Its not that simple, p.2
It's Not That Simple, page 2
“I can get you my schedule, hopefully later this week. It won’t just be the standard meetings this year though. I have class presidents to mentor, as well as the social committee to oversee.” I honestly have no idea why I bit off as much as I did this year. With college applications due and a GPA to maintain, I should have dropped council and kept drama club with Jo, instead of the other way around.
But the people had spoken before the last school year had even ended. I had been voted in, by a landslide, so I took up the mantle. I had hoped for someone like-minded for a VP, but that position was more of a popularity situation. The student body knew what I was capable of bringing to the table, having led the charge at the class level for the last three years. But he ran on a whim and won, against only one other candidate; who would have been the better choice. But I digress.
Sitting at the same table we’ve occupied since we were freshmen, Nox props her face in her hand, typing a message into her phone with the other hand. “Is today over yet?” My twin sighs, joining us as she slumps into a seat, dropping an armful of snacks on the table in front of her.
“Jo, you need to eat more than vending machine food,” Cody reprimands, sitting next to her. Turning his ball cap backward, he starts eating the spaghetti on his tray while she watches him, arms crossed. I shake my head when he grins around a bite, offering the next forkful to her. She eats it happily before turning her attention to me.
“Have you seen Kasper today?” Her eyes narrow in annoyance, and I know I’m not going to like what comes out of her mouth next. When I shake my head, she rolls her eyes so hard that I’m surprised it doesn’t give her a headache. “No surprise, but he's been an arrogant misogynist all morning, telling everyone who will listen that he’s going to take over for you because leading the charge isn’t a woman’s place. Or some shit.”
I clench my teeth before reminding myself that I need to stop that. Rolling my neck, I look around. I haven't seen him yet, but that doesn’t mean he’s far. I pull out my book, opening it to the bobby pin I slid into my spot last night. I’ve only made it three pages before I feel like I’m being watched.
When I look up, I meet an unfamiliar pair of dark eyes and my own eyes widen. I wasn’t expecting to make eye contact with anyone. His shoulders shake in a silent chuckle and he wiggles his fingers at me. Do I know you? Leaning toward Jo, I nudge her shoulder. “Hey, do we know him?” I whisper.
“I’m gonna need you to be more specific than a pronoun,” she responds, looking at me.
“There, with the messy dark hair. White t-shirt?” I try as she twists her long black hair around her hand before dropping it down her back. I know she sees him as soon as she looks up because her red lips tip up in a smile that I know too well. I should have asked Nox.
“Nope, that boy is a stranger,” she declares, standing. “I’ll be back.” My twin sister and I are nothing alike. I mean, we’re identical, but the technicality is where it ends. Outside of her dyed hair and perpetually pale skin, that would be freckled like mine if she spent any time in the sun, we’re physically the same. But she is everything I am not: confident, independent, social, and fearless. I watch as she strolls over to the guy, with a level of sass that only she is capable of and leans against his table.
She says something and he leans back in his chair, prompting her laughter to fill the room. She gestures to him with her whole hand and he shakes his head, taking her offered hand in mutual greeting. Pointing a red-polished finger in a circle around his face, she cocks a hip and his eyebrows rise. He watches her walk back to us before the guy sitting at the same table, kitty-corner to him, glances over his shoulder at me.
“So who is he?” I ask Jo as she drops back into her chair, stealing another forkful of food from Cody.
“No idea,” she shrugs. “But he’s from up north somewhere. His body language is loud as hell and I’m not sure if it's a coincidence or not, but he’s sitting with Daniel Mack.”
“Ace,” Cody looks up from his phone at me, a warning clear in his eyes. “If he’s already friends with Daniel, you should keep your distance.”
“I wasn’t planning on proximity. He was the one staring,” I defend, but curiosity floods me.
This school is massive. The high school I attended back home was one floor and had maybe half the number of students. But there was more than one school there. It appears that the whole of Avernus County attends here. I’ve looked like a moron, using my map to get pretty much everywhere today. But I think I’ve managed pretty well, for the most part.
After realizing the vast differences from what I’m used to this morning, I was sort of dreading lunch. But looking around the cafeteria, it seems pretty chill. Most people have small groups that they’re conversing with and some sit alone, reading books or scrolling on their phones. There are no massive groups, who seem to lord over everything. Sure, you can tell who the cheerleaders are, from their general appearance and disposition. And the athletes are pretty clear too. But even they are scattered among groups of others, who definitely don’t look the part.
“Hi,” I hear from behind me and I spin to face them. A fairly short, stocky guy stands there with a tray in his hands and a backpack secured to his back with both of his arms through the straps.
“Can I help you?” My eyebrows rise when he approaches and puts his tray down, several seats away from me.
“I just didn’t want to sit without announcing myself first,” he says, dropping his bag in the chair on the other side of him. “Daniel. And since I’ve never seen you before in my life, welcome to Avernus.” His tone is anything but welcoming, I might even call it vaguely threatening. But he looks mostly harmless.
