Concerning Strange Hats

When he came by the first time, a cat was sitting on her head, and she decided she’d probably not given him the best impression of herself. He wasn’t handsome, but he was an older man, fifteen to her thirteen, and she blushed and made a complete fool of herself. She was new to the neighborhood, and his mom had forced him to greet her. She had been in her porch swing, reading as best she could in between the twitching of Napoleon’s tail.

Her first impression of him was of a sullen, dark-haired and gangly boy. He had one hand in his pocket and his other awkwardly hanging at his side. It wasn’t because of her, it was his general awkwardness, and even that was hardly noticeable to her. She was more than a little awkward herself.

He asked her name, taking to care to make it seem that it didn’t really matter to him. He was making it clear that he was being forced to make overtures. She told him her name was Regan, and he barely kept himself from sneering that it was a boy’s name. He kind of liked it, anyway. His name was Micah.

When she was thirteen, she wasn’t quite sure whether she counted as a teenager, and teenagers were the ones who were allowed to be sure of themselves. She was shorter than most of her friends, and a late-bloomer in more respects than that. Her best friend Carmena already had boobs—had since fifth grade. The boys went after the saucy pre-teen more because they felt like they should than because they truly gravitated towards her relatively huge torpedoes.

Regan was a tomboy, with frizzy blond hair and muddy green eyes and a body the shape of a two-by-four. Micah told himself he was taking her under his wing when he started spending time with her. This would be her first year of high school, and even though he certainly couldn’t claim to be particularly good at forging his own path through the social jungle, he could warn her off of the more horrible aspects of a class society.

She latched onto him like a leech and he didn’t mind. Micah was already on his way to six feet, he tended to leave his hair unwashed, and he was well into the first stages of a bad case of acne that would haunt him almost until graduation. He didn’t have many friends, and the people that were willing to spend time with him weren’t ones whose company he enjoyed. He became something like her older brother. Regan believed he was the only reason she survived freshman year. The summer before sophomore year they were inseparable. It was sophomore year when the warning signs popped up.

Well actually, Micah had been looking for excuses not to trust her friendship. Sure, she touched him like a friend should, when everyone else shied away from his unwashed presence, but she talked to people he despised, and it wasn’t long before he started to distance himself from her, sometimes becoming downright cruel. She cried, once, and it almost broke him, but he stood firm and she declared to herself that he would never make her cry again. It had been a long time coming.

A summer of beach and parties and hormones brought her back to school her junior year with new confidence and a completely different appearance. Her hair was tamed into the curls they always should have been, her skin was tan, and her body more toned. She wasn’t some great beauty, but her personality more than made up for any deficits in appearance—she was funny and she was nice. Regan swallowed hard when she saw Micah watching her across the lunchroom with a hard look in his eyes, and her heart ached, but she had already tried, and she wasn’t going to make an idiot of herself.

Some of the people she spent her time with weren’t the best kind of people. They were vicious in denigrating the lower echelons of high school society, and Micah was definitely of a kind that made it easy to despise for being lower than dirt. His acne was clearing up, but he now shunned all company and spent his time only on his studies. Too dark to be a nerd and too nerdy to be a goth, and far, far too horrible to be popular, he was a favorite of, in particular, the guy who had his eyes on Regan.

That alone would have been enough to earn Thomas Micah’s everlasting enmity. Thomas was also a complete asshole, something that didn’t escape Regan’s notice, not that Micah would notice her good judgment there.

At first she tried to quietly come to Micah’s defense. She flirted a little with Tom, tried to get him to lay off. Micah only saw the flirting. When she approached him later that first week she tried to help him, he gritted his teeth and told her to leave him the fuck alone. Regan tried to touch his arm like she used to, and he slapped her hand away. That earned him a beating from the vigilant Tom. It wasn’t much of one, as beatings go, but he blamed it on her, and he might as well have been close to death for the hatred it stirred in him for her.

But that hatred was mixed with what had become, a long while ago, some strange emotion that made his heart beat so hard it hurt when she looked at him, when she came near him, made him feel rage when Tom touched her, when she smiled at any guy.

Regan saw him hurting. She couldn’t help but see that. Any darkness in him came from his ostracism, and she knew enough of his home-life to feel sorry for him. With his graduation would come a dead end—his parents didn’t believe he would amount to anything. She wanted to be there for him and he wouldn’t let her. She could sense his hatred for her rolling off of her in waves.

It was a stupid thing, what happened next. She’d just wanted to talk to him about his graduation. She wanted to have some sort of heart-to-heart; she wanted something. Somehow he reduced her to tears again. She tried to hide it. But somehow, Tom found out. Micah was mauled. Broken arm, two fractured ribs, a black eye, and a load of scrapes. Regan slapped Tom hard enough to rock him back when she found out, but what could she do? It had already happened.

She went to Micah’s house on Saturday morning for the first time since the summer before sophomore year. His mom uncaringly waved her upstairs, and through his half-open bedroom door, Regan saw him sitting on his bed, cross-legged with his head bowed, and his shirt off because it was too painful to put on. His hair was wet and washed now instead of lank. She saw the huge bruises, and the stiffness of his body. It was the way her heart clutched that warned her what was happening to her.

Regan didn’t fight it the way Micah did. She pushed open the door and dropped to her knees in front of him, while he stared at her in complete shock. He immediately reached for a blanket, forgetting about his ribs until the shock of pain forced him to stop and squeeze his eyes shut. She reached to grip his uninjured arm in a way that was firm but possessive.

And she apologized, with an intensity that surprised her, much less him. Before he could say anything to hurt her, Regan half-rose to put her knee on his bed and lean over him. His eyes were amazingly clear as she brushed away his hair. And she simply curled around him, taking immense care not to jar him, not to touch his bruises or breaks. She tucked forehead into the crook of his neck and just breathed him.

Micah’s touch was tentative, but it was there. He awkwardly brought his good arm up, to run his fingertips along the line of her jaw and through dangling strands of her hair. For once, he could feel the pounding of her heart, where it was pressed against his back, along with every other inch of her. The breath she took was a shuddering one. She kissed his neck and his fingers clenched in her hair. He was so warm, especially where her skin touched the skin of his chest, or his back. She touched more of him, and he ignored the pain it took to turn to her and simply press his forehead to hers.

She spoke the word “love” first because she knew he needed it more than she did. He didn’t say it back, not then.

Graduation came, and everything but his arm and ribs were healed. She sat in a seat on his ticket and watched him the entire time. When every other graduate went to their families, he came to her and kissed her hard. The roles were switched when she got her own diploma.

Micah was still quiet, he was still quick to anger, but Regan was always the one who could ease him, and he never made her cry again. He was very careful about that. For him, love meant no misunderstandings.

Oh, and Tom ended up with a potbelly and a wife he didn’t love.

The End

A/N: This was partially inspired by a very popular book, so I felt the need to write it. I think it’s the first thing I’ve written without dialogue, so it’s more of an experiment than something I’m proud of. But I think it’s kind of cute. I should probably edit it.