Oops I Did It Again

Merry Xmas ’08 #1 (Dec. 7)

SUMMARY: Lisa has always been a klutz, a trait about herself she has always hated. She’s even fallen on someone once and hoped never to do it again, but well… she is quite a klutz…

DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the SAT, SparkNotes, or Princeton Review, Four Christmases, or anything else copyrighted.

When I was growing up, the words I heard most often were along the lines of, “Get off!” “Damn you!” “Idiot!” and well, it’s not technically a word, but a sigh from my mother.

For as long as I can remember, I have been clumsier than a guy in heels. Actually, even clumsier than that, because these days, quite a few guys can walk quite nicely in heels, but hopefully I get my point across.

I’ve tripped over every thing imaginable, I’ve walked into walls, doors, and poles, I’ve bumped into countless priceless objects, and I’ve also fallen into someone.

The last was quite possibly the worst experience, simply due to the reaction of the victim. All my friends and family who’ve known me for so long understand all too well that anything can break, including limbs, around me. They still love me, of course, but especially when I’m wearing high heels, they tend to keep a few feet away from me.

However, this is not the same for the general population, especially a general population who has never met me before. This held true for the guy I fell into last year.

See, it was June 3rd, and well, the SAT was on June 7th. I was only a sophomore, so I was taking the subject test for chemistry, and well, that wasn’t the best idea, considering while I am quite amazing at biology (I did get an 800 on that subject test), I am horrific when it comes to chemistry. Unfortunately, though, I had already registered and thus, was taking the test. So I needed to study every single free chance I got.

Thus, I was walking to third period with my friend Amanda, who was also taking the subject test. We were studying together in these seven minutes before history, her holding a SparkNotes practice test book and I clutching my own Princeton Review.

“Which of the following gases would be the densest at standard temperature and pressure?” Amanda demanded. “Helium, Argon, Carbon dioxide, Xenon, or Nitrogen?”

I tore my eyes away from my practice book to scoff at her. “That’s ridiculously easy, Amanda, are you serious? Noble gases are so heavy, the answer’s totally Arg-ahhhh!”

I had, while not looking, missed the fact that we were at the stairs, and had tripped over the first step. Normally this would’ve landed in a faceplant, which was a normal occurrence around the infamous Lisa Leung. Today was not normal, for I found myself surprised to hear not only “…on,” the ending of my answer, but also a definitely surprised “What the hell?”

I opened my eyes when I realized the solid thing I had fell into was not cement, and looked into the furious glare of an upperclassman. I quickly eased off of him with an “eep!” and a “I’m so sorry!”

He continued to glare at me. “You better be, freshman.”

“I’m not a freshman! I’m a sophomore!” I protested. Sure I was short, but I was Chinese. And he was too! He should’ve known better!

“Whatever,” he dismissed with an eyeroll. “Same difference. In any case, you have the intelligence of one.”

I huffed at him, no longer apologetic. “Excuse me?”

“The answer’s Xenon,” he said with a smirk. “Something any sophomore should know,” he sneered.

“What?” I demanded quickly, with a gaze at Amanda, but my mind had already begun to realize the upperclassman was right. Xenon was heavier than Argon, and…

Amanda bit her lip. “It’s Xenon, Lisa. Xenon is—“

I waved her off. “I know, I know. I forgot, okay? Geeze, cut me some slack.” I turned to glare at the upperclassman, who was smirking pompously. “And you, yeah, you’re not so tough. I bet you’re a…” He looked like a junior. “Sophomore, too!”

“Junior,” he retorted, looking miffed. “Besides, at least I retain information, Lisa, and I watch where I’m going.”

I huffed, highly irritated by his superior behavior. “You know, that’s not true, because this wouldn’t have happened if you were watching where you were going…”

“Dalton,” he supplied. “Whatever, Lisa, I have to go to class.”

I sputtered after him. “He can’t just! But we were! He doesn’t get the last word!”

“Er, Lisa, we have to get to class too,” Amanda pointed out, dragging me away with a powerwalk headed straight for our classroom.

Later, I found out from my friend Nina, who knows everything about everybody, Dalton’s life story, or at least the one behind his weird name. As if I wanted to know in the first place. I didn’t, by the way, and that’s even after Amanda noted with a smirk that he was “pretty gorgeous.”

Dalton’s dad had a son, Albert, from his first wife, who was apparently “just as uber-hot as Dalton,” but she had died. He’d then married a high school chemistry teacher a few years later, and they had Dalton, named after the guy who made the atomic theory, and his little sister Aura, after Aurum, the Latin word for gold, whose chemical symbol was Au.

See, I do know some things about Chemistry. In any case, Dalton had no right to sneer because well, he should be a chemistry genius anyway.

And for the record, I got a 740, which while all my friends beat me, I’m quite proud of.

