Chocolates & Balloons

Part II

It was hard to be my normal bouncy self, it really was. I felt broken, wounded inside where I couldn't reach to fix. It was really tough. I did my best to bounce around and act normal, but I felt fake. Everything I did felt exaggerated. I really felt like going home and crawling in bed and just staying there. I heard snickering.

"Shut up!" I pounded my fist on the desk dramatically. "Bring me lollipop tributes, peasants!"

Okay, sometimes it was easy to be bouncy and forget. My classmates, the boys my age, were kind of cool. They teased me, I acted dramatically and everyone got a kick out of it.
Needlessly to say, I wasn't a great academic but neither was Kaoru and I got better grades than her still.

Heh.

Anyway, lollipops were my favorite candy. I liked them more than chocolate sometimes.

I hated white chocolate.

I never wanted to see it again.

The thought of my chocolate at the bottom of a trash can somewhere did awful things to my insides. It hurt in ways I didn't know was possible until then. I still saw Shinomori, he was in my class, I couldn't avoid him, but I guess I kind of avoided him now. I didn't go to the cafe anymore and I didn't smile and flirt with him either, I just sort of bounced around him as though he wasn't there.

No easy task, either.

My other heart throb, Yukishiro, well, I still flirted with him. He still winked and grinned at me, I didn't feel totally lost. It had only been a week.

"Class, you are dismissed, Makimachi stay."

I groaned softly as the others stood, gathered their things and left. I turned my head down so that my forehead was pressed against the desk. I didn't want to see even Shinomori's shadow pass my desk. I just couldn't face him right now. When the noise faded I looked up to see my instructor, Takamoto-san waiting. He was our Biology teacher, a class I loathed.

"Yes, Takamoto-sensei?" I chirped, smiling gaily.

Always good to smile, even if it doesn't work.

"Your homework presentation for the last few weeks has been very poor, Makimachi-san. I want to see improvement by Friday or I am notifying your guardian and your coach, am I understood?"

I sighed. He was a boring teacher, but I suppose he knew his Biology. He didn't really care for team sports though, which was bad for me. What choice did I have?

"Yes, sir."

Act suitably cowed and get out was the best course of action. I followed it routinely. My grades wouldn't improve, maybe my homework would. I certainly had time for it; I thought as I gathered my books and headed out. The halls were empty. I didn't think he'd kept me for that long. Ah, well...

I wandered down to the shoe lockers and opened my little cubicle to get my shoes. Club had been canceled earlier due to rain. They had played in soppy weather before and it had resulted in team injuries.

I didn't want to go anywhere. I sighed, slammed the door closed and sat down on the bench behind me. Turning, I laid myself down, my books already set aside I propped my feet up on them and stared at the ceiling. So, what to do then?

Soccer was canceled... I wasn't following around Shinomori anymore; my chocolates had been thrown away... I closed my eyes.

"Yo!"

My eyes snapped open to see a youthful face hovering over my own. "Eew! Yahiko, get away!" I reacted impulsively.

He moved away with a grin. "Hey, haven't seen you around."

"What are you doing here? This is a high school."

He scoffed and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "So? I walked right in, anyway, been looking all over for you. I got new information and I'll even sell for cheap since I haven't seen you in a while."

I shook my head. I wasn't buying and Yahiko looked a bit startled.

"What? You're not stalking Shinomori anymore?"

I shot up and punched him in the gut. "I'm not a stalker... or a fan girl!"

He raised an eyebrow, his hands over his belly dramatically. "Since when?"

I growled and reached for my books and began to stalk away.

"Yo, dim wit!" he called back to me.

"What?"

"You forgot your shoes."

Stalker.

Fan girl.

I laid on my bed that night and thought about my homework and my coach and school and Shinomori. I had the Shinomori journal at my side on the bed. I had ripped half the pages to pieces in angry stints.

I was a stalker, wasn't I? Some completely abnormal, hormonal girl far too immature for such a cool guy like Shinomori. I rolled over onto my stomach and buried my face into my bedding. I was such a loser.

The abrupt knocking on my bedroom door was ignored. I knew it was Kaoru. She always knocked like she was an ape pounding with her forehead. The door slid open a moment later and Kaoru appeared faithfully. I watched her smile fade as she caught sight of me.

"Misao?"

No. No Kaoru sympathy. I sat up and gathered the shreds of my anger and dropped them all into the litter basket. I'm not sure if Kaoru knew what the tiny blue book had once been, but she didn't ask. The death of a love... the tragic rending of a one-sided love maybe was more appropriate. Maybe I ought to try sending him poems...

No.

Forget Shinomori.

He was a stone, cold and impersonal, lackluster in personality. He didn't want to be loved, not by me, even if it wasn't love; it was something, wasn't it? I looked away and then hurriedly glanced toward Kaoru.

"Heh, forgot about you for a second there. What's up?"

"Just came to see how you were. Suki called my house, she was wondering why you weren't at practice, said that no one here was answering the phone."

So, what? She just comes waltzing over?

"Well, it's not like you to miss soccer practice so I-"

"WHAT? I was told it was canceled this morning!" I shot to my feet. "I missed practice!"

Kaoru blinked. "They announced at lunch and there was a notice on the bulletin board."

"Huh... wow... weird day." I flopped back onto my bed and stared at the ceiling. I was going to be chewed out for an hour tomorrow by the coach and I hadn't done my homework. Takamoto would eat me for dinner.

Maybe I should just quit high school and become a waitress...

Erg, no... that wasn't such a good idea.

"Misao, are you okay? The Shinomori thing is really bothering you, isn't it? You want to talk about it?"

"No," I answered. I didn't want to acknowledge that it had even happened. I didn't know anyone named Shinomori. I hadn't humiliated myself. I hadn't had my heart broken on a downtown sidewalk.

