1one

I have never been a particular social butterfly. I had no friends before my one best friend since kindergarten started a WhatsApp group, and even then, it took me a while to get used to people. I had no real experience with much of anything, except for giving people awesome advice which I can never seem to remember myself, which sounds like superpower but it isn’t. I fit like a screw in whatever friend group I was forced to be a part of. Although I always preferred books and video games, being included felt nice. Before I knew it, these eleven people in the group chat were my support system as I went through a shitty life. Anytime I got free from doing nothing, I played ‘Fireflies’ by Owl City and opened said group chat. I love that song.

So, my parents thought I was doing unholy things on the computer all day, which is just weird, because I have never felt anything for anyone anytime. I come across as robotic and emotionless, but I’d prefer that over trying to fit in and feeling bad when I don’t. I am in no way emotionless, as, I did feel bad, but I got used to feel bad. Kind of like taking poison every day to be immune. Kind of. Mithridatism, bitch.

First of all, let me tell you what this memoir is not. It is not a biography It is not ancient history. It is an inspired account of a fictional life of a fictional person growing up in a fictional country. Lots of these things get mistaken, but I do believe that all fiction starts with a thread of truth, so henceforth I will carry on this story and you will have to decide what is fiction and what is truth. Ha.

I have written this multiple times before, but it sounds rather teenagery. It is teenagery. It is cringey. It is every bit of the things you and I felt when we were what we were. This is honest.

I try to cut out the sappy parts but it is still a bit sappy. And profane. This thing is more profane than you after you stub your toe.

Okay. So.

It was the first day of school in fifth grade. I have working parents as they honestly don’t give a fuck, except when it’s my birthday or some shit, and although they weren’t crappy people, they were crappy parents. They believed they were doing it so I could go to college and become whatever they wanted me to become, and that’s just stupid. I did not care at the time, and I do not care now but saying what I am saying right now has been largely due to a good part of my childhood spent on Reddit.

So, I take the bus every day, and I made some friends, which were good people but shitty friends, and I used to get dropped off to my grandparent's house and spend the day there. Then at night, I would go to Mom and Dad, and I slept there. That was the way it is, and that was the way it shouldn’t have been.

So, when I started fifth grade, I was really neck-deep into video-games. No one really knew why I liked them so much and I was basically a freak because I read for fun, so gaming really brightened up my day. I always wanted to have a ps4, but my family couldn’t spend five hundred dollars on a gaming system, no matter how good of a gaming system it is.

So, I played a lot of CoD, and a lot of PUBG, which were really great games in general, but felt really sad when you were alone, and considering the fact that I was alone most of the time, I enjoyed them and enjoyed the freedom of anonymity. No one really knew about the games.

So, here I am, just sitting on the bus, and this girl comes up to me, stunningly pretty in her pressed uniform (our school made us wear uniforms) and she asked me if she could sit next to me. This was seven A.M, in the morning, and I didn’t really notice anything except oh my god she’s so pretty and why does she want to sit with me.

She had light coffee colored skin and brown eyes, and her nose was all small and pointy and tall. She was five feet tall, which was normal, but I was five feet five, and played football, so I was sort of proud of myself.

She wore her hair in a way I really liked, and there was no way she would have known that, but it was short and hung down a bit onto her forehead, and I could already tell she had loose and long hair-like I did- and the only thing that was preventing her locks to spill down over her face was a blue hairband.

“Excuse me?” She was talking to me.

“Uh, whuh, yeah?” I said, still groggy.

“Can I sit here?”

I looked around but no, it was me she was talking to. In a bus, the different rows of seats are split up like factions. The first to fifth row is of the little children, the fifth to tenth of the fifth graders and the tenth to fifteenth and the really long row at the back was for the cool kids.

I said bang in the middle, alone, comfortable, with my bag on the other seat, and here was this girl, trying to take away my seat and forcing me to put the heavy bag on my lap.

“Yeah. Yeah sure.” I picked up the bag, and put it in my lap, with a grunt.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Thanks,” she said, making eye contact for the first time.

Shit, she was pretty. Like sharp features, her face all lines and angles and the deep brown eyes.

Then we did this weird thing where we tried to shake hands but our bags got in a way, so we just kind of fist bumped instead.

“Hi!” She said. Even her voice was distracting. It was like a sweet symphony of a boy and a girl’s voice mixed together, not deep and rumbling but not squeaky either. She said s in a really cool way, so that her tongue touched her teeth, and she blunted her t’s without noticing. So, at this point it she was just saying th. It sounds better and I have not done it justice.

“Hi,” I said, then was suddenly pissed off at how squeaky my own voice sounded. See, that’s the thing. I noticed a page’s worth of things about her in a minute, and I analyzed every move she made, over thought every move I made. I am not this way around everybody, for some reason it was just her.

“My name is Ava. I’m new here, and I’m nine years old.”

“My name is Shane, I’ve been studying here all my life, and I’m nine years old too.”

