Another Encounter [1]

(Malory)

Kyle was nowhere to be found this morning. By the time the first bell rings, I’m exhausted trying to spot the idiot, so while everyone else hurries to their classrooms and the morning announcements damage my eardrums over the PA system, I burst into the science class and scan the room.

Mr Deacons, the physics teacher, almost gets a heart attack from my sudden appearance. I must’ve interrupted his lesson, though that doesn’t particularly matter to me because I’m pretty sure that no person in their right mind starts teaching a class while people are talking over the PA. Deacons just thinks he’s some special science god.

“Good morning, Mr Deacons,” I say, “I’m terribly sorry to intrude but there’s an emergency. Davidson and I need to head to the principal’s office. Right now.”

The startled wannabe science god turns to Kyle and gives him a quick nod, saying “Sure, go ahead, Kyle.”

Kyle slams the cover of his notebook down unto the other half of it, dropping his pen and leaning back into his seat with folded arms. He’s not having it with my bullshit emergency story. “What do you want?” He asks me.

“Did you read the script?” I inquire, frantic.

He gives me this confused, oblivious expression, “What?”

For a genius, Kyle has such a slow brain.

“The script, Davidson; the script we got yesterday for the play.”

In realisation, he remains calm and sighs. “No, I haven’t. Should I have?”

“Oh my god you’re so incompetent,” I mutter, I roll my eyes and they land on Olivia, sitting near the window at the end of the classroom.

What’s going on? She mouths to me, puzzled. I give her a pointed look. I turn back to Kyle. “Get your script out. Come. Come now.”

“Can’t you see I’m in the middle of learning?” he spits, exasperatedly.

I sigh and relax my tensed muscles. I unzip my schoolbag and pull out my copy of the script.

Last night, I’d gone through the entire thing from beginning to end, highlighting, scribbling notes, cursing the living daylight out of my bad luck and basically abusing the poor sheets of paper to the point where it looked like a dog had actually eaten and regurgitated it. “You’re keeping the class back by sitting around, Davidson,” I say.

He looks around to confirm that I’m right. All the other students in the class –and Mr Deacons- are staring at us in silence.

“But-”

“-Oh for God’s sake,” I cut him off, pinching my fingers onto his ear and pulling him into a standing position. He yells, and I proceed to pull him out of the classroom while simultaneously apologizing to the teacher once more. “I’m sorry for the intrusion again, Mr Deacons. He’ll just be gone a few minutes.”

Reaching the corridor, Kyle lets out a painful groan before yelling, “Let go of me, Mother Mayhem, I can walk on my own!”

I release his ear and he stands for a brief moment to catch his breath and stare at me in horror. After I decide that a moment is all he needs, I grip at his silky black hair –covering his face as always- and began pulling him away again.

“Not the hair! Not the hair! Not the hair!” The poor bastard cries.

I ignore him. “If you keep whining I’ll yank you by those two unflattering black snake bites on your bottom lip next. Would you prefer that?”

Immediately, it’s as if Kyle had gained the strength of Hulk. He pulls away from me and finds a way to tower his height above me. He won’t scare me.

“Do you actually want me to kill you?” He offers. “Do you want that septum piercing yanked out of your nose before you can even touch me? Let go.”

I decide fretting over his incompetence is no longer a job of mine. Calm and unbothered, I reply. “You’re so incompetent. If you had read the script last night you’d know why I’m bullying you into the principal’s office right now. Not that I wouldn’t have done it anyway.”

“What is up with you?” He asks, rubbing the part of his head where I pulled at the hair roots. I sincerely hope that it hurt. “What’s so despairing that you had to kidnap me from class and couldn’t save the bullying for break or lunch?” He continues, “Jeez, Lloyd, you’re really something.”

He drifted from reality for a second before rolling his eyes and glaring at me to shake it off. I decide not to touch him again.

“Just follow me.”

Bursting through the doors of the principal’s office, we find Mrs Beverly seated with Mrs Cole and Mr Richards, laughing over whatever. All laughter ceases, however, when we enter the room. I pinch Kyle by his ear again and he stumbles away from me to cover it. If it had ripped off I’d bore a hole into it and wear it as a necklace. If I was a member of a cannibalistic, indigenous tribe and I wore that, they’d either say I was cursed or a god. It’s too bad that such ornaments are frowned upon in our society.

