Sometimes Life Is Funny- Chapter 1

*I started this story because it's based on true event that are happening right now in my life. All names have been changed to protect the identity of those portrayed (Wow, that sounded official, didn't it? )*
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Sometimes life is funny. Sometimes, you don’t really see things that are sitting right in front of you, shouting, “Hey! Look at me! Understand me!” But humanity can be pretty stupid at times, especially when it comes to stories of the heart. This story is one such case.

Piper had always been a little different from the other girls. She never played with Barbie dolls or kitchen sets. She read comic books and watched karate movies. She didn’t primp and fool with her hair in the bathroom for an hour while deciding what skirt she would wear that day with her designer blouse. Piper wore jeans and a t-shirt, tying her hair back as she ran outside to play baseball. She never got invited to parties or socialized with the other girls. If she was talking to anyone at all, it was to one of the boys about which rock band was the best or who was going to win the World Series. She never asked anyone out, and no one ever asked her out, but it didn’t matter to her, the boys were fine as friends to her, really nothing more than that. She really didn’t care if she never went out on a date in her whole life, not even when she entered high school and everyone had a boyfriend. No, Piper didn’t care; there just wasn’t a guy she thought would work out as a good boyfriend for her. Although sometimes, only sometimes, she wondered if there was a guy out there like that, but soon pushed it out of her mind. No, it would never happen, the guys were her friends, and that was how it was always going to be.
* *
Bam! Piper Hallow’s books fell on top of her desk, making it quiver under the weight.

“Ugh!” she exclaimed, slumping into her chair and throwing her head back. “I hate Mondays!”

“Ya’ aren’t the only one,” someone else said.

“Hey, Ben,” she said to the boy at the front of the room. “Whadd’ you do this weekend?”

“Nothin’ much. Beat Enter the Matrix for the third time though. You do anything?”

“Nope.”

Benjamin Roberts was one of Piper’s guy friends. Now both in their junior year, they had met the previous year in their sophomore English class when Ben and his friend, Willis, had been having a discussion about their favorite characters in Dragonball Z, a popular Japanese animation show. Surprised at her great interest in the show, and infinite knowledge about it, Ben had been speaking to Piper ever since about many other things they shared interests in.

“Class, please take your seats,” their theology teacher, Miss Carmen, said loudly above the din of noise that had filled the classroom. “Now, are there any intentions?”

A few students voice something they wished to pray for, the class then stood, said the Our Father, and then sat down once again, pulling out binders and notebooks from beneath their desks as Miss Carmen turned on the overhead and lay a sheet of notes on top.

“Now, we’ll start from where we left off on Friday. As I was saying before the bell rang, God created humanity so that we may ultimately share in His grace in Heaven, and…”

Miss Carmen’s words trailed off in Ben’s mind, just as they did almost everyday. He knew he probably should have been paying attention (this was bound to be on the test next week) but couldn’t help his thoughts from wandering to more interesting matters. Like Anya Harlem, the junior girl with long blond hair at locker 163. Anya was one of the only girl friends Piper had that Ben knew of.

Anya was slim and pretty, her bright blue eyes always peering out through a pair of round glasses. And not only was she good-looking, but she was smart too. He had asked for her help more than once in the subjects they had together. Although she and Piper were friends, good friends actually, there were differences between them, some of them very big. Piper got along with most of the boys. She liked to read comic books, especially Japanese manga, and discuss video games. Ben didn’t believe he’d ever seen her wearing a skirt, even on Mass days in their high school. Her usual attire was a pair of zip-off cargos, the legitimate white or blue collared shirt of the school’s dress code, and a pair of sneakers. Anya was more girly but not excessively so. She wore pants, just like Piper did, but would always wear a skirt on the Mass days. She also wore make-up; never as much as the other girls, but usually a bit of eyeliner and lipstick. On no account had Ben seen so much as a smudge of lip gloss or blush across Piper’s face, although he didn’t think it mattered. Despite the fact that her complexion was paler than any of the other girls, it was still dotted with freckles, and, besides, Ben figured she just wouldn’t look like Piper if she put anything her face.

“Mister Roberts, would you kindly join us from that little dream world of yours?”

