| Monday, the first day back from spring holiday and the school could not buzz louder. Students gather in small clusters to chatter about their trips and fun times, while others, like Abe, work very hard to separate themselves from the hives of chatter.
Sometimes you just want to breathe!
How can one do that packed 5 deep into a small group?
Seated at his own table on the sunny portion of the outdoor patio, the football player can be found. Stretched out, seated on the table bench, his feet propped up and crossed one over the other, he turns the page in his magazine as he taps the toe of his shoe against the side of the table, a match to the beat playing in his ears. Judging from the ear buds he's wearing, there's an iPod tucked in his jacket.
"Ugh!" says Saya as she drops herself down onto the bench opposite Abe. "All day it's been 'Where did you go for vacation? Oh, you stayed home? And worked? That sucks. Let me tell you all about MY fabulous vacation in Florida/Hawaii/New York/Lake Tahoe." She pouts a little bit and shakes her head. "Save me, Abe," she pleads. "If I have to hear about one more vacation that I didn't get to go on, I might barf."
Abe chuckles as she slips into her eat. It isn't until he spots her that h tugs the ear bugs free, allowing him to catch her words..and they ring rather true. "Yes well, town wouldn't have been nearly as nice if they had all stayed, now would it. Imagine if you were working and had to deal with -all- of them complaining because their yacht was in the shop and they had to take the sailboat to the island?" The island being a small area just off the west side of the city. Somewhere only those with boat access can reach. He grins easily toward the dancer, "Other than slowly dying of envy, is your first day back going okay?"
Saya giggles a little. "You were quite enough," she laughs. "All coming into my restaurant and being nice and having a good conversation and leaving me a good tip. Geeze." She pretends like it was a hassle, but her tone belies that. "Well, it's fine," she tells him. "There's this guy in, like, most of my classes," she says with a sly sort of grin. "And he's pretty hot, so whenever I get too bored I sneak a peak at him."
Abe chuckles again. "I'm terribly sorry for my oily intrusion on your work shift." Abe allows, his hand pressing against his chest in a mock gesture of apology. "But I was starving to death." He'd not expected conversation but it doesn't appear that he hated it. Her little confession has his brows creasing as he sends a glance (ignorantly) toward the crowded table of A-Listers, and then a glance toward the equally crowded table of burnouts. Hmmm. "I hope it's not Kevin Dean because he's going to be a little skittish with girls for a while. Meadow and I got to watch that red head Lori Lowery lose her lunch all over him at the Firefly Saturday night. He's pretty much been traumatized since." Poor Kevin, if only Abe could muster a look of pity for his friend. If only.
Saya laughs, though she's still wrinkling her nose at the picture. "Gross!" she says. "And no... it's definitely not Kevin Dean." She giggles again. "Oh, you know Meadow?" she asks, brightening. "She's the sweetest girl. We're going to do a water conservation flash mob. She was thinking that the football players can get involved, too. And the band, somehow. It's gonna be awesome."
"Oh believe me, I know all about her project. She's dubbed me her assistant. I'm not really sure what my actual role is. Maybe she thinks I can have some sway over the team but she'd be very wrong. Most of them still call me a flake for quitting last year." Abe seems vastly unconcerned with his social status, and instead merely allows his shoulders to roll. "She's very sweet though, yes. Though she looked oddly out of place at the Fly. She needs to learn to have more fun that isn't related to saving something."
"Her assistant?" Saya repeats. She squints one eye thoughtfully at him. "I bet she likes you," she says. "She doesn't have a boyfriend. I bet she just wants to spend some time with you." She doesn't seem overly thrilled by her guesses, either. "I hear she's a vegan," she says. "I've been thinking about trying it out. I was reading about the -- the antibiotics and hormones and stuff in meat, and, like, I don't wanna put that in my body, you know? I was gonna ask her about it."