Mrs Beverly is the first to plaster a blank expression over her pearly smile before responding to us. “Malory. Kyle. What’s the matter?”

I slap my script onto the office desk, biting both my lips between my teeth and inhaling deeply. In as low a tone as possible, I try to remain as polite and respectful as possible while getting my point across.

Not exactly.

“Mrs Beverly. Mrs Cole. Mr Richards. It’s rather fitting that you’re all here –save for Miss Jenkins.”

Mrs Bev looks at me bewildered at first. “What’s bothering you? I hope you two haven’t gotten yourselves into trouble with teachers this early in the morning.”

“Hey lowlife,” the genius dreg beside me says, “I’m missing physics because of you. What the hell did you drag me all the way here for?”

“I have read this play dozens of times,” I poke my index finger down onto the script, “I have seen it,” I poke it again, “I have learnt parts of it before,” another poke, “And while taking into account every single time I’ve ever crossed paths with this play in my entire life, I must protest with strong opposition that there has never been a kiss scene.”

Kyle’s voice shakes the room.

“What!?”

He goes wide-eyed, pulling the script from under my finger and flipping through it, sloppily. “Where is it? Are you kidding me?”

I clench my teeth and speak without turning to him. “You see, Clueless Cliff? If you’d read it, you’d be aware.”

“We got the script yesterday, Lloyd. I’m usually quite busy if you didn’t know,” he says, continuing to flip through the script like an imbecile with a futile motive. “Look at all these damn scribbles and highlights, sheeshhhh... and you call this ‘organised’? WHERE IS THE KISS SCENE, MALORY?”

I’m tired of watching him make an absolute fool out of himself. I pull the script from him. “It doesn’t matter. We’re not doing it.”

“Why would you even-” he can’t even continue what he’s about to say to the adults in front of us. He runs a hand down the back of his head, dragging his fingers through the strands of his hair.

For a brief moment, I realised his hair was actually quite soft –at least it felt like he had a pretty good conditioner while I was yanking him into this office.

Beside the point.

I sharpen my thoughts by voicing the facts, “The play was fine with all its changes up till the point where you crossed the line with the kiss. There wasn’t meant to be a kiss. There was not meant to be a kiss.”

Kyle scoffs. “We aren’t doing it.”

I agree. “We are not doing it.”

A moment of silence passed through the room as the teachers study us.

“Are you both done?” Mrs Bev asks.

“I’ve presented my concerns and made the rival party aware of the issue. I’ve done my work here,” I say.

“Are you ready for the explanation?” She asks.

“Yes.”

“It hadn’t even been a full month after the previous April Fest when Miss Howel pitched the idea to use this play. Seems like she wanted to have an upper hand in the previous one but another member of the board had sponsored it so she sat still until it was over to present her own idea. Then, it was scripted in into its current concept and left to rest until this new school year began. The contents of the play were not changed since then to suit you two. And if you hadn’t misbehaved and caused trouble on the first day, you wouldn’t even need to be the leads for it. That was obviously decided later on, too.”

You see, Davidson? They weren’t planning on making us the leads. You dummy. You absolute idiot. You sickening dweeb. You disgustingly unintelligible hobo. You ignorant mountain-man.

“So does that mean we don’t have to do it, then?” He asks.

Oh my god, someone save me from this unintelligible nightmare.

“Leave the script as is,” Mrs Cole protests, sternly. “You dare not remove or ignore a single word from it.”

“I suppose you won’t have to do it if you agree to uphold the initial terms of cooperation,” Mrs Bev pitches in.

OH THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

But then I realise even without having to do the kiss scene, I’d still have to cooperate with Kyle Davidson; the epitome of Putrefaction.

“But...” I trail off, turning to Kyle with a grave expression.

“Think of our deal,” Mrs Bev’s voice appears to taunt me.

“Madam,” Kyle says, “there’s literally no other reason why we’re both doing this.”

He’s right about that.

He turns to me and sighs in defeat, his expression softening. “I guess... I could at least try.”

I want to kill myself.

“If we try then we do not have to do the kiss scene, right? Is that right?” I ask in a desperate voice. I look to the teachers in anticipation.

“That can be arranged,” is all Mrs Bev says, in her expressionless, devilishly calm tone of voice.

“Fine!” I almost yell at them.

“Fine!” Kyle yells beside me.

I turn to stare at the human trash bag. I study Kyle for a moment. “Fine,” I say, low and defeated.