“Bellamy,” I return and nod. “Moved from Michigan a couple of weeks ago.” He nods and immediately puts headphones over his ears. I can hear the bass thump through them as I turn to watch people mull around me again. A few tables down, I notice the strangest assortment of people I’ve seen yet. Three girls and a guy who wears a school ball cap. He looks like an open book, but it's the other three. Their faces are so similar, that they must be related. But their collective appearance makes me so curious.
The girl from the restaurant sits there, with her bubblegum pink hair and black wire glasses, wrapped in a gauzy-looking dress that puddles on the floor at her feet. In hair-to-toe black, with stark red lips, the second reminds me of an emo Snow White, leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed. And the third’s nose is deep in a thick book. She sits ramrod straight and is dressed like she knows the Dewey decimal system better than her own address.
Like she can feel my eyes on her, the third girl looks up from her book, making eye contact with me. It must be accidental because the alarm that she actually met someone’s gaze, is written all over her face. I stifle a chuckle and lift my fingers to wiggle a wave in her direction. Her eyes widen further and she leans toward the girl on her right, whose face matches her own completely. Twisting black hair around her hand before tossing it over her shoulder, Snow White looks at me and grins almost deviously. Words that I can’t hear are said to the table, the guy and third girl looking up.
I’m not sure why it doesn’t surprise me when the notably alt girl saunters up to me and props herself against my table. “You’re a stranger,” she points out bluntly. I'm painfully aware that I'm new around here, but the word stranger feels almost accusatory when it falls from her lips.
Leaning back in my chair, I try to feign nonchalance but she just laughs. “Woah there, no need to make such a loud body statement, Cowboy. Welcome to Alabama,” she says, extending a hand toward me.
Shaking it I narrow my eyes. “How’d you know I’m new to Alabama?” I have to ask.
“Dark hair, dark eyes and warm undertones? Boy, if you spent even one whole year here, your skin wouldn’t be nearly as pale,” she looks me over, taking in my clothes too. “Plus the haircut. If I had to guess, I’d say you migrated south from somewhere close to Canada. Like way up there, where winter is a real thing.” How’d she do that?
I nod and she pushes off the table, nodding back. “As I said, welcome to Alabama, Jack.” My brow furrows as I watch her round my table and return to her own.
“Jack? I thought your name was Bellamy?” My table mate looks back at the girl before assessing me.
“It is,” I tilt my head and replay our conversation trying to figure it out. “She came to Jack on her own.”
“Fuck, the Greys are weird sometimes. Hot as hell, but so fucking weird,” he shakes his head, returning to whatever he was doing.
When I walk into my last class of the day, a seemingly pointless study hall, the girl from lunch is there. Dressed like she could be sitting in a J.Crew ad, her long copper hair is twisted up with a pen through it. Curious, I sit at the desk behind her and I can't help but watch her ignore the whole world around her for the whole hour.
I've done the same thing every day this week. It's now Friday and Daniel told me about a party that’s supposed to be happening tonight. This girl doesn’t look the type to party, but I’m crossing my fingers that looks can be deceiving. I sit in front of her and pick up the phone on the corner of her desk.
“That’s mine,” she says, not even looking up as I add myself as a contact in her phone, hitting call. Feeling my phone vibrate in my pocket, I end the call and replace her device where I found it.
“Who leaves their phone unlocked?” I ask her and she finally looks up.
“People who don’t have things to hide?” she tilts her head at me and narrows her eyes. “You’re new,” she eventually says.
I nod. “Bellamy,” I introduce myself, and she just stares for a minute.
“Not Jack then,” she smiles, drawing my attention to her mouth.
“Definitely not Jack. I don’t know where that even came from,” I admit.
“My sister thinks she’s clever. You come from where it gets really cold. So she named you Jack Frost.” She chuckles, continuing. “I’m Ace.”
“Ace?” I have to ask.
“Technically Cadence, but only my Gram calls me that. Or teachers, if I’m in trouble.” So, just her Gram then? Because I get the distinct impression that this girl never finds herself in any sort of trouble. Her eyes hold mine a beat until she shrugs and they drop back to the notebook she has been writing in all week.
“I hear there’s a party tonight,” I start and she nods, not looking up again. “You should come with me. I mean, you’re like the third person to give me a name this week.”
“I can’t,” she shakes her head as her grey eyes meet mine again. “I have to work, sorry.”
“Well, you can’t be working that late. Everything in this town closes by ten,” I point out and her eyebrows rise. “At least call me when you’re done with work. Maybe we can swing something,” I say as the teacher walks into the room and I turn to face the front.
“How am I supposed to call you?” she whispers at my back and I chuckle under my breath.
“Check your phone, Ace.”
The audacity he has makes me so curious. Who is this kid? I ignore him for most of our last block, but when Ms. Loel leaves early, dismissing us, my phone vibrates on my desk almost immediately.
Bellamy: This is how.