"I don't know why she would." He allows with a shrug before reaching for one of his fries. His lunch is hardly vegan. In fact the remainder of a ham and cheese sub sits on his tray, along with a rather large and heavily slated order of fries and a coke from the machine. Nothing healthy or vegan about it. "I mean, I don't recycle. I drive a gas guzzling truck and the most animal friendly I do is not hunt. Plus, I'm a terrible date. I get awkward and say the wrong thing, I never make the first move and I /never/ seem to realize when hints are being dropped." He laughs at his own expense with ease, "In other words, I'm a miserable failure at being a seventeen year old male."
"You should recycle," Saya says, leaning forward on her elbows. Her lunch, which she brought in an insulated lunch bag, isn't vegan, either, but it looks healthy and is heavy on fruits and vegetables. "It's so easy. I mean..." she points to a nearby recycling can. "Look. They're everywhere. Its right next to the trash can. Don't be one of those douche-bags that throws their water bottle into the trash can instead of shifting three inches to one side and recycling it," she urges. "Come on, now." When he says he doesn't know when hints are being dropped, she raises her eyebrows. "You don't say," she drawls slowly. "Really?"
Abe snorts. "You say this like it's easy." He may be teasing her in that regard. "But I can't believe you just called me a douche-bag. I'm wounded." Again his hand moves to his heart, though someone catches his attention as they pass, causing him to track the two girls till they depart. It's less of a 'check out and more of a 'did I just see that' look. It may be the girls newly dyed green hair that does the trick in drawing his attention so well. He may be judging her silently, but the words never reach his lips. Ultimately he glances back toward Saya as she speaks again, and shrugs. "I'm pretty sure I'm not the only guy who misses things."
Saya sighs. "No, you're probably right about that." She leans her elbows on the table and crosses her arms. "Abe," she says. "Two things. One, recycling IS easy, and I didn't call you a douche-bag, I urged you not to be a douche-bag. And two, you are the hot guy I've been stealing glances at. Since you obviously didn't get my hint earlier." She pauses. "I think you're hot." Despite her bold words and relaxed body language, her cheeks are turning pink, and she can't quite meet his gaze. She grabs a carrot stick, swirls it around in her little container of hummus, and crunches down.
Abe is /that/ ignorant of flirting. He actually looks shocked as she confesses. The comments of douche-baggieness and recycling are forgotten for the moment. "Me?" He takes another moment to look bewildered before he hums, "Oh. Really? /Why/?" Not exactly eloquent in his shock but at least he's not running, retracting or trying to change the topic. "I mean thank you. You're really pretty too." But why is his over-sounding question.
Saya half-grins and half-frowns. "Uh, 'cause you just /are/," she says. "Don't pretend you don't know, I mean... do you /own/ a mirror?" She blushes a bit more and smiles at him, the half-frown disappearing. "Thanks," she says when he calls her pretty. She finishes off her crunchy hummus-covered carrot, glances up at him, and away again.
This is why flirting is so dangerous. It turns friends into hiding, basket cases of awkwardness. He does his best to defuse it, albeit awkwardly. "I..guess. I dunno. I kinda feel average." He's nothing if not honest. "We all can't be hot Asian dancers." And he tries to joke. Badly. "I can even forgive you for eating hummus. Which looks like the contents of a stomach, by the way." Just sayin. And he's deflecting from the comments about himself like a champ! He may also be just a little red too.
"We all can't be... hot White football players?" Saya replies, frowning a little. "See, I think it's kind of annoying that any time someone comments on my looks or my smarts, they have to throw 'Asian' in there. Yes. I know my great-grandparents were Japanese. So the fuck what?" she asks, pouting a little bit. It's kind of funny how she drops her voice to a whisper when she drops the F-bomb. "Does it matter if your ancestors were from Ireland or Germany or France or wherever? No. No one ever brings it up when they talk about you. So how come it always comes up where mine were from?" She pauses a second and shakes her head. "I'm -- I'm not, like, upset exactly. It's just... kind of racist, isn't it? Not in a mean way, but... still."
