Once under the Twilight

It’s a really bad habit of mine to notice everything around me.

For example, at the table over there’s a girl by the name of Monica Stevens. She’s a sophomore taking three periods of band classes, and the blonde hair she has is naturally black in color. She’s dating the boy next to her, but what he doesn’t know is she’s holding hands with the girl to her other side—and that she’s really a lesbian.

I don’t purposely go out looking for these things. Really I’m just observant in catching almost every single detail. I tend to catch things not many would bother tuning in to, and I can pretty much hear everything people around me are saying to one other, whether they mean for me to hear or not.

“…all gonna get trashed there tonight ‘coz his mom’s outta town…” That voice would belong to Timothy Brown, quarterback of the school’s football team. Most girls find him quite hideous, though, yet he’s still considered to be a major person to associate with in order to be popular.

It’s quite sad to say that the high school I attend pretty much runs on a popularity contest. You were popular only if you’re friends were; you weren’t cool if you hung around people that weren’t as high in the social ladder. In a way, then, that was probably why many people didn’t go near me.

Really, Elise Summers was the only person that’d actually sit within five feet of me in the lunchroom—except for the unlucky students that were oh-so-forced to sit there due to no more seating. Elise was my best friend and indeed better looking—though we would never really date each other; dating your best friend always felt kinda strange.

As for me, I’m really only a brown-haired boy standing at five and a half feet. No one’s really considered me being anything special save a girl back in my seventh grade class, but she had worn glasses out of her prescription anyway, so her complimenting me on my appearance didn’t say much.

“Damn lunch lines,” she says to me that lunchtime as she takes a seat at my table. Elise is a junior and the valedictorian of her (and our) class, and naturally blonde. She likes to curse a lot, but for the most part she’s a decently honest person.

“Long lunch lines again?” I ask with a smile and she nods.

“Just a tad,” she says, though I’m sure she’s a bit sarcastic. No wait, verbally ironic, as my English teacher insists. “All I wanted was a damn pizza; it shouldn’t have taken that long to get one.”

“You never know,” I reply. “We probably have at least two dozen kids here that only speak Spanish….” Being in the state of Florida many of the students tended to speak Spanish as a second language, but there were some people at our school—I could probably name the majority of them—who couldn’t speak a word of English. Though, I suppose some of them knew phrases like “fucking shit” and “I’d do your mom.”

“They should learn English,” she says, biting into her pizza. I watch as strings of pizza attach to her lips, creating one of the thinnest bridges in existence from her plastic tray to her lips. I watch as she cuts it off with her fingers, lapping up the extra cheese with whatever part of her mouth she used to do it—I wouldn’t know. “Speaking of which, there’s a new French kid who doesn’t know much English, either.”

“Oh?” This information actually shocks me when I first hear it; James LeBlanc, in all his sharp-eyed glory, doesn’t yet know of the new transfer student. Sure, the particular time of year tended to bring many new students into the school, but I had usually been quite up to date in that regard.

But this time it had already been noon, lunchtime—bad James, bad.

“He’s in one of my earlier classes,” Elise continues, smiling at the thought. “It’s fucking hilarious how Ms. Savage can’t understand a word he’s saying.” Ms. Savage is a physics teacher who’s in her forties; she’s been married twice, the first of which being violated due to a closet homosexual.

“I’d figure,” I reply, “unless she speaks French—or understands it.”

“He was speaking English, though. I suppose she’s not really used to heavy accents.” In a way that’s kinda odd, though, since she should probably be by now used to odd accents. Elise takes another bite off her pizza and sighs, brushing her long hair to the side and thus revealing a set of emerald eyes. “I don’t think he learned English at his old school. The words he was using, he probably just picked up on words he heard at the airport or something.”

“I don’t think so,” I say as she breaks yet another cheese bridge. Personally I don’t really eat lunch, so I usually spend most my break watching her. “I think he learned English in France…. It’s not like foreign countries don’t speak English at all, you know.”

“Yeah, but….” Yet Elise doesn’t continue—she has nothing else to say. She returns to devouring her pizza once more, and as I look around the lunchroom at the many students seated here my mind makes its mind on a certain decision.