He was unexpectedly roused from his daydreams of Anya Harlem as Miss Carmen’s voice pierced through the cloudy silence that had enveloped him.

“Huh?” he said quickly, his chin springing from the heel of his palm, where it had comfortably been resting. He could hear snickers coming from behind him.

“Well, now that Mr. Roberts has joined us again, I’d like you all to complete the handout you received last Thursday, both sides due tomorrow.”

With a sigh, Ben flipped through his binder to the worksheet in his homework section that he had not yet begun to work on. As he pulled a pen from his pocket and began to write down his name at the top of the paper, something collided with the side of his head and a small piece of folded notebook paper fell onto his desktop. After making sure that Miss Carmen wasn’t looking, he unfolded it and saw that it was a note.

'You know, it’s probably not a good idea to zone out when you sit in the very front of your row.'

Ben recognized the untidy scrawl that the message was written in to be Piper’s. She was the only girl he knew whose handwriting wasn’t neat and tidy. Turning around in his desk, he looked back to where she sat in the second to last seat on the first row, three rows away from his. She met his gaze and grinned in a slightly teasing way. Ben lowered his eyebrows, as if in anger, but grinned back.

“I wasn’t zoning out,” he said as he walked up to her desk when class was over.

“Oh yeah?” she asked, fishing a book from the wire shelf beneath her desk. “Then what were you doing?”

“Daydreaming,” he answered.

“It’s the same thing!” she laughed, heading out into the hall with him.

“Is not, I drool when I zone out,” he retorted.

Piper snorted and burst out laughing again, dropping her Bible in the process.

“Very funny, smart-aleck,” she said, bending down to pick up the book. “Well, I’ve gotta’ get to art class. See you later!”

“See ya’, Piper.”

She turned and went over to her locker, throwing her theology books in and pulling her art notebook out. As she walked away, Anya Harlem suddenly stepped from the crowd entering the hallway to meet her friend. Ben felt his heart give a hard thump as Anya pulled a loose strand of hair behind her ear. After speaking for a few moments, Piper continued around the corner to get to the art wing. Anya, on the other hand, was coming his way.

“Um, hey, Anya,” Ben said as she passed.

“Hi, Ben,” she said with a small smile, and continued on to her locker.

“Argh!” he exclaimed in irritation. “Is that the best thing I can think of, ‘Hey, Anya?’ Urgh!” he whipped around and began to smack his forehead against a nearby locker. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
* *
Ben was still smacking his head in fourth period, only now it was against the lunch table in the cafeteria.

“Dude, stop making such a big deal about it. You talked to her, didn’t you?” said his best friend, Willis Kamen.

“Yeah,” Ben answered, his voice muffled as he spoke into the table.

“Then stop worryin’! Look, I don’t get what the big deal is. You go and stand with her and Piper and Kennedy after school to talk don’t ya’?”

“Yeah, well, I guess, but it’s usually just Piper and Kennedy I end up talking to. Anya just doesn’t like get stuff like anime and video games. Sometimes she just walks away with one of her other friends, especially when we talk about swords and stuff.”

“Dude, then quit bringing the subject up when she’s around,” said another guy, Carl Forlon.

“But I can’t help it! Mark’s always bringing these awesome weapon magazines so he can give the old issues to Piper. I don’t like it when Anya walks away, but I want to check out the magazines before Piper’s mom picks her up. Man, I just don’t know what to do.”

“Just ask her out already,” Willis sighed in exasperation.

“Are you crazy!? She’d never go out with me!”

“Then how come you keep obsessing about her?”

“I do not obsess!”

“Yes you do,” everyone sitting around the table said at the same time.

“Well, I… Ugh! I don’t know!” Ben let his forehead fall to the table again with a loud smack that rattled the trays on top.

“Dude, cut it out!” cried Philip Cross, steadying his soda can before it fell. “I get that you’re irritated, but quit taking it out on the table, it’s unstable enough.”

