"Patience"? I obviously don't possess it…^-^;;
Revision of chapter two…yeah,
yeah, I know these two chapters didn't have a heck of a lot of revision in
them. In fact, I think I changed all of six sentences in this chapter. I'm just
a picky person occasionally. And there will be a lot of changes in three
and four and there'll be a chapter five. So there.
*blows raspberries* X_x
And I still love seeing fanart pics of these two in
Hawaiian shirts…it's just so cute! ^-^ *drools*
******
"Male friends do not always
face each other: they stand side by side, facing the world." - Carolyn Heilbrun
Tai's the first to break off
the kiss, and he shoves me lightly back. Fumbling a little bit, I try to keep
my balance on the
I glare at Tai. He's ignoring
me though in favor of looking up at the stars. Blowing out a big, frustrated
sigh I crawl over to my usual place on the hood and lean back like I usually do
and follow his example. What just happened?
Okay, maybe I know what just
happened, but what did it mean? Why did he dare me to kiss him?
Looking over at Tai, I can
see him scowling at the sky and I can feel myself glaring at him. People should
be like computer programs. If they were I'd be able to figure them out, but noooo...Stupid Tai and his stupid dares and his stupid
parties...
"Let's dye our
hair." I jerk around to stare at him, and he's got this huge semi-fake
smile plastered on his face. Have I missed something? Okay, okay, maybe it was
a given already that I missed something, but still. These weren't exactly the
words I was expecting him to say next.
"Excuse me?" I
finally respond as I sit up and try not to look at him too incredulously.
"Let's dye our hair. I
know Kari has a bottle of peroxide in her bathroom from when she was trying to
get up the guts to dye her hair blonde like Matt and TK's.
Whadda ya say?"
"You mean other than
'You're insane'?" I ask as I raise an eyebrow. He rolls his eyes, but waits
for me to finish. "Why should we dye our hair?" I finally bite. Of course, at this point I'm really more interested in figuring
out why he dared me to kiss him, but he'll dodge the question if I ask now. I
know that much about him, at least.
"Promise to listen to
the whole thing before you shoot the idea down?" He asks with a frown.
Reluctantly, I nod. "Well, I was thinking about the party and about how
neither of us seemed to have had much fun there tonight." It looked like
he was having fun to me. I can feel my brow furl a little bit in confusion. If
he wasn't going to have any fun there why did he drag me along with him? Or was
I the reason he wasn't having any fun?
"And you know when I saw
you out by the car at the party it got me to thinking about how you used to be.
You know, before you got bumped up to our grade."
"How I used to be?"
I echo. I wasn't aware that I'd changed that much. And I still have no idea
what this has to do with us dying our hair.
"Yeah, c'mon Izzy, you remember what it used to be like. You," he
pokes me gently on the chest with his finger, "got me into so much
trouble."
"I did not!"
"You did, too!" He
laughs. "My God, when everyone else was doing dumb things like TP-ing houses, me and my best friend
were out there hiring painters to paint the principal's house purple." The
principal was a real jerk, and he deserved it, I reflect.
"That would have worked
to if I had been able to erase your mother's credit card number from their database
like we'd planned. I hadn't anticipated on their security system being that
hard to crack."
"Oh man, it was worth it
though to see the look on Mr. Kipping's face. But
see, it was stuff like that. You don't come up with plans like that anymore. Why not?"
Why not? I draw up a knee and
rest my chin on it as I think. "I think I don't do stuff like that anymore
because I finally have enough school work to keep me busy. I was so
bored back then. You can only play on a computer for so long before your eyes
start crossing." He looks back at me a bit shocked. Oh come on! I'm not
that geeky that much of the time! I'm still a kid, too! "I'm not a nerd
all of the time." I mutter as I glare at him. He shoots me a confused
glance before continuing.
"Well, anyway, I just
got to thinking that at that party, you weren't the Izzy there that you are when we're hanging out together.
And I realized that I wasn't acting like myself either." He looks over at
me, and I get the impression from the look on his face that he's expecting me
to have some huge type of revelation. About what, I'm not sure.
"Your
point?"
"Geez
Izzy." He blows out a sigh and then gives me a
patronizing look. "I'm saying we should dye our hair as a kind of rite of
passage. It's like making a vow to ourselves that from here on into college. We
aren't going to let people like Claire and Mike get the best of us. We're going
to be who we are and screw everyone else in our class."
