Not Always As It Seems
Written by: Shayna, Dani, Stacey, and Shelby
Chapter 4-by: Shayna
"Five, four, three, two, one… we have liftoff!" My alarm clock went off as usual, I hit it off and buried my head in my pillow. The nights were no longer restful times, where I'd dream of Cindy, now they were but a threat of reality. So it wasn't like I wanted to go to sleep, that was torture, but I didn't want to go to school either. Therefore, there I lay. In bed staring at the top of my pillow, thinking about the 'thoughts' I had last night instead of my O-so-sweet-dreams, I miss so dearly. Sheen has been acting really weird lately; he hasn't even mentioned Ultralord once this week. Even his grade, which was already pathetic at a flat 'C', has dropped to a very disgraceful 'F' in less than four weeks. So, as if that isn't enough, he doesn't even talk to me anymore, not about Libby or Ultralord. It makes me wonder, is Sheen there or is his body just an empty corpse. Actually, not much is the same as it was in the beginning of the year.
"Jimmy, are you up?" my mother hollered up the stairs. I stumbled out of bed, and my eyes drifted to my window, there I saw, in the shadows, Cindy's beautiful shadow. Then it all came back, just like that. The reality was like a nightmare, worse than Sheen's situation to me, worse then the thoughts at night. Worse than anything I could imagine. 'Cindy would never like me as I do her.' That truth hurt more than I could bear. Not so much the fact itself, for on the surface, it was always there. It was the attitude.
See, at the beginning of eternity Cindy and I hated each other, or at least appeared to. But as I got smarter, I started noticing slight frowns if I was sad, or smiles if something worked. It was then that I started having slight feelings for her, in the fifth grade. It's been about two years since then, at one point all I had to do was fess up, she would have been mine. Pride got the best of me so I didn't, she kept flirting more and more, and I was about to tell her the truth. Then that day came, I was about to say it, and Jessie, the second most popular girl next to Betty comes up, hands Cindy a cheerleader try-out form and told Cindy to try-out, because she was sure to make it. Cindy squalled with delight, ran off, and eventually tried-out. Just as Jessie promised, Cindy made it. She's been in cheerleading ever since, about one year.
But did the other cheerleader immediately accept her, as they should have? Nope, in fact, she is still trying to gain their approval. She does everything in her power to get Nick or Betty, or any other football player or cheerleader's, attention. Yesterday, I over-heard her talking to Jessie, about dieing her hair, the latest of several dumb tests Betty and Nick have been putting her through. If you ask me, neither Nick nor Betty has any intention of letting Cindy inside the 'inner circle.' This has been going on for a year, and once Cindy 'aces' a test, she has to keep doing that one thing, while doing something even less like her at the same time. I can't tell you how long it's been since we last fought. That was her first 'test' to quit being around, flirting with, or teasing (unless told to do so) me. And I miss those fights so much. I guess the only way she can justify taking notice of my existence is when I trip her or, heaven forbid, mess up her hair. So obviously I still have feelings for her, truth is probably always will, but she's not really the same Cindy I knew, the one I loved. I'm sure she's there somewhere, I just don't know where.
I grabbed my clothes, and put them on and trudged down the stairs, only to find a piece of toast, the usual, but still I could use something to make my day better. Then I went back to my thoughts.
It was just about the time Cindy changed that Libby's parents' got a divorce, in the end of the fifth grade. And now, just when she's gotten used to the back and forth, and all of their stuff was at last divided up, now Libby has to face choosing to live mainly with her mom or dad. I thought this little issue, well little compared to mine at least, would bring Cindy back to her old self, but it isn't doing that, at least it hasn't yet. Probably because they still manage to communicate via IM, E-mail, and phone and, vary rarely, at each other's homes; every day, from five to eight excluding Friday and Saturday nights, of course. But it doesn't show, I wouldn't be surprised if I were the only one who knew about these 'secret' conversations.
More thoughts came in, I tried my best to stop them as I ate, but they came anyways. "Have you left yet?"
