No Pads… No Helmets… Just Memories!

"Hey Jasey!" A too familiar voice chimed as I could feel my eyes want to roll back into my head.


"Riley!" I spoke through gritted teeth as I turned to face him.


I had managed to avoid him for the past three days of the week. I had even managed to avoid him in the halls this morning but he had somehow spotted me by the utensils in the lunch room.


I’d been so desperately avoiding Riley for the simplest fact that since Saturday night, my life had been normal. That show gave me much more then my best friend back. With Alex, everything else seemed to slip into place.


Cass being her normal self, Rian teasing me on pointless shit, Jack's dumb jokes, everything. Everything had gone back to the way it was. Everyone had returned to treating me like a person instead of frail ice beneath their feet. I was as close as ever to having the life I would have normally, had my birth mother not been who she was. I felt almost as if I had a place in this town, instead of the broken outcast I had grown to accept before.


Even Tammy had managed to stay out of my hair for the previous week days, it wasn't long, but for me it was a virtue. I had gone three and a half days without being harassed, tripped, bumped into, or had my books knocked to the ground. I had gone three and a half days as a normal human being.


I should have been anticipating something or someone to slip up and bring the reality that I wasn’t normal, and I didn't have a normal or easy life with it.


And Riley, he was that reality. That just because with Alex at my side things seemed at bliss and simple doesn’t mean they were. That I hadn’t solved all my issues. And that my life wasn’t what I allowed myself to believe it was the past few days.


That I wasn’t the picture perfect Dawson twin I wanted to be, that I was a girl. A girl who had spawned from a monster, and had paid the consequences for it. A girl that had more than one issue on her hands and another issue that was the smallest of all stood before me as a reminder, a gateway in a way to the rest.


"I’ve been trying to get ahold of you!" He laughed leaning a hand on the tin table beside us.


"I noticed." I mumbled and cringed that the comment caught his ear.


"What have you been avoiding me?" He asked looked, almost hurt?


Yes


"Uhm..." I stuttered.


He cleared his throat as I could feel my face growing redder and redder.


"Jasey?" He spoke my name in a calming tone.


"I uhm..."


"JASEY!" A voice called out as I snapped my head to the side to have a wave of relief wash over my being to see Vinny and Jack standing at a round table in the center of the cafeteria. Between the two Rian stood from the other side of the table and waved a hand for me to join the group. I shot my brother and friends a thankful smile before flushly turning to Riley. "Have to go!" I said almost too happy to be leaving his presence as I pulled my tray from the table and darted for the boys.


"Bless your souls!" I gushed as I plopped my tray onto the table and claimed the empty seat beside Vinny.


"Why was he even talking to you?" A voice asked as I looked up to see Cass swirling a fry through a pool of ketchup.


"Huh?" I scrunched my nose.


"Didn’t you tell him you don't like him...?” She asked meeting my gaze as a pulled my knees up to rest on the edge of the table.


"More like that I never liked him like that; I flat out told him he was a mistake, that I was drunk." I pleaded, "He just won’t let it go."


"Seems to me like he did." Rian muttered as I looked to my brother and followed his gaze to spot Riley being pulled into Tammy's side as he slid into the seat beside her.


"Slut." Andrea muttered causing us to all raise a brow at the first negative comment to fall past her lips since meeting her.


"Who?" A voice asked as we all looked up to see Marc trotting to pull out a chair followed by Alex.


"No one." I shook my head just wanting the subject to be dropped much to my dismay as Andrea re-opened her mouth.


"Tammy." She nearly spat bringing her milk carton to her lips tipping it back.


"Someone has a bone to pick!" I laughed at her, still trying to gradually change the subject.


"Damn right I do!" She spat causing my laughing to stop and my expression to drop as she spoke again, "That little skank and Colton are telling peo-"


Her rant was stopped as a tanned hand smacked over mouth encasing the words with it.


"Telling people what?" I asked placing my feet on the floor and leaning in now interested as to what could have gotten Andrea of all people so worked up.


"Nothing..." Vinny spoke with a tone whirling with both caution and warning, as if he was telling me whatever it was, I didn’t want to know.


"No tell me!" I ushered.


"Jasey," Rian spoke meeting my eyes as they slid around the table, "leave it be." He warned.


I scoffed leaning back in my seat as I crossed my arms with an audible huff like a small child. It’s like I was a little kid again who wasn’t allowed to hear the big kid’s secrets. It was annoying to say the least.


"It’s honestly nothing Jace." Marc cooed from beside Alex across the ways who had been oddly quiet since he got here.


"What’s up with you?" I asked nodding to Alex.


"Nothing." He muttered brusquely pushing away from the table, "I just don't feel good is all." He spoke before walking away, abandoning his food at the table.


"What up with him?" I asked looking around but mostly to Jack who would be the most likely to understand the strange mind that Alex held.


"No idea!" He shrugged leaning back in his seat, "maybe he’s nervous."


"Probably!" Rian shrugged as Marc and Vinny nodded and I looked around at all my friends.


"Why would he be nervous?" I asked cocking my head


"For the show!" Vinny spoke looking me in the eyes as if I was supposed to know any of this.


"The show?" I asked scrunching my eyebrows.


"He’s going to play a new song," Jack explained, "it’s at a bar near Zack's school so the shows nothing special but apparently the new songs got him choked."


"Well what song is it?" I asked wondering why Alex hadn’t even mentioned the show to me in the past three days of the school week let alone a new song.


"No one knows." Rian shrugged getting up to dispose of his trash, "he won’t let any of us hear it till the show, he’s going acoustic," he explained returning to his seat, "he just keeps saying he needs to do this for himself and we will understand later..." Rian spoke in a fashion almost questioning his own words.


"Weird." I mumbled mostly taking note to myself but I knew everyone else had heard the comment by their silent nods.


Alex hadn’t been acting all that odd lately. If anything he'd been more normal around me since things had been returning to how they should be. I hadn’t noticed anything was off until right then.


I was a little upset that something was bothering him and he hadn't brought it up yet. Maybe I was over thinking things at the moment but that was sort of the roots of our friendship.


If something was bothering one of us that we were embarrassed or too scared to say to the group we went to one another. Maybe I was being selfish because I wanted Alex to be able to tell me everything even though I couldn’t bring myself to do just that. But we had to start somewhere and better him then me.


"What you thinking about?" I looked up to see Marc looking over at me with soft eyes.


"Uhm... Nothing." I shook my head as I pushed away from the table and slid my bag onto my back. "I think I’m going to go see what’s up with Alex." I said as I looked around the table to take note of the nodding heads before I turned and parted for the main hall in the direction Alex had headed in.

Notes