"That might take some
time." It takes a minute for him to get the joke and then he just groans
as he punches me on the shoulder.
"Be serious, Izzy. Whadda ya
think?"
"Okay, let me get this
straight," I say finally, "we're going to vow to become truer to
ourselves by artificially dying our hair another color. You do see the
huge contradiction in that, right?" Even as I'm asking, Tai's already shaking his head.
"No, no, no. You're
thinking of it all wrong. Okay, think about us and how we fit in with the kids
at school. I do my best to blend in and be just like everyone else, and you lay
as low as possible and stay as quiet as possible, hoping that no one will give
you a second glance." As irked as I am by his description, it still has a
lot of truth to it. "Doing something like dying our hair breaks us out of
that. I can't be like everyone else if I've done something weird, like dye my
hair. And you can't lay low if you've done something that outrageous. Just the
nature of the thing will break us of the habit of trying to turn ourselves into
sheep when we're really goats."
"You're weird, you know
that, right?" I ask, even as I'm turning what he's said over in my head.
In a really warped, odd sort of way, it makes sense.
"Listen, if your mother made
soy brownies, went to yoga every morning, and had three zen
rock gardens placed in certain positions of your house to enhance the 'harmony'
of the space, you're thoughts would be a little odd, too." He states as he
leans back and looks up at the stars. I don't think now would be a good time to
point out the fact that Kari doesn't seem to have a problem with logic or
making sense.
But do I really want to do
something as irreversible as dying my hair? And why in the hell am I even
contemplating that?! Of course I'm not going to dye my hair! And I still
haven't figured out why he dared me to kiss him. People...Tai should be
like a computer program. And while I guess I do have some parts of him figured
out, I get the impression that I'm missing something big. Of course, with Tai,
it's hard to tell.
"So
c'mon, Shorty. Let's go dye our hair!" He grins at me and then hops off the
Toyota. It takes about four seconds to register the fact that he's just called
me shorty.
"Hey!" I yell at
his retreating back indignantly as I run to catch up with him.
Two hours later, I'm standing
in front of the Kamiya's hallway mirror looking at my
hair in utter disbelief. My roots are still the same dark red that they've
always been but the rest of my hair, which falls just a little bit past my
ears, is an unnaturally white shade of bleached blonde.
***
"Izzy. Hey Izumi. Wake up!" Groggily, I roll over as someone
shakes my shoulder. "Geez, why do you have to be such a deep sleeper."
The voice grumbles as it shakes me again, harder this time.
"I'm up, I'm up." I
mutter, just before it registers in my head that the voice is Tai. I should
have pretended to still be asleep. "Tai? D'ya have any idea what time it
is?" I grumble sleepily as I reach up and grab his alarm clock off his
bedside table. In nice big red digital numbers, 3:06 flashes back at me.
"This is am not pm. I'm g'ing back t'sleep." I tell him and then fall back down on the
sleeping bag and the pillow he lent me.
"C'mon Izzy, don't be like that. I'll let you sleep in the
car." The car? I blink in the darkness and look
up at him as he leans over me. I never did ask him about that kiss or the dare.
Was he just joking around? Or was he serious? And if he was serious what does
that mean? And why can I not stop thinking about this?! It was just a stupid
dare...it doesn't mean anything.
At least, for him it doesn't.
"We're going
surfing."
"At 3," I look back
at the alarm clock, "06 in the morning, I don't think so, Tai. G'night." He shakes me again as I try to shut my eyes
and ignore him.
"You don't like surfing
when there's anyone on the beach so we have to do it early in the morning, and
if we're going to get over to the East coast, we have to leave now."
"I don't have my
board." I try, fishing for any excuse not to go. It's just natural that at
3:06 in the morning a person's gonna want to stay
asleep, right? And besides, that poor second hand,
dinged up surfboard that Tai talked me into buying two years ago is at my
house.
"Your board's here,
remember? You left it here the last time we went." Damn. Sighing, I sit
up, almost knocking my forehead into his. A real friend is the guy who would do
this kind of thing to you and with you, right? I think to myself as I blink
blearily at him. A real friend convinces you to do crazy things like dye your
hair blonde with them, right?