"Leaving now, Mom." I said grabbing my jetpack and closing the door behind me. I still had approximately 5 min, and 33.56 seconds before the bus came, and it took three of those minutes to get to the bus stop on the other end of the street, 'looks like I caught Sheen.' I thought to myself racing to the end of the driveway. I caught up with Sheen just in time. "Hey Sheen!" I said as enthusiastically as I could, no reason to let others know that I was having troubles.
"Hey, Jimmy." Sheen said, almost as unenthused as I felt.
"How ya doing?" I asked, if my acting skills were convincing, I knew you could tell I was at least uneasy about something just by my conversational skills, or lack there of.
"Ok." Sheen said, still staring at the pavement.
"Has a new Ultra-lord episode come out yet?" I said, it was my best set to get him talking, if not there was only one thing that would work.
"Haven't checked, but I suppose so."
"O, How's Libby?" I hated to have to resort to that, but if Ultralord isn't a conversation starter, then the only thing left was Libby.
"Dang it Jimmy! She hasn't said more than one hounded words to me since the divorce!" 'So apparently, as I suspected, that will get him to talk.' Sheen threw his hands up into the air as he practically yelled at me. "And when I tell her I would take her mind off things, take her to the movies, buy a snack at the candy bar, all she does is shrug her shoulders, and say she's busy! Her dad was a jerk, so is mine, but that doesn't mean all guys are. I'm a very decent guy Jimmy, and what do I get for it? Nothing!"
"So, what's new at your house?" I said desperate to change the subject, I hated seeing Sheen turn into his dad, which he does, if you talk about certain subjects at certain times.
"Sorry," He whispered. "Well, yesterday I saw…"
I never did get to hear what Sheen saw, or where, because in that same moment Libby and Cindy, neither talking to the other, bumped into me and Sheen causing all four of us to fell down. Sheen immediately stood up; didn't bother to brush himself off and offered his hand to help pull her up; she refused.
I stayed there, down on the middle of the road, for about another 45 seconds. I wanted to offer to help Cindy, but there was a really sharp pain in my side. It wasn't broken, seeing as how I got up eventually, just damaged somehow.
"Watch your step, Nerdtron!" I heard Cindy call out, but not without looking around to see if anyone was in audible range. 'O, that sweet venomous name!' I couldn't help but think, it'd been 4 months, 13 days, 17 hours, and 43.2 seconds since I last heard her call me that.
"Sorry, Vortex." I tried my best to sneer her name, hoping that she'd try to make a comeback. She didn't. So, that was that. I picked my jetpack up, and preceded to walk to school, surely I had missed the bus by now. I walked pretty quickly, and by the time I had gotten to school I saw Cindy hopping out of Nick's car, and talking to him flirtatiously. I looked away. I know I shouldn't care what she does with her life, I mean just cause something's wrong for me doesn't mean it's not right for her, but I do. So, as usual, I turned my head, looked at the ground and focused on getting to class. Not five minutes after I sat down the final bell rang.
"Claaaaass, please take your seeeats." Mrs. Fowl crowed. Instantaneously the whole class sat down, except for, of coarse, Cindy and Nick. "I have some gooood news. Sooon, we will have four new additions to our claaaaass. They should beeeeee here by the end of this month." Mrs. Fowl said excitedly. Just as fast as the class had sat down, most got up and began talking about the new students. Everyone thought they were going to be their friends, except for the cheerleaders, who were already planning their first prank to pull on the 'newbies.'
I decided that there was no other better time to draw upgrades for Goddard then now, and with four hours till lunch, I had plenty of time. So I opened up my desk to get my Neutronic pencil that tells you, within five minutes, when you will run out of lead. That's when a big cloud of white chalk dust hit my face. 'Nerdtron and a joke in the same day, not bad' I thought to myself. Things just might be looking up. I grabbed my pencil and a few sheets of, now chalk-covered, white paper, and began to draw.