A/N: I was in dire need to write this inspired by the lovely novel Perks of Being a Wallflower.
By the way, children~ Chapter three of PINK will be updated this Wednesday so I hope you're all excited for that! Also, I hope you guys enjoy this little one-shot and please do REVIEW and tell me what you thought! It would mean a lot c:
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Degrassi.
P.S. Sorry for any grammatical errors - Blame homework for making me rush so much!
Wow. Wow. If I had to paint you a picture, I wouldn't know how to begin. I was sitting in my room with Bullfrog's lucky suit next to me on the bed. The lights outside were twinkling and singing as the stars sang their lullaby. It was snowing – large, big, white balls of frozen water fell slow on the ground. It felt like if I were somewhere else. Like somewhere different.
It's Christmas, and everyone is exchanging his or her presents downstairs (my friends, mostly, because Cece and Bullfrog left with the adults to a bar). And I'm upstairs, staring at old pictures of my parents. Old pictures of them in their glory days. My father was a football player in college, but had to stop when he found out Cece was pregnant with me. Although he was pissed, I suppose he's glad I'm his son.
My mother, on the other side, was a cheerleader in her glory days. Her hair was longer than now, straighter, well kept. She had fair skin – nowadays she couldn't care less of her appearance. She says that, "Bullfrog doesn't look at me like before, honey." I guess I just have to believe her, even though my father says he falls in love with her every day. Every time I stare at pictures of my mother I realize how beautiful she looks in them. I think the only one that cold ever look more stunning than Cece is Clare Edwards.
Then again the love I have for my mother is different than the one I have for Edwards. No. It's not infatuation. It's something that makes my hands shake and my heart to stop when I stare at her eyes. It makes me frightened when she smiles My Smile at me. With her I feel infinite.
Downstairs everyone is drinking eggnog and we all look stiff – awkward. It's uncomfortable until the first person stands up to give their present to their chosen Secret Santa. When everyone finishes exchanging their presents – even Clare Edwards, her person was Drew Torres – Adam is the only one left. He flashes me a grin and I almost don't catch it when he leaves to bring back a bowl of chips and a suit hanging from his free arm.
"Anyone want chips?" He says teasingly, placing the bowl on the coffee table of my living room, and gives me a suit as a present. "Every great writer used to wear one of these so I thought why not," he explains, hugging me.
Even though we all had Secret Santa's, we all bought each other presents apart from that. The girls gave each other little bracelets and earrings. The guys gave each other sports junk. I gave everyone something different. For Adam, I gave him a vintage copy of a Superman comic book. I gave Drew an old, signed baseball I had once grabbed when I went to a Metz game. Finally, for Clare Edwards, I gave her an old pendant my grandmother had given me and told me to, "Give to someone you love." It sounds fitting to give it to her.
Clare only hugged me and kissed my head before moving away and smiling at me. I smiled back, standing up soon after and clearing my voice. Everyone in the living room looked up at me. I told them that I was going to read them the poem that got me into NYU, and they all stared at me like a lost herd of deer but I wasn't nervous. I wasn't nervous because we were all trying to act like adults and we were drinking brandy and eggnog. I felt warm. I still feel warm. But I had to tell them, so I did.
After I finished reading my poem, everyone was silent. Silent in a sad way, but not in a bad sad way. Sad in a good way. In a way in which they all looked around to make sure everyone was there. And then I got a glimpse of Adam and Clare looking at me as if they knew. They knew something, but it wasn't concrete. They knew, and I think that's all you could ever ask from a friend.
After the commotion with the presents, Clare grabbed my hand in secrecy and led me to my bedroom where she shut the door behind her. I didn't ask her what she was doing; I just stared as she dug up something form under my bed. There I was, in my suit, in front of an old typewriter wrapped with a red ribbon. She blushed at me and I smiled down at it. At the moment I couldn't believe that Clare had gone to such lengths to get me this. I was happy, and not in the I'm-so-happy-I-might-cry way. Happy in the way that made me smile. She hugged me for a moment, and I whispered, "I love you." That was the only thing that would come out of my mouth in that moment.
She nodded at me, and typed on the piece of white paper in the typewriter. "I know." She hesitated before writing something else. "Write something about me one day, okay?" And then I typed something else there, standing with her in my room between what could be reality and illusion.
"I will."
I felt proud that those were the first two words I ever typed in my old typewriter. After that, we both stayed quiet, sitting juxtaposed to each other. It wasn't after a moment that she grabbed the typewriter and pulled it closer to her.
"I love you, too," she typed. That must have been the third time in my life that someone had said that to me. The first time was my grandmother before she died. The second one was my mother when I got accepter into NYU. But the third time was the most important.
And then Clare hugged me and she was crying. And she told me something that I might never forget. Ever. "I'm so sorry if I ever hurt you, Eli. I'm sorry that it took me so long to open up to you when I… when I was harassed and I'm sorry if you ever doubted me. I… it wasn't my intentions to leave you behind when I did last year – after the accident, you know? And I'm sorry if we won't be together forever but I just want you to know that I love you, okay?"
"Okay."
"I just want to make sure that… the first person you spent the night with loves you, okay?"
"Okay," I whispered back, and she was crying hard now. And I was crying, too, because moments like these always get to me.
"I just want to make sure of that. Okay?"
"Okay."
And then we kissed. It was the kind of kiss that I could never tell anyone about. The kind of kiss that made me know that I was never so happy in my whole life.