WE DO NOT OWN THE BREAKFAST CLUB.
Shermer High School. Clarendon Hills, Illinois.
(Claire)
"Maybe I don't want to let you in!" Luke yelled. I recoiled as he thrust my sketch away and started throwing his things into his book bag. As he was shouldering his bag and sprinting for the door, he yelled something more, but it was lost to me. Why was he yelling at me? I was trying to help, and he just yelled at me. I bit my lip, trying not to cry. I picked up my sketch of the vase of flowers we had been assigned to draw. It wasn't very good. Not like Luke's. I picked up his, too. It was beautiful, it looked perfectly like the flowers. He could make such beautiful things. But he kept yelling at me. Yelling, when I hadn't done anything wrong. Even when he said he loved me, he had been yelling.
I swallowed hard and the urge to cry dropped away. It was almost time for the bell, so I gathered my own things and turned in my sketch as well as Luke's. My head was down and I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, so it wasn't surprising when I bumped into someone. I looked up to mutter an apology and found I'd walked right into Allison, wrapped up in Bender's embrace. Seeing me, Bender muttered something in Allison's ear. He gave me a quirk of a smile and said, "Later, Princess."
"Why does he always look like he knows something other people don't?" I asked Allison.
"Well, he usually does," was her simple answer. "Why are you walking into people today? That's my job."
"I was thinking…" I trailed off.
"Thinking about Luke?"
"Yes." Tears were welling up again. "Why is he angry with me? I didn't do anything wrong."
"Let's walk down to the bleachers. We can cut study hall."
I was happy to get this invitation. Maybe Allison could help me figure out Luke. She might be a weirdo and a loner, but she seemed to understand people in a special way. I guessed she had spent her time more profitably than I had, observing people instead of trying to impress people.
I was so busy with these thoughts that we reached the back doors to the sports fields without me really noticing it. The waft of fresh air and the scent of grass recalled me to the present.
"We can sit here," Allison suggested, gesturing to the nearest bleachers. "I sit out here with John sometimes."
I snorted. "So he can smoke his weed, right?"
"Sometimes, yeah, but mainly because it's quiet out here."
We sat in silence. I was used to filling silences with inanities to be socially acceptable, but apparently Allison felt no need to do so. And oddly enough, the silence was soothing, not awkward.
Finally I said, "Luke keeps yelling at me and I don't know why." She turned her wide, brown eyes on me. "I'm just trying to help, to be there for him, to love him."
"Love is strange. It makes you think you know what someone needs. But you don't always guess right."
I felt miserable with the idea I was hurting, not helping Luke. "But how else can you know? Besides guessing?"
"Well, you can always ask."
This seemed like a simple answer, but I had no experience with being so unadorned, straightforward, blunt. I always had to guess how my parents would react to me, how my former friends might react to me. Guess and talk around the topic and probe and try to anticipate. Mind reading.
"Mind reading doesn't work as well as asking." How had she known I was thinking that very word? "No, I didn't read your mind. I read your face."
"So I should ask him… what? I don't even know what to ask."
"Ask him what he needs from you, what he wants from you, what would help him."
"And then he'd stop yelling at me?"
"Maybe. But maybe not. Unless you tell him what you feel when he yells at you, and what you need."
"But he's the one who needs things right now. I don't want to burden him more. This whole thing with his father is bad enough."
"But you count. Your feelings are important, too."
The bell rang, dismissing the last class. We got up and headed back to the school building in silence. As we opened the double doors, Allison said,"If you need condoms, Planned Parenthood gives them out for free, no questions asked."
I opened my mouth to deny any need for condoms, but she was gone.
That idea, however, brought up other thoughts about Luke. Thoughts of a most racy sort, remembering our time in his bedroom. On his bed. In his arms. My hands under his shirt.
I was sort of dreamily drifting towards my locker, rather than walking briskly, so Luke had been waiting by my locker for a few minutes when I finally arrived. I snapped back to the here and now.
"Claire-" he started, at the same moment I pronounced his name. We both stopped, and I was suddenly feeling very shy. Maybe he was too, he seemed to be blushing.
"Claire, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for yelling at you." I wasn't quite sure what to say to this. He continued, "It wasn't right for me to yell, you didn't do anything wrong."
"I want to help you, Luke. What do you need from me?" This bald question felt odd, but Allison was right, mind reading didn't work all that well.
"Please, say you forgive me." He took my hand. I stroked his.
"I forgive you Luke, but you need to tell me, what do you need from me?" The repetition of this direct question felt a little easier the second time. I continued to clasp his hand. When he brought my fingers to his lips, I asked him again, "What do you need?"
"I don't know. Nothing. No, sometimes I need-" He seemed as unaccustomed to direct talk as I was. "I need to know you care because you love me, not because I am some kind of charity case."
"You aren't a charity case to me. You are an amazing person. You are talented, intelligent, caring, real, forgiving. I care what you think of me. How many times do I have to tell you? I have never seen you as a charity case. Never."
"I know that, really, but sometimes I get scared-" This seemed very hard for him to get out. "I get scared you'll leave me, stop loving me."
"I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right here, at your side." I stroked his cheek. "I won't leave you."
"You forgive me, really?"
"Yes, but Luke, I feel hurt and scared when you yell at me."
"Ok, I promise, no more yelling at you. But I have to yell about my dad sometimes, or I think I'll explode."
"Yell all you want about your dad, I'll yell with you! Just don't yell at me. I want to help and you need to tell me what you need."
He kissed me and I responded quite eagerly, remembering the feel of his skin, the touch of his hands. Reluctantly I let him pull away.
"C'mon, Claire Bear. Daddy is waiting for us."
CLAIRE AND LUKE WILL BE ALL RIGHT. REVIEWS NEEDED AND APPRECIATED.