But then, would your best
friend dare you to kiss them? Argh. I'm not going to think about that anymore. I've already
obsessed over it too much as it is, and I doubt Tai's given it more than a
second thought. He'd probably die laughing if I told him that I couldn't get
the way it felt to have my lips on his out of my mind. Sheesh. And that's only if
he didn't punch me first for thinking perverted things about him. Great. Just great.
"So whadda
ya say? Let's go surfing." Tai smiles back at me
in the darkness right before I rub the last of the sleep out of my eyes.
"How are we gonna get the boards into your Toyota?"
"Oh that's easy. We're
going to borrow Dad's Chevy Tahoe." He grins as he jingles the set of keys
in front of my face. I can hear his father's lecture ringing in my ears
already.
***
"We've got that five
page paper due for Mrs. Robinson's class on Monday, don't we?" I ask. It's
not that I really care if we do or not, my paper's already written, revised,
and ready to turn in. I just wanted to say something to break up the silence.
Tai's been quieter than usual.
"Oh man, don't remind
me. That witch hates me, I swear." He moans as he flops back onto the
floor of the Tahoe. He kicked off his shoes the minute we got here and his bare
feet are dangling out the back end of the SUV.
The parking lot ends just a
few feet from the beach itself, and Tai backed the Tahoe into a spot, so sitting
in the back, we can see out across the ocean. I think it's a shame really that
tourists miss out on this part of the beach experience. They always come in the
middle of the day, when the temperature is the hottest and the people are at
their most obnoxious.
The beach should be seen like
this. In the few hours just before dawn, with the moon
reflecting down on the dark waters, and not another soul in sight.
"You know, the first
time I tried to get you to go surfing with me, Izzy,
I got so mad at you." Tai says suddenly, jerking me out of my own
thoughts as he sits up. He got mad at me?! I scowl at him, but
he's not looking at me so it really doesn't matter.
I knew at the time that he
wanted to try surfing, and for the life of me, I'll never be able to figure out
why he didn't just ask Matt to do it with him. He knows I'm not good at the
athletic stuff, and he knows it makes me self-conscious to try to do the sports
thing. But he just wouldn't give it up. He kept pushing at me and hassling and
cajoling until I finally gave in and decided to give it a try.
My only stipulation had been
that we do it when and where no one would be able to witness my utter and
complete failure to have even the smallest bit of coordination.
"You know I'm not good at
sports." I mumble as I fold my arms over my chest. "You could have
just gotten Matt to surf with you, you know. I'm sure he would have been happy
to do it."
"Geez,
what is with you, Izzy?" Tai frowns at me and I
try uncomfortably to shrug it off. "I got mad at you because I wanted to
surf in the middle of the afternoon in the sun, but coming here like this and
seeing the beach like this, and having the waves and the waters to ourselves...it's just perfect this way. It's perfect in ways
that doing this in the middle of the day never would have been, and I'm glad
that you could convince me to do it this way."
"Oh." I get out, a
little stunned.
"And why would I pick
Matt over you anyway?!" He frowns at me. "The whole reason I wanted
to surf in the first place was so you and me could have something that just the
two of us did together. I mean, I do the drama club thing with Matt, and the
soccer thing with Sora. But what did I have that I
did with you? Nothing until the surfing thing."
"Stop it! Just stop
it." I yell at him before hopping out off the back end of the tailgate and
wandering down to the beach. I don't need his pity. I never asked him to take
time out of his busy schedule to do something with his socially inept teammate
from his childhood days. Sighing, I plop down on the hard, wet packed sand at
the edge of the surf.
"Stop what?" I hear
Tai's perplexed voice beside me, and I look up to see him flop down beside me.
In typical Tai fashion, he sticks his feet out into the path of the surf,
letting it wash over them. "C'mon Izumi, spill.
What's going on inside that head of yours? You've been whacked all
weekend."
"You don't have to hang
out with me just because you feel sorry for me." It tumbles out of my
mouth before I can stop it.
"What??"
"I mean it, Tai." I
cut him off, feeling miserable as I shove my fingers into the sand and
concentrate on them instead of his face. "You don't have to stick around
me and be my friend just because you pity me." What am I saying?! This guy
is my best friend. Can't I just live with his pity and pretend it's real friendship?
