Couple of quick notes before we get into things here:
Last chapter was accidentally written in present tense when the rest of the story is in past tense. I'm just a big ole idiot.
And yeah, I know it's been a while. I had a very busy December/Christmas holiday. Sorry about that. I can't ever promise uploading this will be consistent, but I am going to finish it. Eventually.
Also, just to clarify something that I didn't think I needed to clarify: the opinions of my characters, even the POV character, are not always my own. Crazy, I know.
Finally, a couple of people have told me my story is depressing. And I can only say that my central motivation from the start was to make a DDLC fic where nothing felt easy. Fics where the main character finds love and happiness right from the start have their place, but there's just so many of them. I didn't want to do that. And just as a warning: yes, things are going to get worse before they get better. In this very chapter, in fact. But, and I hate to spoil my own story here, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. When I end this, it will be a happy ending, and it will be all the happier because it was earned. But there's a long road to travel to get there.
Anyhow, let us continue.
((((CHAPTER SEVEN))))
The football game ended with our school losing. Predictably. No one in our group really seemed to care, although Monika was quite sad.
We met in the parking lot around fifteen minutes later, seven of us. Me, Zach, Monika, Heather, Jeffrey, Aaron, and Daniel. It was nearly ten, and the only light came from cars trying frantically to escape the chaotic post-game throng. In the distance, I could see the flashing lights of a police car, directing traffic out of the school at the intersection. Somewhere else, a horn sounded angrily.
"What we doing, ladies and gents?" Zach asked with a stretch and a yawn, as if he was actually tired or something.
"Food, yeah?" Daniel suggested, adjusting his glasses. Aaron clapped his hands together and nodded in an absurd way. Another gesture he's picked up from Daniel. The two of them were becoming rather close friends, I had noticed. It made sense, since they were both in band and the rest of us weren't...but I felt a pang of discomfort all the same. Yeah, because you can never feel happy for anyone, you piece of shit. Oh, what a glorious time my brain has been having.
"Where?" Heather asked, sounding irritated.
"We could hit up Waffle House again," suggested Daniel. "Just like old times."
Zach and Aaron voiced excited agreement, but Heather scrunched her face up. "The only reason we ever went to Waffle House in the first place is because we got banned from Sonic."
Daniel gave her a funny look. "Your point being? Those are basically our only two options as high schoolers this late at night."
"Right, whatever." Heather conceded.
"What's Waffle House?" Monika asked.
"Oh, it's a magical place," I spoke up. "They serve breakfast items 24 hours a day, the waitresses are high, the cooks are half-asleep, the bathrooms have no paper towels, and there's always some shit going down in the parking lot."
Daniel snorted. "I couldn't have said it better myself," Zach said proudly.
I felt a little satisfied, until I saw that Monika seemed kind of frightened. "Don't worry," I reassured her. "Worst case scenario, you get food poisoning for a few days."
"That doesn't make me feel any better!" She sounded tsundere for a second there.
"Come on, let's go," Heather said. "I'll walk back to my house and pick up my car. Me and Monika can meet you guys there."
"Oh, that's okay, Heather," Monika said. "I can just ride with Zach."
Zach jingled the keys to his truck, flashing a grin. Oh. There were so many things I hated about this, but what was I going to do? If I got involved here, the jig was up. Everyone would know my feelings. It would be obvious as hell.
To my dismay, Heather didn't even fight, either. "Fine. I will meet you guys there. Probably."
"You're with me, right Aaron?" Daniel asked.
"Yeah. Although not for much longer. I'm getting my license soon!"
"Easy there, tiger. I've seen you drive. I'm sure the DMV will know a threat to our good American highways when they see one."
"Suck my dick."
I walked over to Jeffrey, who was standing off to the side pensively. "You're coming, right?" I asked him. I don't think I'd be able to stand it without him.
Jeffrey looked up blankly, and then seemed to recognize me. "Uh, yeah! Just gotta let my parents know…that I'm staying out later…" He pulled out his phone and started tapping away on it furiously, sending messages.
And Jeffrey had his own vehicle, of course. So I ended up driving to Waffle House by myself, in the dark.
Waffle House was on the other side of town, in a more impoverished area. It was pretty well-lit and urban once you got there, with restaurants and gas stations and stores everywhere, but to get there from the area with all the public schools, you had to go down a few winding forest roads through the heart of town, which was kind of…wild with nature. Towns in our part of America were weird that way.
Going down one of these skinny roads, with spacious houses to our left and nasty, looming woods to the right, I recognized Daniel's headlights right ahead of me. Even further ahead would be Zach and Monika, since Zach drove way over the speed limit. Jeffrey was somewhere behind me, I guess. Heather was probably just now leaving her house.