Abe laughs, "It gets dropped because it's exotic in comparison to..saw...Lucy." He points toward a pretty but rather generic blond girl sitting next to his friend Scott. "Sure she's hot, but if you line Lucy up with Janell and Stephanie..they all kinda look like carbon copies. It' no different than having someone comment on a hot red head, or a hot football player. I'm more than a football player you know." He's teasing mostly, but he also shrugs. "Guess I'm just another racist white guy." She started it! "Plus, every red blooded American male goes through an 'asian' phase. So there's that. You're cursed to suffer through our constant assumptions that Asians are somehow unique."
Saya shakes her head a little, still frowning and in thought. "I dunno," she says. "I've been thinking about it a lot since this one guy called me Chinkerbelle." She cringes a little at the name. "So let's... let's break it down logically. Exotic means something rare and foreign, right?"
Abe shrugs, "If you want to b technical about it. If someone's using it on a personal basis it can also mean unique or special." He seems somewhat annoyed at the conversation but being Abe, he bites it back. "There's a distinct difference between calling someone Asian, and calling them a derogatory term."
"It's not that I mind being called Asian," Saya says. "Obviously, I am Asian. It's that I mind that it's constantly being brought up, all the time." She bites her bottom lip, gently chews on it, thinks for a second. "You talk about lining up girls, and between me and Janell and Stephanie and Lucy, I'm the one that would stand out. Why? Is it because I'm smarter, or nicer, or I like the same things you do, or I'm more courageous? No. It's not even 'cause I'm actually any prettier. It's cause I'm Asian. And that's the only reason." She sighs. "I just feel like sometimes that's the only thing people see about me."
Abe chuckles, "This is different in comparison to you saying there was a hot guy you snuck looks at? Rather than a smart guy, or a nice guy?" A brow arches gently, "This is why guys tumble all over themselves when they flirt, by the way. Because girls make so much out of so very little. It's not like we /think/ before we talk. If we did, we'd never dare speak." Mad? Of course not. Annoyed, perhaps a little. It's likely the reason he doesn't flirt. "Very sorry I called you Asian." It's just a sad aspect of Abe. Confrontation of even the mildest degree makes him grumpy.
Saya shakes her head and looks off to one side. "Ugh, that's not even what I was trying to say," she says, sounding annoyed, now, herself. "And it is different, 'cause I didn't say, 'There's this hot White guy I was sneaking looks at.' I said hot guy, that's it. There was no reason to throw race in there. And -- you know, I only really thought you were hot anyway 'cause I had such a nice time talking to you the other day at the restaurant. I thought you were nice, and sweet. That's what made me look at you again, and think, 'Yeah, he is pretty hot, isn't he?' But when you start out with 'Hot Asian chick' you're just -- just /bypassing/ everything that makes me a unique and special person and going straight to my ethnicity, which is something I have no control over or choice in."
"Well if you had I wouldn't be making a big deal out of it. Like I said, I'm sorry. I won't do it again." She can be certain of that. Abe is hardly a politically correct personality, nor does he seem driven to be as such. He also retreats into himself again, and his lunch as he lifts a fry and pops it into his mouth.
Saya sighs and rests her face on her hands. After a second she drags her fingers back through her hair and goes back to eating her own lunch. In silence, with an unhappy sort of look on her face. She picks up another carrot, with a nice dallop of hummus on the end, and looks at it for a second, then looks at him. "This doesn't look like barf at all," she says. "Have you ever had it? It's delicious."
Abe seems perfectly at ease with the silence. Then again, he's a quiet guy. It isn't until she mentions the hummus again, that he makes a noise. And it's not a pleasant sound. Much more of a groan than not. And it's directed at the carrot. "I suppose it's all in perception, but I refuse to eat anything that reminds me of /any/ body fluid." He pops a second fry into his mouth before his eyes roll upward thoughtfully as he chews. "I also don't eat blue cheese anything, or yogurt. Or cauliflower, but only because it just looks like the most offensive simultaneously boring vegetable on earth." Whatever. He takes a bite of his own celery before his attention is lifted toward the other table again, this time allowing him to bear witness to Kevin as he mocks the red head from the night before.