"You're an idiot."
I jerk my head up to look at him. His eyes are flashing like they do when he
usually gets pissed off and he's scowling down at me. "When, in the entire
time that you've known me, have I ever done something that I didn't want
to do? I am friends with you because I want to be and for no other reason but
that."
"Oh come off it,
Tai." I snarl back, suddenly pissed myself. I can't believe he's going to
deny it like this. I can't believe he's just going to sit there and flat out
lie to me. Even if I'm not a real friend, I at least deserve the truth.
"I'm the nerd. I'm the snotty little upstart that skipped two grades. My
clothes are never in fashion and I hate going to parties, clubs, and football
games. Out of all the kids in our grade, I am easily the most unpopular.
And you? I mean, come on, you were class president
last year, and everyone says hi to you in the hallways. What reason could you
possibly have other than a shared adventure six years ago to want to be my
friend? Pity's the only thing that comes to my mind…"
Tai blinks at me, and then
reaches over and tugs on my hair, reminding me that he did talk me into dying
it blonde. I am never going to live this down. What possessed me to actually go
through with it and bleach my hair? My mother's going to scalp me...literally.
"I'm your friend,
stupid, because I can see what everyone else at school can't seem to be able
to. Why do you think I wanted you to dye your hair with me? You can't let the
kids at school sucker you into believing that you're just some big nerd with no
life."
"Isn't that what I
am?"
"No. You're the guy who
tricked me and Matt into believing that Mimi really was an alien for two
weeks. You're the guy who got me to believe that his mother's electric
toothbrush was a personal pleasure device. Dude, you're the guy I go surfing
with and watch weird sci-fi movies with on Friday nights. You have a life, it
just doesn't match the same description as the one everyone at school thinks a
person should have. And really, do you want to have a life like them?" Tai
makes a disgusted face, and I can feel a tiny grin tug at my lips. "I know
I for one have better things to do other than bang someone whose name I can't
remember because I got drunk with them at a rave in Ybor."
He gives one last snort for emphasis before digging his own fingers into the
sand.
"Well, when you put it
that way…" I say hesitantly.
"You're my best friend,
Izumi, get over it."
"Fine,
fine. Okay, I admit I've been a
little over sensitive lately." Tai looks over at me and raises an eyebrow.
"Okay," I flush, "I've been a lot over sensitive lately. I'm
sorry."
"I suppose I can forgive
you...just this once." He shoots me a toothy grin and then lightly shoves
me with a laugh.
"Yeah,
yeah, yeah. Accept my apologies oh
'almighty blonde one'." I tease back with a wry grin. "Now that we've
established the reasons for why you felt you needed to drastically alter my
hair color, why don't you tell me why you dyed yours." I throw my arms
over my chest and give him my best know-it-all look. I think it would probably
work better if I had Joe's glasses, but oh well, Tai's never fallen for it
anyway.
"Er.
Because I didn't want you to have to do it alone?"
He suggests a bit uncomfortably.
"What happened to that
whole 'I never do anything that I don't want to' spiel?" Weasel your way out of that, Kamiya.
Besides, it should be obvious to him, I think, that I don't have a prayer of
understanding him sometimes. I really would like to know what his reasons were
for suggesting this in the first place. Although, in retrospect, I think I
should be glad that he only suggested dying our hair instead of getting
something tattooed or pierced.
"I'm not sure I should
tell you." He says finally. "Can I just say that I've begun to
realize that I've been making myself blend into what everyone expects me to be
instead of being what I really am?"
"Huh?"
"Guess not." He
mutters darkly at my stupefied face before taking a deep breath. "Okay,
you remember how I told you after Sora decided that
she didn't want to ever date me, that I was never
going to give girls a second glance?"
"Yeah." I say hesitantly as I recall how upset Tai had been
at the time. He'd been absolutely furious, but just listening to him, I could hear the hurt too. Oh I know Tai probably
exaggerated her cruelness when he was recounting the whole thing to me, but I
could have just kicked her for not seeing what a great guy Tai was. But then,
who can figure out what goes through girls' heads? I have a hard enough time
just trying to figure out Tai.
"Well, it really doesn't
have anything to do with Sora anymore, but I don't
give girls a second glance, because they aren't the ones that interest
me."