I didn't necessarily have an aversion or fear of driving alone in the dark, but it would have been nice to have some company. I felt bad thoughts starting to creep in. Thoughts that would only serve to discourage me, and not help me solve any problems.
I was beginning to think there would be no way to solve my problems. That I was just a terrible person, and that's why I wouldn't get anything I wanted. I mean, just thinking that way is pretty awful, right? Just look at me. All sullen and whiny because an anime girl won't requite my feelings. Because she prefers someone else. And if I do anything to stop it, I'm even more the bad guy.
Impossible. It was all impossible. I should have just given up.
And isn't this sad? My thinking got this bad just because she chose to hang out with another guy tonight. That's literally it. That's the only reason I went down this path. And now I'm just thinking endgame-level thoughts. How could I have let things spiral so far down? Was this what love did to people?
You idiot. You're not in love. You just desire her. You just want her body. Idiot, idiot, idiot. Kill yourself.
Yikes. Didn't mean to think that last one.
I'd never considered myself suicidal before, at any point. That the thought had come so naturally to me at the end there was frightening. More frightening than the dark woods to the right. More frightening than Monika never speaking to me again.
As you could probably tell, I pulled into Waffle House in a pretty bad mood.
The parking lot was dark and dreary, with a dumpster at the opposite end. A couple of employees were smoking just outside the building, presumably on break. At a car near the front, some girl was chasing down another girl and shouting at her. I ignored all these things and went inside.
The girl at the counter only looked up at me with the most basic of interest before looking back down, and the other two workers didn't even turn around. I walked past the counter, which had a couple of Hispanic guys in construction vests drinking coffee, and went to the two booths by the windows. Sitting at one were Zach and Monika. Sitting at the other were Daniel and Aaron.
As I walked, my brain did several things in a few milliseconds. First, I thought I had to make the choice of where I sat seem absolutely effortless, as if there was no conflict. Second, I thought that I really wasn't up to dealing with Zach and Monika right now. Third, I needed to get my friendships back on track, something I'd already thought about back at the game.
I sat down next to Aaron, not skipping a beat.
"Welcome," Daniel nearly whispered, with a dramatic little gesture. Waffle House was almost always pretty quiet at this hour, with the only real sound being the sizzling and smoking of the cooking food. As a result, our conversations here often felt low-key, almost sleepy.
The one waitress in the whole place walked up and asked me what I wanted to drink. "Just water, please," I told her in a weary voice, smiling. She only wrote it down with a blank expression and walked off.
Monika turned around from her booth ahead of us and looked at me, just past Daniel's shoulder. "Wow, Tyson," she pouted. "Didn't want to sit next to me? Have anything to say for yourself?"
I stretched and yawned through my brief panic, keeping a cool expression. "I'm…tired."
Luckily, everyone laughed at that, even Aaron. I felt a little more at ease.
Jeffrey arrived, followed by Heather. Heather sat with Monika. Jeffrey sat by Daniel, right across from me. Waitress came back, got their drinks ordered, came back around with the drinks, got people's food ordered, came back around with that. Didn't take terribly long.
"Mmm…" Monika said, chewing her waffle, which had chocolate chips on it. "So good! I want to thank the cook personally…"
"No," Heather and Zach said at the same time.
Meanwhile, at our booth, we were just eating in silence. "Pass a napkin this way," I told Aaron. He did so.
Jeffrey looked up from his egg-and-cheese melt. "I thought you guys did well at halftime."
Aaron and Daniel exchanged a glance, and they both smirked in a self-deprecating sort of way. "Thanks," Daniel said to him, "but Terry didn't think so. He yelled at us after, and said he was super disappointed in our performance."
Terry was the first name of the band director, who barely anyone in the band seemed to respect from my limited observations.
Aaron shrugged. "It's whatever. I've stopped caring at this point. Band is filled with idiots."
Daniel smiled. "Hey, that's no fair! You can't stop caring now, you're not a senior yet! You'll get into the negative numbers by next year at this rate."
"That's not how that works," Jeffrey said.
"That true?" Aaron looked at Jeffrey and me. "You guys aren't in band, but you're seniors. Have you stopped caring in class?"
"No," Jeffrey said, straightening up a little.
"Yeah," I said.
From the other booth, Monika snorted. "Stop eavesdropping," I told her, not really seriously. "Don't you guys have stuff to talk about, too?"
Monika put her fork down on her plate. "Right, of course. Sorry."
Heather turned around and shot me a glance. There was a brief awkward silence.
Dammit. She took me seriously. I'm such an asshole. I felt heat going to my ears, and Aaron whistled, looking back down at his food with wide eyes. Jeffrey only gave me a glance filled with pity.
"Come on, Tyson," he said. "You gotta do well in class if you're going to college."
