CHAPTER TWO: SPOONS AND FROGS

So after taking 3 showers and heavily applying several brands of deodorant, I begin to obsess about this Cedward Sullen guy.

I guess I can excuse his rudeness. After all, I did smell...

But couldn't he at least have said "hi"? Or like, did one of those funny grimace/smiles that people do when they say hi to people they don't like very much?

Cedward was the only guy who didn't slobber all over me though...and he's cute enough to have a crush on...

I close my eyes and count to three. Okay, I am officially crushing on Cedward Sullen. I want to jump on him and rip his clothes off with my teeth. I want to bear his children.

Wow, that was easy.

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This time, when I get to school, there are people in the parking lot.

So people actually see my piece of shit car.

By the way, I've named her Renesmee. Because I really like that name for some odd reason. Don't ask me. I think my mom drank a little too much when she was pregnant with me.

"Wow, new girl. Nice car!"

I can't really see who's shouting at me, because giant puffs of smoke are coming from the engine. I cough and yell back "Thanks!"

I park the car (somehow) after almost hitting several other cars (and nearly running over a large percentage of the student population). The door is stuck again, of course, and by the time I force it open, I've accumulated a rather large audience.

The stress makes me fall off my seat and onto the pavement.

"DEHLA! Are you okay?!"

I stand up, perfectly fine. "Why wouldn't I be? And also, it's Dehla, okay? D-e-h-l-a. Rhymes with schmella."

I see the speaker is Derek, the boy who tried desperately to hit on me yesterday. I think he's gotten uglier.

Or maybe everyone is just uglier in general, now that I've decided to crush on Cedward Sullen.

"Are you sure? Because I can nurse you back to health. I've got the skills. I can heal you, baby. All day every day. Just call me the love doctor."

I decide just to walk away, and hope for the best.

School is a drag. The girl named Jenny thinks she's my BFF now, and keeps going on and on about the slumber party we need to have, and how we're going to make smores, and talk about boys.

Please. I'm way too mature to talk about high school boys anymore. I'm in love with the untouchable Cedward Sullen. Nobody else even matters. Not even me.

I walk into lunch, excited. Because you see, when you're madly in love with someone who doesn't know you exist, you get the excitement of staring at them from across the room and pretending you're not every time they catch you. The rush is amazing.

Only guess what? Cedward is absent.

I have a panic attack in the middle of the lunchroom. I collapse onto the floor and my knees slide out from under me. Soon the side of my face is pressed against the linoleum and I'm panting ridiculously.

"Uh, Dehla? Are you okay?"

"Just peachy," I answer between pants. How could he do this to me? He is my future husband! My life! My sole reason for breathing! I allow myself to shed a few tears before standing up.

"What was that about?" Jenny is eyeing me as if I'm going to start foaming at the mouth.

"Nothing. Just a little sad."

"Because we're having tuna salad for lunch?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"Oh, okay." She pauses. "He'll be back tomorrow probably. They're really only absent when the weather is nice."

"Who, now?"

"Cedward. Cedward Sullen."

I giggle despite myself. Bond. James Bond. "Oh, okay? I wasn't really thinking about that honestly."

"Oh, come on, Dehla. Everyone knows."

"Knows what?"

"That you've got the hots for Cedward."

I stare at her as if she has three heads. "What?"

"It's written all over you."

I snort. "Really, now. It's not that noticeable."

"Dehla..." She grabs my arm, and I sigh irritably. Oh. I forgot that I had written Mrs Cedward Sullen all over my forearms with my eyeliner.

"It's a different Cedward Sullen, okay? One from my old school. No relation to this guy whatsoever."

Jenny rolls her eyes at me, and we sit down at the lunch table, where I put my head down and sleep for the rest of the lunch period. Nobody bothers to wake me though, so I end up sleeping through my last two classes.

It's not like that matters, though. Because Cedward wasn't in Biology anyway. It would have been a huge waste of time. What would I do, learn something? Come on.

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The next five days aren't worth mentioning because they are Cedward free. Therefore, I am not including them as part of my existence.

I go to lunch on the sixth day, and quickly look at the Sullen's lunch table.

He's there! My love! My hope! My sugar-apple-pie!

I skip joyfully to my lunch table, and on the way, I trip and fall flat on my face. It takes less than half a minute for the school's entire male population to be at my side.

Except for the only male that matters, of course.

"DEHLA, ARE YOU OKAY?"
"Someone call an ambulance!"

"Her face looks all squished in!"
"No, I think it looked that way before!"

I stand up and brush of my clothes. It turns out black fabric accumulates a lot of lint.

And cat hair, even though I don't own a cat.

"Guys, guys, I'm fine." I pick up my books and walk slowly over to my lunch table, ignoring the throbbing pain in my calves.

