lost_boy | (no subject)

Lunch was my favourite time of the school day.

It was probably stupid, I liked most of my classes, so it wasn't as if I was bored, but I liked lunch because it meant I got to see my friends. We weren't all in the same grade, never mind the same classes, so it was the one time during the day I could see all of them. And maybe I didn't see every single one of them every single day, but there was always a familiar face or several.

And the lunch room was loud. It was as close as I had ever seen to the Lost Boys and although I was still trying to distance myself from the Island and Peter and everything I had been there, it was still something I liked. Something that made me feel a little more at home.

I thought most other students liked it, too, if only because it meant they weren't in class. It was a break and I was always starving by the time I made it to the lunch room. Today was no different and I walked into the room briskly with my lunch bag by my side, then scanned the crowd. There, over on one side, were the people I knew, and I made my way toward them with a smile.

There were groups everywhere, though. I smiled at some of them, avoided others, and thought to myself, as I finally sat down, that maybe I was getting the hang of being a normal teenager after all.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I don't know why people would care, but they do. Or else they find something else to care about for stupid reasons. Because they're stupid." And if Richie is going to be judgmental, she can sit there and be spooky.

"I don't really think about those kinds of things ever, really. I've only kissed two people–" Aggie pauses and then blushes, realizing who one of those two people were. She really hasn't thought much of that spin the bottle game at the sleepover. It had been fun and she'd been unsurprised that she was unmoved by the kisses. But, well.

"One of them was Eddie, actually. But it was just a dumb game of spin the bottle."

"Really?" I asked. Eddie hadn't told me who he had kissed and I didn't know what spin the bottle was, but suddenly I felt much less jealous. When Eddie had told me he kissed someone during a game, I had felt a strange, sad feeling in my chest, one I didn't fully understand as jealousy until a little while later, but I had also known it hadn't mattered much. That was before I was even here and Eddie had said it was just a game.

I felt like Aggie probably didn't want to steal my boyfriend.

"What's spin the bottle?" I asked to show I wasn't bothered by it. I wondered if she thought Eddie was a good kisser. I did, but I had never kissed anyone before him, not the way we did it. Sal and I had kissed, but only on the cheek, and although they had been kisses with promises of so much more, nothing had ever come of it before she died.

Aggie laughs and puts up her hands as if she's surrendering. "Really," she says. "I offered to let him kiss my pet snake, Morgana, instead but I guess he thought I was less terrifying." So far, her first and only kisses had been on that night and she thinks she can take it or leave it. The game had mostly affirmed what she already knew about herself; love might be nice, but it would take a lot to convince her into anything physical.

"It's a party game. Everyone sits in a circle and there's a bottle. When it's your turn, you spin it and kiss whoever it's pointing at when it stops." And Jamie doesn't seem mad, so she figures there's no reason not to be honest. "Eddie spun the bottle and it landed on me."

It sounded like the sort of game that could be fun, but also a game I wouldn't want to play given my own current situation. Kissing other people would be appealing if not for the fact that I only wanted to be kissing Eddie. Being his boyfriend meant he was the only one I was supposed to kiss, too, and I was perfectly happy with that arrangement.

"We never did anything like that on the Island," I said. "But then most of us were pretty young. I don't think boys care much for kissing when they're only eight years old."

I paused, then admitted, "I don't think I'd like to do it now either. I don't want to kiss anyone else."

"I don't really want to kiss anyone at all," Aggie says, her way of saying it's all right. She'd done the game on a lark and known that the kisses weren't likely to mean much to her at all and had only been confirmed in that theory. If she'd had a person she liked, she wouldn't even want to do it for a laugh.

"I realized a while ago that that stuff isn't really my thing. I like seeing my friends getting together and being happy, but I don't really want it for myself. People say that I'm weird."

"Why is that weird?" I asked, although I was mostly asking rhetorically, because I didn't expect Aggie to have an answer. I had already learned kids in Darrow declared all sorts of things weird and I fit into half of them this week. Next week I would probably fit the other half.

"I really like kissing," I said. I really liked kissing. My body decided to make me very aware of just how much I liked kissing nearly every single time I got to do it and also half the time Eddie just smiled at me the right way, which could be annoying, but that much, I knew, was completely normal.

"But I can see why someone wouldn't," I continued. "When you describe it, it sounds sort of gross, doesn't it?"

Aggie shrugs, not especially bothered. "Because most people want to have that kind of relationship. So they can't understand someone who doesn't." It's not like she doesn't love people any less; Aggie adores all of her found family and friends. She can feel love, just not that particular desire.

"I'm sure it's fun, if you like that kind of thing. When we played the game, I didn't get anything more than a little peck from Eddie or the guy I landed on after." It's not a particularly varied pool of samples, she realizes, but Aggie doesn't think she needs any to know herself.

That definitely wasn't how Eddie and I kissed. At least not all of the time. Sometimes, mostly when we were in public, I would kiss him very quickly because I didn't want a lot of people looking at us. I wasn't embarrassed, but I knew someone would probably tease us.

And it was nice, too, having something private with Eddie, something that was just ours.

"I think maybe people don't need to understand not to be rude about it," I said thoughtfully. "I don't understand why someone might want to shave off all their hair, but I don't care if they do."

"Because they're people." That's one thing she's learned from living in two centuries. There are just always going to be people who are petty and nosy, who have to know everyone's business because their own lives are simply so boring that they have to bother others. It's sort of reassuring in its annoying mundanity.

"They don't understand two boys kissing or a girl who wants a metal ring through her nose. But we still exist. So there."