"No," I said, jumping on the train of a different subject with full speed. "I have to pay for college if I'm going to college. That's how it is these days."
"Besides, Tyson does well anyway," Daniel pointed out. "We all do. It's just that no one cares."
Jeffrey shifted, and smiled nervously. "Man, I gotta get used to you guys."
"Oh, be warned," Aaron grinned. "This isn't even the full extent of our idiocy."
Daniel had a dark expression. "Maybe if our school was better, I would care. But…it's not a good school, really. Not a good atmosphere. Everyone's so mean to everyone else all the time."
"I like the school," said Monika, turning around. "I think it's good. You should be more appreciative of it."
I quickly cut in to repair what happened earlier, as if to show that I really don't care about her eavesdropping. "It ain't that easy, Monika," I said. "We can look around and see these other great schools in the bigger cities or on the coasts. We see them in the news and stuff. It makes us feel…small. Like trying is pointless from this place. They've all got more opportunity than us."
"Yeah, but they're probably just as depressed!" Aaron joked.
"Yeah," Daniel muttered. "Probably."
"Gotta agree with Tyson here," said Heather.
"Am I dreaming?" I slapped myself in the face lightly.
"Shut up, moron. What I'm saying, Monika, is that you should have come out of someone else's computer. You can't have your best life from this town." Heather seemed serious about it, to my disbelief. Her face looked like it was about to show emotion, even.
Monika's own face went dark for a moment, but then she brightened again. "You'd try and get rid of me so easily? No, I bet I can live my best life from this town, because it's the one I landed in. The Tortoise would have shot me somewhere else if I hadn't been meant to…"
"What are you guys talking about?" Jeffrey asked.
Everyone went quiet. Daniel sucked in a breath through his teeth.
My mind had suddenly been stimulated. What the hell? What tortoise does she mean? For the first time in a while, I got out of my cerebral depression pit and was suddenly curious about Monika's…arrival. I had never been that curious about it before. But something about a tortoise sounded so…familiar…
We paid and went back out into the parking lot, where the only vehicle left besides ours' was a sketchy-looking truck with a dark silhouette sitting inside. Who knew what the dude was doing in there. We gave the truck a wide amount of space and headed back past the dumpster where our cars were parked.
Leaning against Zach's truck, Heather and Monika explained everything to Jeffrey. At first, he thought it was a meme, but when he looked at the other boys and saw how gravely serious we were, he seemed to accept it.
"Jesus Christ," he mumbled. "Tyson, why didn't you tell me?"
"Huh?" I looked up from my phone. "Why would I have been the one that tells you?"
"Well, because you're…" he suddenly stumbled over his words, and my eyes widened. You better not. "Never mind. That makes sense. If she's living with Heather, then…"
I exhaled. "Right."
"Anyway, let's get going," Heather told Monika. "Sorry, Zach, I'm taking her for the night. Maybe next weekend, bud."
Monika blushed deeply, but Zach took it in stride. "I'll be waiting, then!" He said it in that perfectly balanced tone where he could have meant it seriously, but if you tried to confront him about it, he would have just claimed that he was returning Heather's banter.
"Can you get me back to my house, Daniel?" Aaron asked.
"No prob."
Everyone began moving to their vehicles, getting ready to go. When I opened the door to the Subaru, I felt someone standing behind me.
I turned. It was her, of course.
"Yes?" I asked, feeling kind of annoyed at everything that had happened this evening. What could she possibly want from me right now? I swear to god, if she tries to apologize, I might just crash my car into a ditch.
"You've just been…" Monika clenched her fists, and then unclenched them. Almost like something I would do.
"You've just been weird tonight. Like you're avoiding me. You're not avoiding me, are you?"
"Huh?" I was blindsided by this. What did she mean? "I'm not avoiding you. I didn't mean to make it seem that way, if I did. Sorry."
Monika sighs, and I can see even in the dark parking lot that her green eyes were shimmering a little. "Okay. Because I didn't know if I'd done anything wrong, and... I don't know, I might be kind of scared for you…"
"What?" I asked. She had lowered her voice to a miniscule volume there at the end, and I hadn't caught the last few words.
"Nothing," she said quickly with a toss of her hair. "Don't worry. We're still friends, aren't we?" She was smiling at me, but I saw anxiety all over her face.
"Of course," I told her, hoping I sounded reassuring. "You have a good night now, Monika. See you on Monday."
"Ah…yeah." She had taken an awkward little step forward, but as I got into my driver's seat, she stepped back again. "Y-you too. See you."
Our little group pulled out of the Waffle House and back onto the street in a line, and then we split our separate ways, me going back to my house far away on the other side of the high school.
It was ten minutes later, as I pulled into my neighborhood with a wave at the gatehouse guard, that I realized Monika had been trying to give me a hug.