I shake my head, putting everything into my bag. Once the bell rings, I have eighteen minutes to make it to Gril, so getting out a couple of minutes early is a serious stroke of luck. With the bag over my shoulder, I head out into the hallway. Stopping at my locker, I grab my second bag that holds the rest of my books and miscellaneous things that I need throughout my day. Jo never fails to scoff at the fact that I carry two bags to school with me almost every day, but I hate schlepping from class to class with a full course load of books and I don’t like carrying the books in my hands, either.
I made arrangements for Jo to head home with Cody tonight, and Nox is due for a serving shift at Gril in another couple of hours. Tommy, the owner, always needs help with the scheduling software on Fridays, so I usually start and finish my work here before the dinner shift even arrives. Tommy is at least as old as Gram and has owned Heartbreak Gril for more than fifty years. The restaurant itself had been passed down to him, from his father. Back then it had been some sort of seafood place. But Tommy rebranded it into a soda shoppe and comfort food diner and named it Heartbreak Gril.
There were originally supposed to be two Ls on the sign. But the story goes that he saw a pretty girl walk by while he was painting the thing and dropped his paintbrush. Going down the ladder to retrieve it, he came face to face with her. The girl in the story was his Betty and the unfinished sign made her laugh. He says that her laugh changed his life, so how could he possibly change the thing that brought it into his life? The generation before us had shortened the name to just Heartbreak, but something about that must have struck wrong once it came to our turn. Because a handful of years ago, the teens that frequent the place started calling it Gril instead and it stuck. It was probably as simple as wanting to define something different in this town from their parent’s generation. But it’s just been Gril since I was old enough to come for milkshakes and fries by myself.
“Tommy?” I call out, walking in through the back door.
“Be out in a minute,” his gruffness sounds from the walk-in. Setting onto my usual seat in his postage stamp of an office, I pull out my notebook. I’ve been tracking changes we make, in hopes of being more efficient. I’m also trying to prove to Tommy that he doesn’t need to watch me input the schedule every time. I only work for him a handful of hours a week, doing this and inputting hours for payroll, on alternating Fridays. But I can do both of those things without sitting in the office. “Have a good week at school, Red?” the old man shuffles into the space.
“I did. Have a lot going on this semester, so I need to be in and out today.” He just nods in acknowledgment before sifting through a stack of papers on his desk and handing it to me.
“Best get to it then. I’ll be on the line,” he mutters before crossing the threshold again.
In forty minutes, the schedule is posted for the next two weeks. Pack my book back into the bag I hauled in here and wander out toward the front. I spot Betty, wandering between the tables, and smile. She refuses to do anything in an official capacity with the restaurant, even after retiring from a long nursing career. The ever-present hostess, Betty says that she prefers to just talk to all the people who walk through their door. Their grandson is supposed to take over in two years when he finishes college. But when he left town, there was talk that he might never actually return to Avernus.
“Cadence!” Betty chimes, pulling me into a hug. “Sweet girl, does Mr. Grumpy still have you working on Friday nights? Surely you have better things you could be doing with your young life?”
“Oh, I don’t mind it, really,” I shrug when she releases me.
“Nonsense,” she fusses. “Thomas Wells!” She calls out to her husband.
“Love, whaddya need? I’m cookin’,” he grumbles from the line.
“Give the girl your passwords. She’s a Grey, for crying out loud. You have known Maeve since you could talk. We've watched these girls and their parents grow up. Cadence doesn’t need to schlep in here every Friday, just to type in a few numbers,” she smiles at him. “Hell, I’d trust her with this place, more than Kenny,” she sighs.
His sigh is audible and I smile at them. I hope I can find the Tommy to my Betty one day.
“Fine, my love,” the old man concedes before sighing. “Come in Monday after school, girl. I’ll getcha what you need then.”
“Sure, Mr. Wells,” I nod with a smile. “I’ve gotta get going. But have a good weekend, okay?” I direct at his wife.
“Big plans tonight, sweetie?” Her face lights up and something sinks in me, knowing my plans are going to disappoint her.
“Not really, ma’am. Just school work. And a proposal for the school board about some fundraising,” I admit, making her tsk.
“Girl, you need to get out. Have some fun too,” she encourages. “You work too hard for such a young thing, so much like your mama.” The soft smile that graces her face is filled with pity and nostalgia. When your tragedy happens in a small town, it’s everybody’s business. It’s been eight years, but people still look at Jo and me like that when our parents become part of the conversation.
Unsure what to say to that, I just smile back and make my way out the door. Dropping into the little black car that I parked beside the building, I pull my phone out of my pocket to find messages waiting for me.
Jo: Waiting for Cody to get out of practice. Is anyone home yet?
Nox: Tutoring until four-thirty.
Shaking my head, I tap out a reply.
Ace: Leaving Gril now. Heading home. Do you need something?
Nox: I’d tell you to come and get me, but I have half an hour still.
Jo: Gram probably needs help with the kids and dinner. Cody and I can bring Nox home.