Publicly, and THAT sets worse on the boy than anything else this evening. The look of disapproval is rather evident. "My friends are jerks." He decides with a sigh, "It pains me too, ya know, because I feel like somewhere there is a tree producing massive amounts of oxygen for these people...and they all need to apologize to this tree. But I know it will never happen."
"Oh, ugh, I'm totally with you on yogurt," Saya says. "The texture gets me, it's all slimy and nasty. Ugh." She curls her lip in disgust. "I can't eat okra for the same reason," she tells him. She, too, looks over at his friends being jerks, and frowns at them. "Why are you even friends with them, then?" she asks. "If they're such jerks, I mean."
Abe nods, "Frozen yogurts alright. I prefer ice cream, or sherbet really." He's still watching his 'friends' though her question quickly returns his gaze to her again. He seems to mull the question around before he sighs and shrugs, "Honestly, because I've always been friends with them. Scotts alright," he allows pointing toward the quieter by at the table, trying very hard not to take part. "The problem is he follows Kevin's cues too much. Kevin on the other hand is a complete asshole, but he's the product of a much bigger asshole..so in a way it's not his fault. He doesn't know better." The Deans are, after all, THE family in town. The founders of Lantern Hill, the wealthiest and otherwise influential of the lot. In towns like this, that goes a pretty good ways. "I kinda approach him like I'm approaching a disabled child. He can't help it. No point in getting mad." It's a deluded way of dealing with jerks, sure. But it's his way. "I have no excuse for the girls except that evil travels in flocks."
Saya listens carefully to Abe. She thinks about what he said for a while. "Maybe that was a valid excuse when he was a little kid," she says. "But as some point, everyone has to stop blaming their parents for their douche-baggery, and start taking responsibility for themselves. I think we're just about at that age. Or close to it." She finishes off her last carrot and glances up at him again. "Don't you think?"
Abe chuckles, "I suppose in a perfect world, sure. The sad truth is that people seldom do what is right, and people seldom see eye-to-eye when it comes social behavior. I mean...the world needs all kinds, all viewpoints. It's what creates individuality as much as style and hobbies. Without the jerks there would be no conflict, and what's life without conflict?" he glances back, "Still..he is a asshat. No argument there."
"What I man is... if someone's like, I feel sorry for that jerk because he's a jerk because his parents are jerks,' that only works for so long. After a while he's a jerk just because he is continuing to choose to be a jerk. Or at least he's not choosing not to be a jerk. But that's his choice, by then." Saya shrugs. "And why should they, when nice people keep affirming that their choice is the right one by never confronting them to their face when they do something awful?"
Says Saya.
Abe shrugs, "How can you be something you have never experienced?" At the same time, Abe seems tired already, "I' not perfect, so I see no right for me to point out someone's bad habits. Anyway, I like not making waves. I'm not trying to change the world, just trying to keep my head above water." He rolls a shoulder at the words, perhaps aware that he's merely an enabler. "Karma will come for him in its own time. He has a lot coming for him."
"That's... also true," Saya admits. "You know, I hand't thought of that. Thanks for pointing it out to me." She's finishes up her lunch and starts putting her containers back into her bag. His last couple of sentences catch her attention, though, and she looks up at him, curious. "What does that mean?" she asks. "What'd he do?"
Abe chuckles, "What hasn't he done?" It's more of a filler answer than anything more. Lunch is nearly up, and Abe also begins to clear his place, stacking things onto the trey before he stands. "Have a nice rest of the day. See you in Biology." She gets a faint grin before he tugs his bag onto his shoulder and starts toward the trash. And sadly, he throws his coke bottle in with it.
No one's immune to being set in their ways.
"Later," Saya says. She makes a disgusted tsking noise and picks his bottle out of the trash, only to put it into the recycling bin.
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