OPH nano: flight 2

OPH nano: flight 2

Three hundred channels and Jordan could only watch a japanese stunt show and a few eclectic stories.‭ ‬Static flicker,‭ ‬a sigh of fatigue.‭ ‬She thought of her friend and his deceptive ordinariness‭;‬ brown hair,‭ ‬green eyes,‭ ‬a somewhat hooked nose,‭ ‬and‭ ‬five feet,‭ ‬eleven inches with little else‭ ‬but bone.‭ ‬Sometimes she wondered what was underneath that kindness,‭ ‬and tonight was the first time she asked out of the six months they had known each other.

Funny,‭ ‬how they met outside of school‭ ‬grounds after she tore a new one in the bitch that was‭ ‬in her shitlist.‭ ‬At the time,‭ ‬no one dared to approach her,‭ ‬and there he was,‭ ‬a skinny,‭ ‬awkward kid who looked at her with such‭ ‬graveness.

"What the fuck do you want‭?" Her nose bled a fountain, and there was a scratch above her eye. Not another person in sight- he was almost like a ghost with his paper pale skin and dark clothes.

He opened his mouth‭ ‬and out came a voice that was like a low, clear bell.‭

‭"What do you get out of this?"

‭That made her angry. "What is there to get? People are thorns. You have to fight back. You look like the kind to get beaten up, I bet if you had some more balls you'd agree with me."

‭"I think a better way to fight back is to get good grades and succeed, and be glad that the girl you hate has a dead end job in a fast food place and you don't."

‭He had a meek, lopsided little smile.

‭"You're retarded, whoever you are."

‭"Nathan, my name is Nathan. We have the same lunch period. I sit by the window with my friends and you float around the tables. Even the top tier rich bitches don't scare you because they know you'll kick their asses and their boyfriends' asses. That I can admire."

‭"So what are you here for, to kiss up?"

‭"You know the fact that you're in trouble in school, right? You were supposed to be tutored by a girl in my honors class but she's afraid of you and declined after two rounds of sessions. And now they've hired me."

‭"Everyone's afraid of me." Huff of pride. "You're probably too stupid to be afraid of me."

‭"I'm not stupid, but I think you're a waste of intelligence. I've read the poetry you sent in the school paper a few months ago. It was amazing."

‭He sat down next to her in the ledge by the apartment stairs, close to the scene of the fight that had since then had been vacated of bystanders. She inched away, instinctively. Something sparked in her that she couldn't understand, but it felt much like fear- a different kind.

‭"What do you want from me?"

‭"I want to read more of it. I wondered how can that possibly come out of you. And I can't say I understand why you do things the way you do, because I don't know you. But if I help you get your grades up will you write me some?"

‭"Why should I?"

‭His smile grew braver.

‭"Why shouldn't you?"

‭Why shouldn't you, he said. What held her back from anything- nothing did, he said later. Nothing held back anyone, and that was why there were both crimes and saviors. The mind was a brilliant, terrifying thing that was so capable of greatness and terror.

‭He said a lot of things, and she began to believe them.

‭Jordan- present day Jordan, turned off the television set and went upstairs to read a required school book, Lord of the Flies. Simon reminded her of Nathan. Simon died halfway through the book.

‭Maybe Nathan died too, in his own little way- she suspected that something in him was dying.

‭"People die every day. It's living that is difficult."

‭He said that too.

‭She didn't know what it was, but she thought of him every evening, with his pallid skin and quiet mouth, the way he walked, the way he strung together his words. He wasn't that attractive to her, though his green eyes would light up like a forest fire when he spoke, with his small, dulcet voice.

‭If this was love it was so unexpected and inconvenient, not to mention painful.

‭She wanted to kick something.

‭She wanted to have him.