The Journal Chapter 12: The Asking Outs, a naruto fanfic

I'll have you know that I pounded out this chapter in all of three days, but because there wasn't Internet connection, I had to WAIT :P.

The way I usually write is meandering around for inspiration, waiting for it to hit me, and when it does, hole up and write. This is bad if you're a fanfiction writer with readers hungry for updates, I guess (hint, hint), but good if you're still searching for your style, your voice in writing. This is because I usually get inspired after reading a book, and then my writing unconsciously reflects that tone. I've developed an eclectic tone because of that, now. You'll notice that the Journal seems very bipolar, very multiple-personality-disorderly. I read The Fortunes of Indigo Skye by Deb Caletti, which uses present tense, and I accordingly wrote this chapter in present tense. I think it'll stay.

All day
starin' at the ceiling makin'
friends with shadows on the walls

All night
Hearing voices tellin' me
that I should get some sleep,
'cuz tomorrow might be good,

or something -

~Unwell, Matchbox Twenty

Chapter 12
The Asking Outs

"Hello," Sasuke says, and the way he is smiling, in that cat-that-swallowed-the-canary-way, you would expect him to add an "and goodbye."

But he stays, and I stay, and I wallow in stone-cold silence.

There are the comfortable silences with people you know and hit off great with, like I did with TenTen a year ago. And then there's the suffocating silence that grabs your voice box and renders it powerless to speak.

This silence is neither of those. It's one equated only with the opposite sex who is your friend but whom toward you still feel the vast stretch of discomfort because he's the opposite sex; there's always going to be the moments when you're not sure if your "friend who's a guy" has that smile or personality switched on for everybody, or if he's saving it just for you. Thus, discomfort.

"Hi," I answer, and there's this automatic flushing of my face and neck when his eyes light up, and I think, that kiss that kiss – can he tell I've been thinking about it so much it took me an hour to fall asleep last night?

But if he knows what I'm thinking about, his words don't betray him.

"I was wondering," he says, calmly and concisely, "since there's still twenty minutes for lunchtime, if you'd want to go with me to a café, or somewhere."

I smile the nervous automatic smile of not knowing what else to do, like a cartoon Jerry that smiles at Tom in hopes that he'll get set free. "I…don't know."

"Well, you have a minute or two to make up your mind," he says in a serious tone, but I am too nervous to look and see if he's kidding.

Oh God, oh God. I have the urge to go to the ladies' room, splash water on my face, rearrange my hair and clothes and everything, and then stay there until the coast was clear of possibly humiliating situations.

Oh God oh God. Is he asking me out? No, it can't be like this. Not Sasuke, who I've known as nothing but a friend, who can't possibly want me as a girlfriend.

Backtrack, backtrack. He knows that going with me on an almost-date will evoke rumors, and we aren't even in the same league. God, different people like us aren't even supposed to be friends, let alone something more.

But more than social restraints, I have the panicky feeling of change, that I am on the verge of deciding something and never looking back. Or looking back to regret it.

I scrunch up my face to concentrate: if I do this, go with him, I will never –

Naruto.

And the feeling of betraying Naruto is so ridiculous yet so strong that the decision if made before I consciously take note of it.

"No," I say, and there is a little movement, a tightening of his jaw line. But then Sasuke nods and smiles.

I didn't know if he times it, or if his natural elegance auto-sets it for him, but he turns and walks in such a way that I know he is still smiling. Still amused and not giving up.

I wonder what motivation keeps his amusement going, and then decide it isn't much the next day, when he asks me the same thing after sixth period.

"No," I answer him, and his cheeks tauten slightly but he does not blink; his eyes do not change. He has more control over his eyes, I discover, than over his facial muscles. I guess he knows about the "eyes are windows to the soul" adage, but doesn't know that the nuances of the face expose him just as easily.

But after the fourth day he reveals no emotion whatsoever.

It has become prosaic, this routine made up of his question and my answer. I grow used to watching him walk away.

My guess is since I never see him in the lunchroom or even the library to research for history class, that he goes to the café every day, buys the same thing.

Maybe the staff all knows him by now. Maybe there's a gorgeous waitress – but no, I tell myself, because my back has tightened and I'm feeling the pricking sense of jealous in my spine.

Don't you dare get – envious – (because this is easier, somewhat, to admit, than being jealous, though I don't know why. I guess jealousy implies you want of a person and envious is more of a materialistic desire) of her.

Sasuke is not yours to get envious over, anyway.