None of it had happened.

Only it had and I couldn't seem to recover. It clung to me like the remnants of broken glass embedded deep and painfully into the skin and I was trying to remove them by shaking.

"Misao-"

"I don't want to talk about it, Kaoru."

She sighed and brought a hand around from behind her. I hadn't noticed she was standing that way… Clasped in her fingers was an envelope.

"This was downstairs taped to your front door. I brought it up for you."

She handed me the envelope and I was about to accuse her of reading my mail when I noticed it was sealed. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but I tore it open anyway.

"Shinomori quit his job at the café, too many girls came there and bothered him. Instead, he got a new job at a sports supply place like four streets down, can't remember the name."

I crumbled it and tossed it into the trash. Stupid Yahiko. I don't care where he's working! I'm not going there… I sighed.

"What was it?"

"Nothing," I mumbled. "Yahiko being stupid."

"Oh!" Kaoru's eyes lit up. "I forgot, I meant to tell you earlier, I was talking to Yahiko this morning before school. He told me that day you gave Shinomori the chocolates that he stuck them in his pocket."

"What?"

Kaoru nodded. "I know we saw him toss something, so when Yahiko told me, I made him give me specs on the little package. It was in blue paper with the shimmering green bow, that's basically what he said."

I felt my hope waver. "Basically?"

Kaoru shrugged. "Well, you know Yahiko… he said something like 'it was blue with this stupid green ribbon on it. Way too girly for someone to give a guy, if a girl tried to give me that I'd laugh in her face.'"

I smiled. "Like a girl would give him anything anyway."

"So maybe he didn't toss your chocolates away."

I shook my head. "Even if he didn't, he told me to stop bothering him. Jiya yelled at me when I got home because Takamoto called and Omasu and Okon are teasing me about some guy I didn't even notice until this afternoon… and he's a dork at that." I sat up. "I wonder if I could get Yukishiro to come down to the Aoiya?"

Kaoru rolled her eyes. "That guy is a public menace, stop flirting with him."

I grinned. "You're just sore because he asked you out that one time and then changed his mind before you could answer."

Kaoru puffed up and I knew the argument was on. It was really easy to lure her away from touchy topics. Really easy.

"Yeah right! More like him realizing he wasn't good enough for me!"

"Right, which is why geek bait is falling at your feet, isn't it?"

Kaoru's face reddened and I almost felt bad. Almost. She was really too much fun.

"Oh! I am so out of here! When you rejoin the polite world, let me know!"

She trounced out and slammed the door. Another day, another argument… but what to do about Shinomori?

Consumed with indecision and teenage angst, I did my homework and reported to homeroom the next morning, bright and early. No sooner had I walked in did I notice that Kaoru was not there, geek bait was, and Shinomori was there, a book laid open on his desk. But wait… he looked different.

I blinked.

Where on earth had those glasses come from? They were thin, black wire frames in slender oval shapes. Wow, they looked good on him… I wondered briefly if any of my schoolmates had the guts to call him "four eyes" and if he would punch them squarely in the face.

I laughed and a few people looked up. Then, realizing I was ogling and that was a no-no, I hurriedly sat down. Bad girl, Makimachi, I told myself. Bad girl. I pulled my homework from where I had tucked it inside my math text and prepared myself for class.

Grade, grades… grades sucked.

"Yo, Makimachi!"

I glanced back at Sano and yelped as something flew toward my face. The arm I was leaning my weight on slipped as I tried to dodge the thing, a ball, headed at my head and I fell.

"MAKIMACHI!"

I landed with a sickening thud, one arm bent awkwardly and I laid there dazed a moment as my classmates gathered around me. Ah… something was wrong with my arm… was it my wrist?

A pair of arms scooped me up and I glanced back to see my coach was holding me.

"Coach?" What was he even doing here? Had he seen me fall? Where had he come from?

OH NO! He was going to kick me off the team for the homework thing! Not fair! I only had one day to improve.

One day!

"Oh, no…" he muttered, holding my wrist. "Oh no… Oh no… We don't need this."

He got me up onto my feet and now my wrist was starting to hurt and I could see it was visibly swelling. My place on the school team was forgotten abruptly as fear replaced it, was it broken?

"SAGARA, DETENTION FOR A MONTH!" he roared before whisking me out the doorway.

I was taken to the local hospital, examined, x-rayed, and then had my wrist set in a cast.

Peachy.

The coach, before I was taken away, told me in somber words that if my wrist was broken I was off the team for a couple of weeks. Translated, that meant my season was over entirely. There were only three weeks left in the playing season and my wrist wouldn't heal by then. Our teams chances of winning our last three matches dimmed considerably as I considered myself both the team star and morale.

They were doomed, but I dared not say that aloud. I decided, as I was walked in the hospital doors, that I would carry myself down to the playing field and yell the whole match, every match. Maybe that would help…

I would be a one-girl cheering squad!

By the time I got home, Okina had thoroughly chewed me out despite my protests that it hadn't been my fault. He was under the odd and semi-true impression that I'd been fighting. I hadn't, I mean, not today, but on other occasions I did, certainly.

I was a bouncy, fighting, um… girl machine? Well, that didn't matter so much. I retreated to my room and spent an hour tossing and turning on my bed trying unsuccessfully to sleep.

My life was weird and loopy. Shinomori told me I was a bother. He may or may not have thrown away my chocolates. Yahiko was annoying me with info tidbits. My wrist was now fractured, not broken after all, and I was off the team for the rest of the season.

Briefly I thought I ought to do something with a bit less contact. Something harmless like a board-game club or video or gardening. Eventually, I did fall asleep and had weird, weird dreams about swords.