Holly let her friends talk her into going to the cliffs with them, why she let them do it she wasn’t sure. Maybe it was to get away from her parents for the evening or maybe it was because she was hoping that he would be there and she’d at least get to see him again. Most of the time at school Holly found herself avoiding him so as not to seem weird.
Especially since, oddly, during school hours he looked and dressed totally different than he did when she’d see him out on the street. It was a bit of a mental run around really. There were days she’d leave school to go to her job and he’d be wearing one thing and twenty minutes later he was in her coffee shop wearing something else without a lot of time to change or buy something new….or really having a reason to change.
But the oddities of her classmate’s behavior were way above her paygrade. If it wasn’t, she’d have some sort of knowledge on everyone and she had enough issues within her own family without adding other people’s. However, she couldn’t help the truth behind wanting to know with him. It was something weird she’d noticed a few times and then it just became weirder and weirder because it was well…every day.
However, he left her mind when her friends picked her up and they spent the drive talking about the usual, boys in their school, classwork, teachers they hated or that were giving them a hard time, shopping and college things they were looking into. The usual things teenagers talk about. Holly sat back for the most part and listened, but she was having fun, and there was always a bonus with getting extra time out with her friends at night. Going out with her friends that her parents approved of was the only reason she was allowed out this late. Small price to pay to hang out with the ‘it’ girls at her school.
When they parked, Holly got out, smiling as a group she usually hung out with came over. She slowly made her way away from the group she’d come with to see a few of her other friends that were hanging out away from the cars. “I know, the warden only let me out because I came with them. Otherwise you know she would have put a lock on my door to ensure I was there studying to get into a good school to make them proud or something.” Holly understood her parent’s desire for her to do well, she wanted to as well. But even with the SATs pending, there was only so much she could do that she hadn’t already to ensure that she got into a good University and not just ‘some community college’ as her parents referred to it. Short of maybe selling her first born, she was at her limit.
Momentarily, Holly looked away from her group of friends toward the upper section of the cliffs and scanned the crowd. It definitely looked like the kids from the public school – but there he was. Why was Regan up there instead of down with the rest of them? She didn’t realize that he had public school friends, not that she minded, it was really cool that he was clearly not as stuck up as a lot of people in their school. Happy that he seemed to notice her too, Holly waved at him but was tugged off by her friends to join a group of them down by their own bonfire, before she could actually go and talk to him.
It took a little bit, but finally she was able to sneak away from her friends and when she did, she made her way up the hill. She walked past a group of kids who stared at her and honestly it was really weird. Had they never seen a person in a dress before? Trying to brush off the weird vibes she got, she walked up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Hi,” Holly said, trying to keep her nervousness to herself. “What are you doing up here, silly? Why aren’t you hanging out with us down there?”