I take a deep breath and tell myself that things will be fine, just peachy, because this is just a phase for both of us, a "boy rediscovering that the girl is actually a girl" phase, and sooner or later we'll cast off the awkwardness and revert back to being friends –

– and you'll be fine with Sasuke dating hot waitresses, I remind myself.

Then, Not that you ever weren't fine with that.

I touch my upper lashes gingerly, to check if the mascara had clumped, but not hard enough to rub any off.

These past days, I've been eating lunch sometimes with Karin, who I still feel has the sense of artifice, and going to the library for U.S. History AP research.

I am doing research on the computer now, but instead of at the library, I'm home.

Same crap, different place. I sigh hugely at the computer keys as if I were able to just blow all this homework away. It is suffocating me, encumbering my freedom. I pound out a few more paragraphs about Nixon's Watergate scandal before going to turn on the bathwater for Hanabi.

She's been going through this period when after she finishes her homework, she languishes on the bed and reads Cosmo, Seventeen, Glamour, and Self. We've been getting bunches of these magazines because Hiashi reached some promotion and received several free subscriptions of any magazines he chose. Hanabi finagled him into choosing teen crap magazines.

Anyway, she is so engrossed in them that she refuses to do much anything else until someone has prepared it for her. One of these days, I'll stop starting the bathwater for her, see how she reacts. Hey, it'll be her loss – she should know from reading those magazines that not bathing is worse than doing something yourself for a change. But I digress.

I'm in my room at eleven reaching for my cell phone to turn it off - Hiashi always wants me to keep it on every day in case of emergency - when a notice catches my eye.

A notice about two new text messages, in fact. My mind hits a snag and my heart begins beating like crazy.

See, this is the disparity between mind and body right now. My mind tells me it isn't him; it's the cell phone company or someone, even though I haven't gotten a text message from them since I first got this phone. My body, on the other hand, responds with the anticipation of a dog who's going to go for a walk.

Down, Hinata, I tell myself. Don't do this to yourself. I flip open the phone and press Inbox with fingers that still shake.

It's Karin, and she wants to know if I want to hang out after school tomorrow. We could walk around those new shops, she has written.

I text back, with hands not accustomed to manipulating those tiny keys, and it is twenty minutes later when I have finished, brushed my teeth, and read the Bible.

I've been reading the Bible one passage a day. I'm only at Exodus, but I've calculated all this, and I'll be done in about three years. Which is still an accomplishment, and a gradual change towards enlightened: therefore, I think, a surer one.

I close the light and my eyes adjust to the darkness.

I fall asleep to the sound of crickets chirping and somehow, strangely, Sasuke's image, imprinted in my mind.

"Hinata!" It isn't the knight in my dream, to whom I've pleaded several times to go away. It is my sister, and her stentorian shriek, right next to my temple. I jump awake and throw off my covers.

"You've slept through your alarm!" she snaps waspishly. "God, must I do everything for you?"

"You? I do everything for you!" I'm annoyed inside, the slow, rising anger that you try to rub off because it's the start of a new day, and you don't want the rest of it to progress like this.

"Hanabi, it's the first time you've woken me up," I try to say in a more reasonable, let's-talk-this-out tone. She merely shrugs and brushes her hair, newly layered and curled, off her shoulder.

She must have mixed tips from the magazine on that one, I think, half-smiling to myself when I pull on a jean skirt. Because no fashion magazine would ever advice curly hair and layers.

The day goes downhill from there and gets worse.

I apply eye shadow but forget to apply liner and mascara, so I just l look sleep-deprived and not sexy (which I probably don't look if I do it right, either).

I apply too much foundation without moisturizer first, so that throughout the day I feel the dryness of my skin, and the foundation flaking off. "Awesome," I discover aloud fourth period, grinding my teeth. I ask for the bathroom pass and liberally scrape off the foundation, leaving red marks. I'm never wearing foundation again.

Covering up a few faded red spots of skin is not worth the plastic-mask feeling of foundation against your skin, nor the steps and time it takes to apply it. Bug-bye, dewy skin, I don't need you.

And then, Sasuke isn't at school that day (a good thing: a really good thing - the highlight of my day). The only reason I potentially missed him is to check our text scores in Calc (which, incidentally, I got a 79 on. Execrable. (at least I rule at English vocab)).

During lunch Karin is in a good mood, which is totally fine if you're in a good mood, but if you're not, it pushes you deeper into bad-mood mode because

a. you're annoyed by her cheeriness - is it fake? you think, and

b. you're envious - not jealous - of her perpetual sunniness.

