towards the kitchen, hand reaching for one of the knives in the wooden block, her tea mug in the other.
It all happened so fast really. Garfield ran up to her and yanked at her shoulder, effectively moving her away from the kitchen and back towards the living room and screamed in her face through the Wicked Scary mask. Raven responded by screaming bloody murder, and because of the sudden scare she had endured, tripped over herself and fell into the glass table in the living room, breaking it and all the while accidentally cutting herself up with the glass shards. It was then Garfield realized what he had done.
As he was in the process of taking off his mask and profusely apologizing, Raven threw her tea mug which hit him on the front of his forehead and also spilled her hot tea all over his neck and chest, to which he responded by screaming and promptly stripping off his clothes. You could imagine what it looked like to their fellow floor-mates who were curious of the noise and went to investigate and found some guy shirtless who was panicking and some girl laying very stiffly in a bed of glass shards who was screaming a string of insults and crying while doing it.
Needless to say, Garfield felt horrible.
So horrible in fact, he spent the entirety of his last paycheck on Raven once he got out of the hospital.
Raven still hadn't forgave him. When they were being transported to the local hospital via ambulance, Garfield could recall how Raven glared daggers outside the window and refused to make eye contact or talk to him, even when the EMT's were yelling at him to lay down so they could treat his burn wounds while he was trying very hard to make an effort to get Raven to look at him. When they were laying down side by side in their hospital room, Raven even continued to glare at the TV instead of him, all the while passive-aggressively rubbing her injured arm, which she had apparently broken because she had slammed her elbow into the floor pretty hard when she fell into the glass table. Or the time she glared at her band-aids from all the cut wounds. She wouldn't even acknowledge him.
Since his wounds were minor, he was released the night he got to the hospital. The next morning he went straight to Kori's dorm and asked if she had been released yet, to which Kori replied she would not be released until the next day. Kori also asked him to return the key she gave him and told him that maybe it was best if he didn't come back for a while. Completely ignoring that, Garfield begged Kori to help him out.
"What does she like? Tell me something she wants for Christmas or her birthday or something."
"Garfield, I do not think Raven is the type of girl you take out shopping and is willing to forget after you have wronged her," Kori admitted sadly. "Perhaps a sincere apology?"
"I already tried that and she won't even look at me."
"Well you could do the trying again. I'm sure she has done the cooling down, it has been a few hours and she is a reasonable person, even if she is mad at you."
So Garfield went back to the hospital. The nurses regarded him coldly, they probably heard what had happened. After a fee minutes of begging, they finally let him inside Raven's room.
"You have ten minutes, unless she says otherwise." One nurse said hotly before letting him in. He stepped in with the mandatory crappy bouquet of flowers and set them on a table next to her bed. Raven stiffened and eyed the TV, once again refusing to maintain eye contact with him.
"Hey." He said awkwardly. She said nothing. He sat down in the chair next to her.
"...I'm really sorry." Raven rolled her eyes and looked at him for the first time since their last unfortunate encounter.
"Sorry? That's all you got?" Raven scowled. Garfield frowned.
"Well, I was just getting started,"
"No you weren't."
"I'm sorry," He began, "I'm sorry that I acted like such a creep to you this entire week, and now that I'm looking back on it, it was really immature and lame. I shouldn't have scared you like that, and messed with your things to fool you, it was stupid and petty."
"That sounds way too genuine. It's like you planned it out or something."
"I don't know how else to apologize, but I just want you to know that I meant it, but I understand if you can't forgive."
"I never said that I didn't forgive you."
"So you do forgive me?"
"I also never said that either." Garfield slumped in his chair.
"At least you understand how creepy you were. In what world did you think hiding in my dorm all day with the intentions to scare me would be funny?"
"My intentions were meant to be innocent. I thought I was being clever or something."
"Never do it again."
"Noted." Garfield shifted uncomfortably. "...So..umm, do you have any idea what the hospital bill is going to be? I could look into my savings or-"
"You're not paying the hospital bill. I put my dad's insurance on it. All you should buy me is a new glass table."
"Already did. Also, because I felt so bad, I got you a gift card to Barnes and Nobles. It's inside your bouquet." Raven began to relax. If one were studying her closely, they would be able to note how her face returned to a normal expression and not so hard-looking.
"Thanks."
"No problem." They sat in silence for a while until Raven questioned why he was still there.
"Can you just say you forgive me? Please?"
"I forgive you. Partly because I can't take you seriously with that big, red bruise in the middle of your forehead." She allowed a gentle smile to pass over her features. Garfield would have usually blushed at this as his hand went to gently touch the aforementioned bruise. Instead, he felt a little better when she pointed it out, as it meant that Raven wasn't the only one to get hurt.
"Now I can finally sleep at night. Anyway, see you tomorrow. I'll be the first to sign your cast."
"You're the first to put me in the cast."
"Technically the nurses were."
"But you're the one who scared me." With that sentence, Garfield whipped around to face Raven again, as he was reaching for the door.
"So you admit it, that I scared you?" Raven paled at the question and scowled once again at the man.
"..Yes. You scared me." Garfield flashed a grin and stepped out of her room. He had obtained his goal. Not in the way he planned to, but he did it. Perhaps next time though, he'd try to get her to laugh more, because her smile is quite beautiful, he thought.