Jenny greats me with a wide grin and raised eyebrows. "Well, you're in a good mood today, Dehla."

I kick her underneath the table, and she shuts up.

Lunch can't go by fast enough. I shove my food in my face, swallowing it so quickly that I end up having to run to the garbage can to cough it back up again. This turned out to be helpful, because by the time I felt normal again, the period was over.

I run to biology, but stop before I reach the classroom. This is it. The big moment.

What if he doesn't like me? What if he thinks I'm fat? Thankfully I know I don't smell today. Just to be sure, I spray myself with Lysol before entering.

There he is. Beautiful and gorgeous and godlike and beautiful. I walk to my seat in a dreamy way, like I'm in a movie or something. I sit down on my stool and bat my eyelashes, smiling at him with my newly Crest White Strip-whitened teeth.

Then I see the look on his face and realize that we've never actually spoken to each other. And that the last time we saw each other, he sort of hated me and wanted to rip open my neck.

Oops.

Thankfully, he doesn't look quite so hostile today. With raised eyebrow, he sort of smiles, and says "Well, hello there. My name is Cedward Sullen. I apologize for my rude behavior the other day. It's Dehla, right?"

I sigh in ecstasy. Because of course, he's pronounced my name perfectly.

"Oh, it's no problem whatsoever, Cedward." I get a little thrill from saying his name.

"Right." We begin to work on the lab assignment. We're dissecting a frog.

"Oh, yuck. This thing is disgusting...so cold and wet and slimy."

Cedward looks a little bit uncomfortable and raises his eyebrows again. I'm beginning to wonder if raised eyebrows is his natural expression, when he narrows them and says, "So if you don't like the...uh...wet, why did you move to Spoons?"

"Because my mother thinks that I am not pretty enough to work in Vegas, and that's where she was going."

"Wow, that's pretty inaccurate." He offers me a smile, and it's all I can do to keep from hyperventilating with happiness. My heart's pounding wildly in my chest.

"Are you okay? You look sort of pale." I realize that I'm displaying all of the signs of a panic attack, and so I take a deep breath and try to calm myself down.

"I'm okay. I'm not so good at taking compliments."

We work in silence for a while, and then he says "You hate it here in Spoons, don't you?"

I sigh. I am overwhelmed with the urge to tell him everything, from my distaste of Spoons, to the color of the underwear I am wearing. "Sort of. I guess it's okay."

"What don't you like?"

"Well, for one, I'm not very popular here. I'm not really a people person, and so people tend to stay away from me."

I drop my little dissecting-tool thingie on the floor. All heads swivel toward me and I hear a unanimous murmur of "oh, Dehla, let me get that for you!"

I bend down and pick it up, rolling my eyes irritably. "I've got it, okay?!"

And there go Cedward's eyebrows, up into his hairline.

I take this opportunity to notice something different about Cedward's eyes. They seem to have significantly lightened in color since that day that he was drawing disturbing doodles of me.

"Hey, are you wearing contacts?"

Fshoom. Down go the eyebrows. "No. I am not."

"You sure? Your eyes look all sparkly and gold-ish right now."

"I think you're the one who needs contacts."

I ponder this. First my hearing, now my eyesight...Spoons isn't so great for my health, is it?

"Can you read minds?"

Cedward's eyebrows don't know where to go now. They shoot up, come down again, and then repeat the process several times.

"WHAT?!"

"I'm sorry, was that rude of me to ask?"

"Where on earth did you get that idea from?"

I look down. "I dunno."

"You should be ashamed for having such horrid, inaccurate thoughts."

I feel shame. I begin to cry.

"That's better. Don't ever let me here you utter something so ridiculous ever again."

"I promise, master." I wipe my eyes and then look at the frog. While I was busy feeling shame, I see that Cedward has completely butchered the frog.

"You haven't...done this before, have you?"

"I have, as a matter of fact. 67 times." He looks proud.

"I see." I haven't even done it once, and I can tell that what he's done is clearly wrong.

"See, this is the frog's heart. See?"

He's pointing at its liver.

I nod and smile. Okay, I can handle being the smart one in the relationship.

"What are you thinking about right now, Dehla?"

"What, can't you tell?"

This is clearly the wrong thing to say, because his eyebrows start to move again. Quickly I say, "I mean, isn't it obvious?"

"No. That is why I am asking you." He looks up at the ceiling and sighs.

Isn't that cute? He thinks I'm the dumb one!

"Oh, uh, I'm thinking about how well you know your frog organs."

He grins. "Many thanks, Dehla."

Then the bell rings and he throws his dissecting-thingie across the room. It hits Mickey's frog, which somehow flies off the table and hits him in the face. I laugh at that for half a second, and then look next to me to see if I'm sharing a moment with Cedward...

But he's gone. Up and vanished.

I shake my head. This relationship is going to take a lot of hard work.

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