She jabbers on about how she thinks she'll have a chance at the #1 rank of the grade, since she moved from #14 to #8.

"Oh, I don't know," I say, in one of my more caustic comments. "Sasuke's in first and I'm second, and we've been competing for ages."

"Really?" She is suddenly interested, props elbows on the table to lean in, catch everything. "Is he that smart?"

"I don't know about that; it's probably just luck." I attempt to say this humorously, but I grouse it, and my body tenses up. God. That - guy. He always crops up in conversations, and he isn't even here today. I always have to talk about him (therefore think about him), and I'm hitting myself over the head for mentioning him and then for recognizing his omnipresence, when Karin inquires, "Are you guys dating?"

"Dating?" I repeat, and I see her eyes, shiny and much-too-curious, behind her glasses. Then she blinks and the moment passes, but suddenly I've figured her out, from that look.

"It's more than rumor-gossip curiosity, isn't it?" I ask her, a lateen threat hidden in my voice. It's a rhetorical question, and she needn't answer it. Her eyes grow wide and she gulps, her mouth pushed out.

"Oh! no, it's… Well – it depends on your answer, I guess. Are you guys?"

I feel defensiveness, its tight, clenching hold. So this was her ploy all along. An then my optimistic shows up, that fashionably-late arrival, the last faint hope. I say, "Let's talk about something else."

She shakes her head, her dark, red ringlets bouncing, and I'm reminded of Hanabi, how I kowtowed to her every whim, and there's this white-hot burst of pain around my eyes, and I realize I'm doing the same for Karin. Capitulating to her every wish.

I just didn't realize it before.

I push back my chair, the metal scraping the tiles. "What if Sasuke and I were going out?" I throw at her in clipped anger. It's a fury that bunches my back and neck muscles, raises goose bumps. My arms and legs lift with anticipation, like I'm going into an skirmish.

But the weapons are verbal daggers, and I lash them out.

"How come you never talk about things that matter?" All this anger surges out: Naruto's words are replaying in my head, Sasuke's stolen kiss, his invitations for a date, my sister's despotism.

My head is throbbing so hard it hurts.

"We could have been friends." I'm not shouting. My voice is ice-cold, quiet. I hear a ringing, muddled; the sound is so far away it's as if it were battering against a steel cage. I take a deep breath to keep from exploding, and enunciate every word, every syllable.

"But all you wanted was Sasuke. And I'm not giving him up, because I – I have Naruto up and every last ounce of my dignity, and I tried to be confident, and look where it's gotten me." The fucking makeup is smudging, and between the spots of red I'm seeing, there's Karin's face, her real face, devoid of any compassion.

"So you like him, then?" comes Karin's voice.

I stare at her, humiliated, having hurled out all my excuses, and having her sidestep them and repeat her question. I suddenly feel like one of those cartoon people who is the butt of all jokes, who gets the pie splattered in his face. My hair is plastered against my scalp, disgusting as that sounds, and I just cannot do this, stat.

I look at the exits, and I want to disappear, just vanish into nothing. But I have to answer the question, and I do the worst thing, by lying.

"No," I say, and it's like the world is shattering, the axis tipping into space. I gave her Sasuke.

I go to the bathroom, then the library, and I check my grades and see the grade for the history project.

It's an A, but this holds no warmth to my numbness.

I sit there until the end-lunch bell rings, and I wonder if Sasuke and I will ever compare grades again.

Hiashi's at his computer with his apple and mug of tea-not-coffee sitting dutifully beside him, like a wife.

He always tells Hanabi and me that caffeine, and therefore coffee, is bad bad bad for you. He's big on tea and apples, and drinks as many as two gallons of oolong tea, his favorite, a day, and three apples to top it off.

I've tried telling him that this much tea and apples have even more caffeine than coffee, that an apple contains as much caffeine as one cup of coffee (I found this out in 6th grade health), but he continually ignores me. Hey, if it floats his boat.

"A three dollar raise per hour," he's saying. "That's would be…thirty more dollars a day. That much a month plus how much I have set aside… My daughter, how much is the table again?"

Last time I checked – or rather, he made me check, was – "$640," I tell him.

"Oh!" His eyebrows jump in happiness, and I'm reminded of mountains moving.

"I think we have enough, daughter!"

"Really?" My interest gets piqued marginally. Hiashi's been wanting to buy a foosball table ever since he saw this ad on TV of two cats playing foosball. He worships cats but is allergic to them, and I guess seeing them play foosball was like seeing your favorite celebrity wearing eye glitter – you want to copy her right away.

