The Dance
Okay, before this next part of the story starts, I just want to get some things off my chest. I didn't think that I could start writing again for a long time after September 11, 2001. I live in the New York City area, and I know a lot of poeple who have family that won't come home anymore. It just felt...almost sacreligious to write a happy romance story when so many people are dying only ten miles away from me. I have been writing, though; actually, this terrible event, coupled with the recent death of my beloved housecat of 11 years, has helped me write ahead and almost finish the Ken/Cody plot of this fic.
Another thing: the one thing I can't stand that I'm now seeing on these boards is Digimon-related fics on the WTC attacks. These fics are being written no more than a day after the tragic attack, and I just believe that this is one of the worst acts of selfishness and insensitivity I have ever seen. I do believe that, in time, it is a creative experience to write about this, but I think it's way too early to be writing about it now. I won't name names...because that really gets me in trouble...but I will say I'm really not happy about it.
Oh, and one more thing...TakatoxLee forever. ^_^
8:24 P.M.
Wednesday 16 May
Odaiba High - Gymnasium
"Roger!" I giggled coyly to my hot date, Roger Ohtori. "You are such a tease!"
This I was saying as I necked with him while sitting precariously on his lap.
Roger Ohtori, the beefcake senior of Odaiba High, pulled me close towards him on his lap and seductively licked my earlobe, sending waves of physical excitement through my body. "I'm no more of a tease than you are, babe," he growled in my ear, wrapping his arms around my waist and cupping my firm as in his hands, much to my surprise. "I mean, look at what you're wearing," he continued, motioning towards my tight neon yellow dress that covered the bare essentials and not much else. I shrugged. I didn't think it was that bad. "How do you expect me to keep my hands off you with that hot number?"
"That's exactly the point," I purred, wrapping my arms loosely around his neck. "I don't."
Roger and I had escaped long ago to a dark corner of the gymnasium of Odaiba High, finding a free fold-out chair and proceeding to make out like our lives would end by midnight. Even though this was one of the biggest dances of the year, we weren't paying attention to Matt's loud, punk rock band or Michelle and her cronies, who were all reeking of cheap perfume and fawning over my blond former friend. The entire dance was invisible to us, and we were invisible to them.
We were invisible, of course, except to the eyes of those who still call themselves DigiDestined.
Even though my eyes and my lips were being fully occupied with Roger, I could feel Tai and Sora's disapproving eyes on us from only a few seats away, and Yolei had stolen a glance in my direction when she passed as she entered the gym with Davis. And I didn't even want to think about sad-eyed Joe, moping around the dance like he just lost his best friend.
No; wait. I do want to think about him.
I couldn't believe how cold I was being to him. Sure, I was acting like none of my former friends of Odaiba High existed, but I knew how Joe felt about me, and I was being an absolute jerk because of it. I was ignoring him in the halls, and I let Michelle and her friends make fun of him endlessly without ever thinking about his feelings, just so I would fit in with the cool crowd of the school.
Why was I trying to fit in so much? I knew those senior girls were nothing but shallow trouble the minute they came up to me at school when I moved back to Japan. The only reason they paid attention to a sophomore like me was because I had lived in New York, and if I hadn't they would have dropped me like a fashionable stone a long time ago. The girls I was trying to impress so much weren't my real friends, and the friends that I used to have probably wouldn't even speak to such a cold-hearted bitch like me.
I sighed. This was making me way too depressed. I don't want to think about this any more.
Roger, who was keeping himself busy with kissing my neck, suddenly stopped and looked up at me, his blue eyes filled with concern. It must have been one of those suave tactics he used to get girls in bed with him that June told me about earlier. "Babe, you don't look into this," he said. My face must have been obviously showing how my mind was on something else besides Roger. "Is anything wrong?"
I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to say that I hated being mean to me real friends and how much I despised the giggling seniors who pretended to be my friends. I wanted to tell him about Joe, the great, old friend who I dumped just to go with this male bimbo who had his hands all over me. I wanted to tell him how I hated his hands all over me. I wanted to break down and tell him how just about everything in my life was going wrong...especially how the gymnasium lights were making my neon yellow dress look like the color of vomit.
I looked at him, my caramel eyes meeting his aqua ones, and gave him a plastic smile. "Nothing's wrong, Roger," I said in a mock cheerful tone, as I tried to ignore his hands that were once again creeping up on my ass. "It's just..."
I let my mind wander a bit, thinking about my friends once again, and my gaze turned from Roger's endlessly blue eyes to Sora and Tai, who were sitting a few seats away from us in the recesses of the gym and looking pretty cozy themselves. Tai, who, for some strange reason, wasn't wearing as much hair gel as he usually did back when I knew him, gave a disapproving look in my direction, his hand on Sora's shoulder. He was never much of a fan of public displays of affection, especially when it came to his friends.
His friends...
"Oh," Roger said, in a more serious tone. "I see." He's caught me looking in Tai and Sora's direction, and my head snapped back, never letting Roger see the worried frown on my face. Roger put his sly, seductive smile on once more, and pulled me closer in to his body. "Wandering eyes distracting you?" he asked with a smirk. I only giggled and shrugged stupidly in response; the typical airhead answer. It was what he wanted anyway, wasn't it?