But all that was last year, and as a junior myself now, I had bigger things to worry about, like the fact that I thought I had failed the SAT I Reasoning test I took yesterday.

My group and I had decided to plan a movie trip the day after the SATs, to relax and relieve stress. We hadn’t bargained on how nerdy we were. We were all stressing out about the questions, the vocabulary and formulas we forgot, and also, the writing. We were here to see Four Christmases, and despite what I knew from the synopsis, I had a feeling the characters had nothing on us.

“I completely blanked on the vocabulary section! I swear, I didn’t recognize half of the words!”

“Oh, please. At least you weren’t falling asleep during reading comprehension. I didn’t answer five questions!”

“I completely bombed the writing section!” I whined desperately. “The highest I can get is 1600, and that’s assuming I got everything right in the other two sections, which is definitely not the case.”

My friends comforted me, but I was not assured. I grabbed for more popcorn, the best comfort food, in my opinion, and my fingers only felt kernels.

“We finished the popcorn already?” I exclaimed, though I shouldn’t have been so surprised. We were notoriously fast popcorn eaters. “Well, I better refill this before the trailers.” I glanced at them. “Anyone want to come with me?”

“Just hurry back with the popcorn, Lisa,” Amanda pleaded.

I laughed and started for the stairs. “I swear, Amanda, you’re a serious popcorn ahhhh-“

At least I had tripped down the stairs this time, and not up, as I had done in June, but again, I was surprised that I had not landed on the slightly cushioned floor of the movie theater, but instead on someone’s… lips?

His shock paralleled mine, but instead of leaping away, he grabbed my head, which truthfully kind of hurt, and kissed me.

I was about to protest, since he had just stolen my first kiss, but the boy tasted pretty damn good, and it wasn’t as if he was a bad kisser, either. So instead I leaned a little more into him and kissed him back.

He seemed surprised by my response, and to my chagrin, he pulled away. I now took the time to look at him, since I’d been a bit too busy kissing him before to even think about actually looking at his face, and I was even more shocked to see who I had just been kissing.

“Dalton??”

“Er. Hi,” he replied with a weak wave.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded incredulously.

“Watching a movie,” he replied dryly.

“Four Christmases?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said defensively, “Is that a problem?”

I shook my head but continued my interrogation. “Did you know you were kissing me??”

He had a laugh at that, and I glared at him, waiting for him to continue. “What.”

“You’re the only girl who’s ever tripped on stairs onto me,” he explained, still chuckling.

“Then why did you kiss me?” I asked, a bit oblivious to the fact that I was causing a scene. I later discovered even my friends had broken away from their discussion to stare.

“You kissed me back,” he pointed out.

“You were a good kisser, and that was before I knew who I was kissing.”

Dalton looked highly offended. “What’s wrong with me?”

“You were a jerk,” I replied with a sniff.

“You had just fallen on me!”

“I can’t help it that I’m a klutz,” I replied coldly.

“I wasn’t such a jerk this time, now, was I?” he smirked.

“No, you were just a sleaze,” I retorted. “You can’t just kiss somebody!”

“Says who?” he demanded.

“Says mmf!”

There he went, kissing me again. And my idiot lips just responded right back, ignoring my brain, which was supposed to be the almighty power in my body, but apparently my nervous system was too busy trying to comprehend the weird tingly feelings I felt throughout my body.

“I like you,” he admitted when he pulled away breathlessly, grinning recklessly. “You’re really cute.”

“So you just like me for my looks?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t just mean cute that way. You were really fun to rile up. And you are such a klutz.”

“Well I… but you can’t…” I spluttered indignantly. “But you…”

“You like me too,” he declared brazenly.

“You’re a good kisser!” I insisted. “My lips can’t help themselves!”

He laughed. “Just admit it, Lisa.”

I huffed. Okay, so maybe he was a little cute. And he was smart. And he was willingly watching Four Christmases. Perhaps I was just the teeniest bit attracted to him, but,

“We should go on a date first,” I ordered. “Then I’ll know.”

He smiled brightly at that, and agreed, “Deal.”

I extended my hand, intending to seal the deal, but Dalton had other plans, I soon found out, when he instead grabbed my face again to kiss me.

And as I kissed him back again, falling into his lips, I thought, maybe being a klutz wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

A/N: The cheese monster attacked, I know. But well, it’s Christmas, which is supposed to be a happy time (mind you, that doesn’t mean all of these are happy).

If you’re a returning reader, I’m sorry for not writing ten, but my friend proposed a good idea that I might follow through on for a few years. Seven oneshots for ’07, eight for ’08, and so on and so forth. Thus, there’ll be eight oneshots this year.

Like last year, I’ll try to utilize a different style for each story. I decided to do a little connections thing, so in case you missed it (which you probably did), Dalton is Albert’s (from the first oneshot last year) half-brother.

Constructive criticism or just a review is appreciated. (:

Word Count: 1758