AJ closed his eyes and tipped his face up to the spray of warm water. Freed, at least temporarily, of life’s worries, he allowed his mind to wander, as it often did when he was in the shower. In a way, it was his vacation from the world and, to some extent, from himself. Unsurprisingly, his thoughts turned towards Ophelia and how he knew her.


I’m sure Ophelia doesn’t know this, he thought, or maybe she just doesn’t care, but we’ve gone to school together for a while now. Since middle school, in fact. Back then, things were so different. I was dating Veronica, or maybe Sawyer, or maybe both at the same time. And Ophelia… well, back then, I was like everyone else. I thought she was just this weird chick who would probably end up shooting half the school out of insanity. I didn’t think much of her; she was the strange girl in my English class who wore all black, hung out with Little Miss Bad Temper-- Mae-- and dated guys who looked like they’d fallen into a tub of flour and then got punched in the eyes. Why would the star of the basketball team ever go for that, right?


But a few years ago, something changed. She was never perpetually cheerful, but she became quieter, angrier. She started getting into fights outside of school. Still, it seemed like there was still a shred of the old Ophelia in there, the side that she only showed to a few select people. The side that Emily probably knows. She wasn’t like the others from her group. It was like she had something to be genuinely angry about, whatever it was. The other goth kids’ complaints about being treated differently because of their clothing and their dislike of the “normal” people seemed even more childish, in comparison.

I remember this one time, she dropped a pencil in class, and I picked it up. When I went to hand it to her, she accidentally touched my hand, and her reaction… she yanked her hand away so fast, you’d think she’d had been burned. And the look on her face. She looked like she’d stuck her hand in a pile of worms. I had to actually set the pencil on her desk, just because she wouldn’t-- or couldn’t-- bring herself to potentially touch my hand again.

AJ turned the water off and stepped out of the shower. As he toweled off, he thought, I wonder what could have caused her to act like that.


Jade looked around the nearly-empty coffee shop and spotted Valo staring fixedly at the monitor of her laptop. She noted with some amusement that Valo had a slight smile on her face and was blushing a great deal. Jade chuckled softly to herself as she walked over and sat down at the table, then tapped Valo’s shoulder.

Valo jumped a bit, startled. “Jade! Hi! I didn’t see you come in,” she gasped out.

Jade grinned and remarked, “Based on the expression on your face, there’s only a few things you could have been watching. It was either a video with Ville Valo in it, a game playthrough with the person playing the game being male and having a European accent, a Toki-centric episode of Metalocalypse, or an episode of CSI.”

“Good guess. It’s Metalocalypse. How’d you know?” Valo replied.

Jade snickered and said, “Because you have a thing for musicians, guys with European accents, guys with long hair, and really smart guys. You always get this really goofy expression when you see anything related to those things.”

“You know me better than most people do,” Valo admitted. “So, what’s up with you?”

Jade slumped a little and muttered, “I hate when people play Cupid.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ophelia’s trying to hook me up with her friend Graham.”

“So?” Valo replied. “What’s the problem?”

“Other than he’s been married and divorced already?”

“Really? How old is he?”

“Uh… twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven. Apparently, it was one of those ‘married right out of high school’ things that didn’t go well.”

Valo groaned. “See, and this is why I am against people marrying super-young,” she complained. “Can’t even take care of themselves, most of the time, much less handle a marriage and possible kids. I wish my family would understand that. I kid you not, in my family, if you’re twenty-five, single, and have no kids, you don’t count.”

“Enough about your problems, Valo.”

“Sorry. Look, does the guy seem nice?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Jade said slowly.

“Do you guys have anything in common?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me guess, you didn’t give him a chance.”

“Yeah,” Jade admitted.

“Look, Jade, go for it. Get to know him. It’s not like you’re going to marry him or anything. Just, you know, get to be friends. I mean, you and Mark aren’t a couple, right?”

“Right…”

“I hate when people interfere with my love life, too--”

“--Valo, you are dating a guy who’s, what… eight, nine, ten years older than you? No offense, but you realize that he probably just--”

“Just what? Just likes me because I’m young?”

“It’s a possibility. I‘m just saying, you might not be the best person to be giving me relationship advice.”

Valo shut her laptop and packed it into her bag. “Look, Jade, you’re being pretty catty right now. I haven’t done anything wrong to you, so you have no reason to be ticked at me. I think you’re taking your anger out on me. So, with that, I am going to leave you here. If you’re going to be grouchy, you can sit here and handle things yourself.”

“Fine, maybe I will,” Jade replied sharply.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Valo slung her bag over her shoulder and strode out. Jade sighed and muttered, “I really need to keep my mouth shut.”