See, this is what I am saying. I mirrored her speech with minor corrections, and I was nervous, groggy and excited at the same time.

Talking to people is just skydiving and realizing you forgot your parachute.

“Hey, Shane, sup?”

I liked the way my name sounded on her tongue. It was like a nice little enjoyable current passing through my body.

Talking to people was just like skydiving and realizing you forgot your parachute, but talking to her is like skydiving and realizing you never really needed a parachute.

“Nothing. Just excited about the new CoD.”

“Wait, what, you play CoD?”

It was a gamble I’d taken and boy did it pay off.

“Since Modern Warfare 2.”

“Oh my god, same. Like that scene where Ghost dies? I downright sobbed.”

“Shepherd’s an asshole.”

“YEAH UH” she said, and I realized I’d found myself a second friend.

Thirty minutes later, we’d talked about our favorite band, the new avenger’s movie, and CoD.

“Gee, Shane. This is the first guy I’ve seen my age who actually plays videogames, like in real life.”

“You’re the first person I’ve met that, like, does everything I like to do, and the only one with whom my tastes align.”

She smiled.

I nodded earnestly. Don’t know why, just did.

School. My best friend since kindergarten, Rain, greeted me with a ‘suh’ and jerked his chin upwards. I responded equally amiably.

“Yo, didn’t see you on the bus today?”

“I was sitting there.”

“Uh, but not with me.”

Fifth grade social dictum dictated that I sit with friends. Because of Ava, I forgot that.

“It was the McKenzie girl, wasn’t it?”

I would not like to answer that but I grinned and nodded.

“Damn dude. Chill out. You’re acting like a fucking bride.”

I opened my mouth then shut it a couple of times.

“Shh. Don’t argue. I’ve known you my whole life. Man, she’s weird.”

“No, she isn’t.”

“Bro, she’s like a female version of you. That’s like dating a clone.”

“Why are you like this. Why?”

He grinned. I punched his arm, and we headed to school.

Ava kept coming on the bus daily, and Rain found someone else to sit with, namely another girl named Natalie, who was another girl who was coming on the bus since a year, and he had ignored her. But I guess she was his second choice.

Ava and I kept talking, and Rain and Natalie kept staring out their windows. Slowly, time passed, and Ava was now a guaranteed part of why I didn’t miss the bus every day, and my parents thought that something was off, and they kept making offhanded remarks about my being punctual and they missing driving me to school. But they knew that they enjoyed not having to drive me, that way they could get a Starbucks on their way to their job.

I kept meeting her, and I kept liking her more and more in an entirely platonic way. Of course, it being I did not know what ‘platonic’ meant. I did not know that ‘liking someone’ was based off of something other than looks but I did know that all of this is entirely irrelevant to the story and I should probably move on right now.

It had now been a month since Ava had started to come to the bus, a month since Rain had started sitting with Natalie and a month since I had found someone to talk to for real.

Ava got me. She got everything about me. The quirkiness, the weird addiction to reading, the fact that I wrote books and the fact that I never told anybody whenever my birthday and anything in my life happened because school and in real life were two different areas, two different worlds, and their collision would probably just implode my life as I knew it.

I did fundamentally well in school, up until the point that I stopped caring, and even then, I maintained a B plus, edging my way into a solid A.

It was around that time when I realized that I was doing better and better at school, and the books I was writing were getting better and better. I was getting into a lot of super hero and sci-fi at the time, so it mostly reflected what I read, but it was still really good.

Ava and I were really good friends and Rain, Natalie, Ava and I sat together at lunch. Lunch table politics, was solved. Our little group of four was all we needed. Coincidentally, Natalie and Ava were always friends since the first grade, until Natalie, who we now call Nat, (the evolution of friends) moved away in the summer of last year. No one had ever seen her around before, but we hadn’t seen a lot of people around before. It was the uniform. It was the WW2 Nazis all over again. Everyone blended in. Wore the same clothes. The same colors. It was kind of unsettling actually, but that’s private schools summed up for you in a sentence. It was kind of unsettling actually.

The days flew by, and Ava and I were still talking, sometimes about classroom politics to videogames to why mint ice creams were gloriously underrated. Our discussions had range.

So, at the lunch table the next day, Ava announced something that would change the dynamic of the social group forever.

“Hey, so, uh, this new game just came out, and I thought it’d be kind of cool if we all, I don’t know, played together?”

I nodded. “Black Ops 3, right?”

She nodded.

“I don’t really enjoy videogames that much,” Natalie said. “It’s kind of a boy thing.”

Ava began to speak, but Rain cut her off. “Nat, you have to come. Three isn’t a squad, and also, what you said was incredibly offending on so many levels.”

Nat laughed. “I’m in.”

Rain laughed again. “That’s what she said.”

Natalie looked around in a look of confusion, but then she realized what Rain meant, and she turned red. We were all laughing. It was nice to be included.