Anyway, ever since then, Hiashi's wanted a foosball table, even though (go figure) the ad was about kitty litter. Again, go figure.

"There's still the tax," I remind him, but he's already clicking the foosball table website, reading to punch the "Add to my cart" button.

He arrives at the foosball page, and I see his eyebrows droop in dismay.

"What?" I ask, and I See it: the page says, Product has been removed.

I lean back to digest this, not knowing what to say, and Hiashi rubs his eyes, his voice gruff. "It's would have to do that sooner or later. We just weren't fast enough. Fucking Bill Robertson." Bill Robertson is the name of this American guy shown on TV who won the lottery in Japan twice, and Hiashi is convinced that all our money and government taxes go straight to him. Hence, the using of Bill Robertson as a scapegoat.

"It's okay, Hiashi," I attempt to console him, but I can see it's not okay, won't be okay for a long time because he's wanted to buy it ever since he saw that commercial, two and a half years ago.

"It's nothing," he growls into a napkin, fingernails digging into the wood of the table. "Oh, it's…" He sighs, then seem sot deflate, his bolt upright posture slumping into his chair. I haven't seen him like this since his pet snail died.

"It's just that stupid hope, you know?"

"Yeah, I know." I'm only partially there, subconsciously not wanting to invest too much into understanding him when I have too much to understand myself.

"It's just that goddamn hope everything is gonna turn out right. It's that goddamn hope, like the light at the end of a tunnel. Then life is reality and you're left in the dark."

He's being really poetic today, I'm absent-mindedly thinking, when his words grab me and make me see the light. The light.

"I totally understand you," I'm suddenly saying. "Naruto was a total ass-hat."

Hiashi eyes me, as if I've suddenly turned into a beat-boxin' gangsta, but he nods and mutters, "I knew that Naruto guy was no good. He had too much happiness – "

In other circumstances I would roll my eyes to my father in partisan, but I jump onto his wavelength: "I know. It was insincere, somehow. Like he grinned at everybody in the same way, to lead them all on."

"His hair," Hiashi cuts in. He throws his head back. "God awful. Like Bill Robertson's (God, I hate him). Too bright. Hinata, my elder daughter, when you marry, you must marry a man with dark hair."

"His 'you bet's,'" I say. "what is up with his freak-manic personality."

"His eyes," Hiashi interrupts for the second time, but I'm too busy agreeing with him that I don't even mind (otherwise I would've told him to read his Seven Steps to Perfect Manners book again) – "The blueness. Like, what is up with his eyes? Are they contacts? Hinata, when you marry, you're marrying someone with dark eyes."

"And his clothes," I say, and then, we both yell,

"That God-awful orange polyester jacket/jumpsuit!"

And I add, "So gauche."

And he spits, "Bill Robertson."

And I'm reveling in this moment because it's the first time my father and I understand each other in ages, and I'm suddenly thinking I don't need Karin and TenTen and Naruto (who's he again?), when I can have all the girl-rants I want with my father. (Right?)

"Ah. That got me awake," Hiashi says, in a lighter tone. He grabs the apple and bits ginormously into it.

"Yeah," I agree. I have enough energy to do all my homework for the weekend and save the world from flying monkeys while jumping over buildings. I feel refreshed.

"Oh, wait, my daughter," Hiashi says, and I pause at the door of his study. His eyes are stern now, chips of brown against his lined face. "No marriage, maybe, because that's a little too far away" – (a little, he says) – "but a boyfriend. Now, I know you're at the age to be interested in boys – no more guys like Naruto, understand?" He chuckles when I make the hope-to-die gesture across my chest.

"Instead, I want your boyfriend – if you get one – to be respectable, thoughtful, intelligent, and confidence. Preferably dark-haired, and dark-eyed (you never know about people with colored contacts, like Naruto, probably). Oh, and preferably someone who doesn't grin, but smiles close-clipped. More honest that way. And maybe add a touch of arrogance, too. That way he's sure of his abilities."

I nod, and Hiashi nods back, puts his glasses back on, and resumed typing.

I walk thou of his room and down the stairs, clutching the banister in a daze.

Sasuke, I'm thinking, Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke, and my heart seems to lift up and fly. I stop in the middle of the staircase and lean against the wall, eyes closed, breathing hard. Be still my heart. At that moment I know two things: I know I am over Naruto, and I know did I do not know my response to Sasuke when he would, inevitably, ask me out to lunch on Monday.

Wheeee, drama! 3 3.

The faster you review the faster I update :3