Ben pulled his head dejectedly from the table and looked over to a rectangular table in the corner across from them. There, Anya sat with Piper and two of their other friends; Mark Kennedy, a tall gangly boy with brown hair and glasses, and Sandra Hendell, the second of Piper’s three girl friends who played flute and piccolo in the school band along with Piper, who was a cymbal player. All four of them laughed as Mark obviously made some sort of joke. Piper suddenly grabbed her napkin and pressed it against her mouth, and Ben saw water spurting out from under it, covering her face and shirt. This sent Sandra and Mark into huge gales of laughter, while Anya continued to giggle. Mark was now laughing so hard that he was slapping the table with his hand, enticing Piper to give him a kick, which she did after wiping her glasses off. He watched as Anya continued to smile and put another piece of hair behind her ear as she bit into her apple.

“Can’t say I blame ya’ though, buddy,” Willis said. “Anya sure is cute.”

“And smart,” continued Philip.

“And nice,” added Carl.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it already.”

“Hey, I know!” said the last person that was sitting at their table, a boy named Kurt Wilson. “Go out with Piper!”

“Piper!?” they all exclaimed.

All necks craned to look at the corner table again, where Sandra was now throwing wads of her napkin at Mark, who in turn chucked them at Piper’s head. She reached across the table and punched him in the chest. They all spun back around and burst into hysterical roars of laughter.

“Yeah, real funny there, Kurt!” Philip laughed. “Ask Piper Hallow out, what a riot!”

“Yeah, I mean, come on, dude. Piper’s cool and all, but she’s like one of the guys, not someone you ask out,” said Carl.

“Hey,” Willis added, his voice still quivering with laughter, “could you imagine Piper wearing a dress?”

There was a very brief moment of silence, and then they burst out laughing again.

“Hallow in a dress!?” hooted Kurt. “Yeah, that’ll be the day!”

Ben laughed right along with the others. Yes, it would certainly be a shock to see Piper Hallow wearing a dress, but, now that he thought about it, it wouldn’t be strange, He tried to think of what sort of dress she would ever wear. Nothing flashy or skimpy of course, maybe something simply, a green one with spaghetti straps. Yeah, that seemed like it would be right on her. With a jolt, Ben shook his head furiously. What was he thinking? He knew Piper wasn’t like that, so why was he pondering the type of dress she would wear?

“Hey, Kamen,” a new voice said.

“Huh?”

Willis and the others turned around to find Mark Kennedy standing behind their table. He held out a thick comic book with the words Shonen Jump printed across the front.

“Piper told me to give this back to you. She says she appreciates it,” Mark said, setting the book into Willis’s hands.

They all looked over to Piper, who waved with a smile. Willis waved back and they turned around again.

“Thanks,” Willis said to Mark, but Mark wasn’t paying attention to him. He was staring straight at Ben.

“What?” Ben asked, feeling slightly apprehensive.

“Quit staring at Anya,” he said, giving Ben a dark look. “Try anything dumb and you’re going to regret it.”

Ben gulped as Mark turned and walked back to his own table, where Sandra, Anya, and Piper were gathering their books and getting ready to leave the cafeteria.

“What was that about?” Ben said in a slightly high-pitched voice.

“What, you don’t know?” asked Carl, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

“Know what?”

“After Anya’s first boyfriend, you know, Rich McGowam, that guy who’s in the Choir with her, she and Kennedy were going out for a while, but she broke it off and now they’re just supposed to be friends.”

“So, if they’re just friends, why did he react like that?”

“I said supposed to be,” Carl corrected.

“Yeah,” Philip said with a nod, “Mark didn’t want to break it off. He still wants to go out with her, even though she won’t, so he’s pretty edgy about other guys around her.”

“But he never seems to mind after school.”

“Well, Anya walks off a lot, doesn’t she? And Piper’s always there.”

“Yeah, I guess Piper would probably smack him in the head if he started in on me,” Ben said, leaning back in his chair. “Well, that’s just great.”

“Maybe you should just give up now, man,” said Willis. “Mark’s a pretty tough guy.”

“Kennedy doesn’t scare me,” answered Ben, although that wasn’t true.

“Well, if you wanna’ take the risk, you go right ahead, pal,” Willis shrugged.

The bell rang, ending the lunch period. With a sigh, Ben stood up, threw his trash away, and left the cafeteria to head for Algebra.