On the outside, he was determined to keep his cool. On the inside, he was panicking. Even after he assertively took her hand and started to lead her out of the cafeteria, he had no clue where to go. Location after location at the school flashed through his head until he arrived at the one place he knew best, the one place he had the key to – the student council office, room 203. His hand drifted to his pocket to make sure – his key had been swiped once before.
Still walking, he turned to Olivia and grinned. “I have a place in mind.” he told her. She said nothing, and only nodded, as the two made their way out to the hallway.
Phil was still more nervous than anything. This was a bit of a first for him. Plus, he was skipping. He would have had to come up with an excuse later. As he walked, he shook his head to free the clouds of doubt from his mind, and picked up the pace, his gaze falling to the floor.
“Yo, Phil!” Phil’s head shot up when he suddenly heard a voice calling for him, down the hall. His gaze met that of Matt Schneider, a preppy Grade 10 who shared a seat on the council. Out of instinct, Phil let go of Olivia’s hand immediately, and she almost fell to the floor.
Phil wanted to tell her he was sorry, but something made him hold his tongue as Matt approached. “Matthew, my man!” Phil welcomed him enthusiastically, completely switching gears. “What can I do for ya?”
“You know the fundraiser forms you’ve been looking to get?” Matt asked, a little smugly. “Guess who’s gotten them approved, stamped, and in your office?”
“No way!” Phil was completely into this conversation by this point. “How’d you manage that? You magic, bro?”
“I do what I can.” Matt replied confidently. “Anyway, I wanted to let off some steam and skip class this period, so since you owe me a favor…”
“You got it, dude.” Phil shot back, enthusiastically patting Matt on the back. “No problem.”
“Thanks.” Matt replied. He then turned his gaze to Olivia, then to Phil, then back to Olivia again. “Break a leg.” he said, winking, giving Phil his own pat on the back, then leaving.
Phil was chuckling to himself as Matt disappeared out of sight. “Sorry about that.” he said to Olivia.
“It’s interesting how you talk differently to him than to me.” Olivia noted, one eyebrow raised.
“Well, I mean… we’re both on the council.” Phil replied lamely. “You gotta keep up that image, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“What image do you think you keep up with me?” Olivia asked, almost challenging him.
Phil thought to himself, only staring at her, before he broke out into a chuckle. “I dunno.” he finally said. “You’re really hard to read.”
“You seem to care a lot about reputation with him.” Olivia observed. “With me, you’re like a whole different person.”
Phil started walking to the office, preparing his rebuttal, and gazed behind him to see an unmoving Olivia with an arm outstretched. Rolling his eyes, he trudged back to her, grabbed her wrist, and kept walking. “If you’re looking for honesty, I’ll give ya honesty.” he replied, a surprising amount of heat in his words. “If you want me to just be a pathetic guy looking for sex, fine, here he is.”
“I never said you were pathetic.” Olivia pointed out.
“You implied it.”
“I made you be honest with your intentions. You chose to add ‘pathetic’ yourself.”
Phil stopped walking. “What the fuck are you trying to say?” he asked, the heat in his voice building, as he took a few steps towards her.
“That you have to grapple with your own words, not mine.” she replied, not taking a single step backwards but notably not looking too confident.
Phil chuckled, then laughed. He backed away, his arms up in the surrender position. “You know what? I don’t need to have sex with you. I don’t need to prove anything to you.” he finally said.
Olivia said nothing. She simply looked at him, waiting for whatever he would say next.
“Oh, go fuck yourself.” Phil waved his hand at her in a ‘go away’ motion before stomping off. He would be out of her line of sight entirely before Olivia finally walked away herself.
***
It would take until the next year for the two to converse again. Of course, the moment of the botched quickie was in November, so it wasn’t that long a time, but when one is in high school, even the two months since the November interaction feels like forever, and indeed it did to Phil.
Phil was gaining favor with the girl of his dreams. He had no idea how to proceed – let’s just say she was unpredictable to say the least – but at least he was getting somewhere. It was almost enough to combat his hatred of winter – the cold, the slush in the school hallways, the wind, the dead look to the trees, the fact that it only took until 5pm or earlier for it to get dark.
Still, he took advantage of the time he had in daylight. As a matter of fact, he got into the habit of ending student council early, letting the other council members off almost 30 whole minutes early, just so he could enjoy some more time outside. Whenever the council meetings were over he would almost run to his locker, get his stuff and leave.
And yet, he always took one particular route out of the school now – through the arts hallway. There was a part of him that kind of wished he would find a particular girl down there breaking the rules, though since their last time together, it didn’t look like Olivia was a fan of playing the school’s piano anymore.
A part of him felt guilty. Did he cause this? He knew he was kind of intimidating, especially since he had a bit of a reputation for making sure the rules of the school were upheld perfectly. He knew that if he could see her again, he’d want to straighten things out. He had time to think, and hey, he almost had a girlfriend now, so she could be sure his intentions were honorable.
Phil shook his head as he neared the exit for the school. He needed to get Olivia out of his head. He needed a topic. School spirit week? Nah, even the council couldn’t decide what to do for that, they spent most of the meeting bickering about it. There was no way he was going to make any progress on his own.
Phil pushed the doors open and a cold rush greeted him in the most rude way possible. It wasn’t that the day was particularly windy – in fact, it was kind of nice how still the air was. At the same time, he just hated the cold.
Something was off though. The winter normally had this staleness to the air, a kind of crisp smell. Phil didn’t smell the crispness. In fact, he smelled something quite different. A bit pungent, a bit sweet, but in a sour kind of way. A smell that he claimed to hate, but he knew it just made him curious: the smell of weed.
Phil looked from side to side to see if he could find the source. Curiously, he couldn’t, so he began to wander, looking all around him. After all, students shouldn’t be smoking weed on school grounds, that’s just common sense. Eventually, he found an area where the walls of the school cornered in to create an alley in the turf. Phil raised his eyebrows – he had heard the school had a ‘smoker’s zone,’ dubbed by the community as opposed to the teachers of course. Phil found those teachers kind of backwards – he knew students were going to smoke weed no matter what, and that it was on the school to create a safe environment for it, not pretend it would never happen.