Over the next few days, I decide, I’m going to find out more about this French boy.

At least that decision would be quite easy to execute—the boy’s in my last class of the day.

Ironically enough it happens to be a French class, yet I’m not really quite sure why he’s in this class. As a junior I’m only on my third year of French—and the same goes for everyone else except the girl seated at the very back corner (she’s a freshman that skipped her first two years due to native tongue).

I suppose that could be his reasoning too, but that doesn’t explain why he isn’t in an even higher level of French. Yet I really don’t want to know why; I just remember that things happen or that things are, not really why.

Aside from that, one of the first things I realize is his appearance. Somehow in my mind blonde would be the first hair color I’d think a Frenchman to have, but instead this boy has brown hair. He seems to be the same height as our French teacher, who stands at about five and a quarter feet. He also seems to be quite fit, though not extraordinarily muscular like Timothy Brown.

I glance down at the little notebook before me on my desk, the book I had pulled out of my bag within seconds after seeing him. Flipping through the pages brings me to the first blank page, where I immediately write down what I’ve found. I really don’t purposely find out about people, I swear; I just write everything down once I do see it in the rare occurrence I forget.

All I really have is his physical appearance—I don’t even have his name. But I suppose it’s not like I can find out everything about him just by seeing him.

“Est-ce que tu t’introduirais aux classe, s'il vous plaît?” Madame Sager asks the boy as he stares nervously at the class. It would be one of her characteristics to speak nothing but French, especially in the classroom; but in reality no one could really live up to her expectations. As sad as that was….

Though, with this boy in our class, perhaps I wouldn’t be the only one now putting up decent class discussions.

“Je m’appelle Nathen,” he says shyly.

Nathen, I write at the top of the paper. And somewhere below his physical attributes, timid. It doesn’t really matter the order this stuff’s in, anyway—on my computer is the master database of useless stuff.

“Tu peux t'asseoir à côté de James.” Almost on cue I raise my hand, and she motions her hand toward me for Nathen to take the seat next to me. As he approaches me I flash him quite the smile, but as soon as he meets my gaze he peers down at my desk.

For what reason, I don’t know, but it takes me a good two seconds to realize my book’s still open.

I quickly close it shut, chuckling nervously as I look him in the eye once more. Sadly enough, I think he’s already noticed his name on the first line of that page….

I suppose I’ll add the detail about his eyes later, when he’s nowhere around me.

Another thing to add into my book is that he speaks decent English—on the contrary to Elise’s comment.

“Is she from Quebec?” he asks me as the final bell of the day rings clangorously above us.

No other student would’ve possibly given him the correct answer on the dot, but since he had asked the right person…. “Yeah. She spent up to her college years there and then moved here when she got married.” I gather my things together as I glance at his direction—he’s waiting for me. “How’d you know?”

“Her accent.” Ironically enough this is coming from the boy with an even heavier accent—but as well-informed as I am, I probably couldn’t tell myself where in France the boy came from… if each region in France had different accents at all. “Is this really a class of third-years?”

I ignore his odd terminology, supposing that they probably didn’t use “junior” where he had been from. “Yep. Kinda sad, huh?” He only nods his head, tapping his foot as I finish up gathering my stuff. With a rather bright smile I take the lead, Nathen following close after me. “Actually, there’s a big difference between French III students and AP French kids….”

“AP?”

“Oh… erm, advanced French students. Where I think you should be.”

“I don’t have anything for next year,” he reasons, and suddenly it makes sense to me. In order to graduate at our school you need to have two years of a foreign language….

“Have you made any friends yet?”

“Not really,” he replies. “I haven’t the time.” Even that phrase catches me off guard; “I haven’t had” would be what most others would say.

We arrive at the parking lot, but I find it quite surprising when he stops following me. Though, I am still curious as to why he followed me in the first place.

“How’re you getting home?” I ask curiously.

“Walk. How I got here.”

And then, much to even my own surprise, I do something I would’ve never thought I’d ever do in my life. “Want me to drive you home?”

He looks at me with an odd expression, but somehow I feel satisfied when he nods to my offer.