After my answer, Roger promptly picked me up by the waist and hoisted me off his lap, much to my surprise. I looked back at him with a shocked expression, but still he was taking his sweet time with explaining himself. Roger yawned, stretched his arms out above his head, and gave me a smile a Leomon has right after it eats the Piximon whole.
I shirked back from that smile. It didn't seem so friendly to me.
Roger stood up, his fashionable khakis and navy blue suit jacket fitting him like a glove. "If spying eyes are bothering you," he said in his sexiest voice, the one that really gets my blood going every time he uses it. I wonder if he uses that voice with every girl he wants to get in bed with... "then I'll take you away from the spying eyes."
Snaking an arm around my waist protectively, Roger began to usher me away from the dark corner of the gym and towards the west exit, away from the main entrance of the dance. Returning to my ditzy cheerleader persona - the one that Roger seemed to like the best - I twirled my strawberry pink hair around my index finger and looked up at him with big doe eyes. "Where are we going?" I asked, my voice sounding even more bubbly than usual.
Roger smiled without looking me in the eyes. "The bleachers," he said, meaning the bleachers of the high school's soccer field that lay right outside of the gym. I hadn't even been there yet in the month I had been attending Odaiba High. There was no reason for me to walk by there during school hours, and I would only have an awkward encounter with the rest of the DigiDestined if I ever went to a soccer game, knowing that both Tai and Davis were on the school's soccer team. "It'll be much quieter there, and plus..." Roger leaned down and whispered breathily in my ear, enticing me to no end. "...we'll have some time to be all alone."
I looked up at him and matched his sly smile with my own, and I giggled as we slipped out of the gym, unnoticed, towards the soccer field. I felt like an airhead when I giggled like that - even worse, I felt like one of Michelle's stupid giggling friends. But it was what Roger wanted, and it was what was expected of me. In the group I was in, there weren't supposed to be any independent thinkers, or anyone that would dare threaten the authority of the leader, who just happened to be that witch Michelle. We were just supposed to support her selfish and vicious acts, and be her low-IQ lackeys. I hated it. I had never been a lackey before - not when I went to Odaiba Elementary, not when I moved to New York - and I didn't want to start now. I wasn't going to suppress my own identity or my own ideas just for Michelle and the "cool crowd."
I looked up at Roger, fascinated at how his dark blue eyes matched the color of the twilight sky perfectly, and giggled, thinking about all the fun we were going to have by ourselves over at the bleachers.
But being someone else just for tonight couldn't possibly hurt.
8:27 P.M.
Wednesday 16 May
Odaiba High - Gymnasium
Considering how boring and depressing this night had already been, death would have been a pleasure.
I was alone here at the dance. Truly, definitely alone. Wasn't I the most pathetic individual on the face of the earth? I looked over at the refreshments tables; I was avoiding them the entire night mostly because I didn't want to intrude upon Izzy and his blind date, but also because nearly everything in the sandwiches the Dance Committee made makes me break out in hives. I saw Izzy chatting it up with a red-haired girl in a flouncy navy blue dress, and I assumed that was his blind date, though with the way they were seeming to get along, it would look like they were friends for years to any passersby.
There. That settles it. If Izzy has found a girl at the Youth Day Dance, then I really am the most pathetic person on earth.
What was even worse was that, up until a few minutes ago, Mimi and her sad excuse for brain cells boyfriend of hers had been going at it in a dark corner of the gymnasium, and it didn't look like they were coming up for air any time soon. Mimi and Roger Ohtori really do seem like the perfect high school couple; the fashion plate and the jock, arm in arm, lip to lip...so to speak. Mimi sure did seem happy with Roger, I reflected, as I sneezed once again, even though the big, muscular and stupid template Roger fit into wasn't typically her type. Although, I might be a bit biased; I'm the one who wants tall, lanky, and a bit geeky-looking to be her type.
I know I said I wanted to forget about Mimi Tachikawa, and to get on with my life, since she obviously didn't care about me, or even think about me anymore. But there was still a part of me that wanted to believe that she hadn't changed in all those years she was away from Japan, and away fro me. I still want to believe she was the innocent, beautiful ten year old that learned how to earn her Crest of Sincerity and understood the meaning of true friendship, so that, maybe, she'd come back to me one day - come back to all of us - and be the Mimi I remembered.
But then I come to my senses. Mimi isn't the girl I met in summer camp six years ago. She's different...she's changed, maybe not for the better, but she's changed, nonetheless. I wasn't a part of her life anymore, and it looks like she wouldn't care if I was.
I felt my chest get tight, and it wasn't over emotion about Mimi Tachikawa. The perfume smell in the air was getting to me, and I knew that if I didn't get out of there - and soon - they would be wheeling me out on a stretcher instead.
Scanning the gymnasium, I caught sight of the western exit, that I knew from many asthma attacks during gym class lead directly to the soccer field. Ah; now that's what I needed. Some fresh air.
Making a beeline for the door, I glanced back in the direction where Mimi and Roger were sitting only moments before, and was surprised to see the spot vacant.
I wonder where they went.
I sneezed violently, for what seemed like the umpteenth time that night, as I hugged the edges of the happy crowd on the dance floor, making sure not to get too close to the hordes of giggling girls cramming themselves at Matt's feet. I was highly allergic to cheap perfume, and from the way those girls reeked of it, it seemed like they bathed in it last night. If I got too close to the stage, then - to listen to the incredibly loud music that I didn't really like anyway - my throat would close, my lungs would collapse, and I might just die.
