“Are we there yet?” Tevin whined, craning his neck to try and look around an upcoming curve in the road.
“We’re almost there, baby,” I replied, placing my hand on his leg. “Very soon you’ll be mentally ready to take me in your arms and make sweet love to me.”
“I meant your school, Leah.”
“But before you can do that,” I continued, not paying attention to his comment, “I’m gonna have to show you that I can handle it.”
“Oh good, there it is,” Tevin said in relief as he pulled into the line of cars in the front of my school. “Well, have a nice day!” he exclaimed with an odd tone in his voice, reaching across me to open my door.
“Aw, thanks for opening the door for me, Tevin,” I said, acknowledging his sweet gesture. Then, I pulled the door shut once more and turned to face him. “At the end of today, I will come to you with evidence that I can handle anything you have for me. You need to see that I’m a woman now. Even though you know I’m of age now, somewhere in your brain there is a block that’s not allowing you to see how grown up I am. Part of you still sees me as your sweet little baby sister, and while I love that you see me like that, you need to see how much more I’ve become now.”
“Time to go to school, Leah,” he said, picking up my book-bag and placing it in my lap.
“And tonight you will see,” I continued. “I will show you just how ready for you I am. I hate that it has to be this way, but I see no alternative. This is what life has given us, and we just have to roll with it. Make sense?”
“Uh-huh!” Tevin said with a jerky nod of his head, an oddly pained looking smile on his face.
“Aww,” I replied, placing my hand on his face and stroking his cheek lovingly. “It’ll be alright, baby. After tonight, everything will be okay.”
“Yep, sounds great!” he said as he once more leaned across me and opened my door. “Have a nice day, Leah!”
“You too, big brother!” I replied as I stepped out of his car. Before shutting his door, I heard him mumble something. “What was that, Tevin?”
“Huh?”
“I thought I heard you say something. Something about a…crazy bitch?”
His eyes grew wide. “Oh, yeah…just talking about…someone from school.”
I laughed and shrugged my shoulders. “Okay then!” I said. I turned and started walking toward the building, ready to begin what was going to be a very interesting day at school.
There were many perks to being a senior in high school, one of which being that as long as you did what you were supposed to do academically for the first three years, it was easy to get into a situation where you had enough credits that you didn’t actually have to have a class every period. After my first period class was over, I had a free period that I usually liked to spend hanging out in the library. I’d take that time to get as much homework done as I could, or if I didn’t have homework, then I’d read magazines or mess around on my phone or something. Most of the other kids that had free periods would leave campus and go hang out somewhere together, but I didn’t really mesh too well with them. Tevin wasn’t wrong earlier when he mentioned that I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t care, though. People my age irked me. Hell, people in general irked me. As long as I had my family, especially Tevin, then I was good to go.
There was one kid that I’d seen in the library every day for the whole school year. Someone who was kind of a loner, like me. He always kept to himself, but every now and then I’d see him stealing glances in my direction. Normally, I would have felt threatened by something like that and left, or perhaps even told a teacher that another student was sexually harassing me. But this was not a scary guy by any stretch of the imagination. He seemed perfectly harmless, a little on the geeky side even. So even though he annoyed me, I would just ignore his stares and mind my own business.
“Hey, how old are you?” I asked him as I abruptly sat down at his table across from him.
“Uhh…what?” he replied, clearly taken aback at my sudden intrusion on his studies. He had several papers and books spread out around him, and before I approached him, had been completely immersed in them.
“You don’t have an accent,” I pointed out to him. “I figured you would have.”
“Wh-um…why?”
“Oh wait, I hear it now a little bit. Are you from India?”
“N-no. I’m from here.”
“Parents from India?”
“Grandparents.”
“Ha. I knew it.” I ran my tongue softly along the front of my braces, thinking of something else to say to try and break the tension.
“Eighteen,” he said out of nowhere.
“Thirty-seven!” I chirped in response.
“You’re thirty-seven?” he asked with a questioning glance.
“Oh! I thought we were just saying random numbers.” He looked at me in a way that would normally make me lash out, but since I needed something from him, I decided to let it go.
“You started off the conversation by asking me for my age,” he said. “Remember?”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. Very happy to hear that you’re eighteen. I am too.”
“Cool,” he said with a light nod of his head.
“So what’s your name?” I asked, smiling as sweetly as I could at him.
“Um, Leah?” he replied softly.
“Your name is Leah? Is that a boy’s name in India?”
“No…your name is Leah.”
“Oh cool. How’d you know that?”
He stared at me for a moment before answering. “We’ve gone to the same school since we were children,” he explained. “We’ve had many classes together in high school. We even have fourth period English together now.”
“We do?”
“Yep.”
“Oh.” This was not going well, but there was still time to rectify the situation.
“And my name is Rohan.”
“Rohan,” I repeated.
“Yep.”
“Well it’s very nice to meet you, Ronan!”
“It’s Rohan. And we’ve met before, Leah. Spoken even.”
“Oh.” I decided to just get to the point, since it was becoming clear that conversation was not Ronan’s strong suit. “Ronan,” I began, “you ever been in one of those little study rooms on the other side of the library? You know, the private ones that supposedly block out all noise and allow the occupant to focus on whatever they are trying to do without any outside distractions? The ones that people hook up in sometimes?”
He swallowed visibly hard. “No,” he replied simply. “I always just do my studying out here.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” I said. “How much have you noticed me this school year? In the library during second period specifically, that is.”
His eyes shifted, finding a random spot over my head to focus on. “How much have I noticed you?” he repeated nervously.
“Rhetorical question,” I said simply. “Let me rephrase. Ronan, I’ve noticed you looking at me quite a lot this school year. Do you deny it?”
“Well I…I’ve looked your way a couple of times.”
“Oh please. I know lust when I see it. It’s been written all over your face all year. Even now as we speak, I can see how much you want me.” I poked my chest out dramatically, causing him to look down. “See!? Can’t take your eyes off me, can you?”
“Yeah, but you just-”
“I’m not gonna lie to you, Ronan. I need something from you. You a virgin?”
“What-”
“Of course you are. Do you masturbate?”
“Leah, I’m not very-”
“Another dumb question, right? Listen, I’m gonna go into one of those little study rooms now. Last one on the right. This time of day, no one is ever in that part of the library. Now, Mrs. Frickenbottom-you know Mrs. Frickenbottom, right?”
“The librarian?”
“Good job. Mrs. Frickenbottom is going to walk out of her office behind the counter in just a few minutes. She does this every day at this time. She’s going to stand behind the counter, look around the room, and then go back into her office and not come out again for another twenty minutes. When she goes back into her office, come join me in that little room. Got it?”
Before he could reply, I hopped up out of the chair and quickly scurried across the library. As I predicted, there was no one else in the area. I walked right into the study room, sat at a chair behind the little table that was in there, and waited. After about five minutes, I saw Ronan approach the room through the big pane of glass in the door. He peered through the glass briefly, letting his eyes scan the whole room before settling them on me, then came in.
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