Chapter 12: This Girl

Jason Chapter 12: This Girl

 OK, time out. Holy shit, that was tiring. After all that fantasy crap, I think now might be a good time to talk about something a bit more grounded toward reality. To be more specific, I'll be talking about my crush/friend (well, I guess we don't even really have a choice but to listen. I mean, it's not like the readers can choose what to read in this book. Unless they skip the chapter altogether, that is. Anyway, carry on).
So first things first: let's talk about HOW the fuck I met my crush/friend. I first met her during the induction programme into my new school. Back in those days, I wasn't ready to enter a new school, mainly because the school I used to go to was so much better (both in terms of sociability and academic expectations). Just so you can get a clue of how fucking difficult it was for me to adapt to a new school, below is a table showing the differences between my old and new school (at first glance).

SOMEHOW PUT IN THE TABLE HERE

Judging from the information provided by the information above, I think that I've made it pretty goddamn obvious that moving schools wasn't exactly the most thrilling event I was looking forward to doing at the time. Alas, when your parents tell you to do something, you do it regardless of whether you like it or not. I mean, it's not like you're even capable of doing anything to stop that shit anyway. As a wise man once said (just so you guys know, the “wise man” that Jason is referring to right now is himself, because apparently his quotes are so goddamn wise that they might as well be uttered from the mouth of motherfuckin' CONFUCIUS, or so he claims...), there are no brakes (or seatbelts, on that note) on the rollercoaster of life. So if you don't hold on tight, life doesn't give a flying fuck whether you're prepared for an upcoming loop-de-loop or not; it just resumes the ride, and whether or not you're still inside your car after the rollercoaster had gone through the loop is none of life's fucking business. For all it cares, you might as well have faceplanted your pretty little noggin into the ground (killing you in the process, obviously. Think about it: if you leave the rollercoaster of LIFE, you automatically DIE. The logic is unquestionable), and the rollercoaster will still be going on its merry way.
My point is, my fate to move schools was pretty much sealed the second my parents decided that I should move, so I just had to grin and bear it.
The moment I set foot in my new school, I already had this feeling that I would have difficulty fitting in (both socially and academically), and boy, was I right (to this day, I'm STILL awkward as fuck, despite numerous attempts to “mingle with the community”, as some people would say. Thankfully, there ARE some people I feel comfortable speaking to from time to time, although it DID take quite a bit of time for me to realize that I wasn't the only freak in the school). The induction programme my new school had arranged was supposed to help me introduce myself other (victims) students, and although the programme DID succeed in its main purpose (introducing students to their compatriots), the friendships I had with the people I met during the induction programme only lasted for several days, tops. The moment school had ACTUALLY started, the vast majority of the people I knew during the first few days at school started treating me as if we never even met and didn't know shit about me, whereas several others would only recognize me and greet me from time to time without feeling the need to sit down and chat with me to catch up on things (I mean, that's what NORMAL people do with the friends they meet on their first days of school, right? Right? Ah, forget it. It's not like you can answer through the pages of this book or some shit). As a matter of fact,the only people who had maintained a relatively healthy relationship with me ever since my first few days at school had at least one of the following traits:

They speak in the same language as I do.
They are was as big a fuck-up as I was in terms of academic achievement (sometimes goes together with #1)
They need help with their English skills.
They help me with my work.
I'm head over heels for them (only applies to one person so far).

But enough about the school. After all, I promised you guys that I was gonna talk (hold on a sec, how can you even SPEAK here? Last I checked, you were writing a BOOK) about my crush/friend ever since the start of this chapter, so let's just get right into it. So long story short, the time I've had in my new school is somewhat...surreal. There is simply no other word for it; I've had shit happen to me (both good and bad) during my time in school, and if I was given the opportunity to leave, I would probably hesitate to consider the consequences of me departing from the school, and that's thanks to a one girl, who continues helping me undergo the perils of school life to this very day.
Since I feel uncomfortable using her actual name, I'm gonna refer to my crush/friend's as “Anna” from this point on (besides, I'd appreciate it if I could call her something other than “my crush/friend”. After all, it is MY book...). I still remember the moment I met her as clear as if it was yesterday. I first laid eyes on Anna during this one moment in the induction programme where two groups of students had to get together in order to discuss some sort of community and service activity. We both belonged in different groups (or “divisions”, as the school called it), and the discussion about the community and service activity required both divisions to gather in a circle (just an FYI, we held our discussion whilst sitting in a goddamn PARKING LOT, out of all places. But hey, it could've been worse. Much, MUCH worse) so that we could share our ideas about the activity to everyone else with ease.
Anna was sitting in front of me, and the more both divisions began to talk about topics that became increasingly irrelevant to the original discussion, the more she joined in on the conversation. Her participation in the discussion was what made her strike me as the sociable type (unlike yours truly, obviously), but the thought of Anna and I ever becoming close friends had never occurred to me at the time. In fact, I somewhat disliked her at first due to my impression of her as one of those girls whose sole purpose in life is to waltz around the school talking about feminine bullshit (no offense, women who might be reading this book. I know the chances are slim, but I apologize nevertheless. As for the Feminazis who might be reading this, go suck a big, hairy dick) with their friends and gossip about some girl's horrendous hairdo.
Put simply, I first thought of Anna as one of those stereotypical teenage girls you see in those high school dramas (you know, the ones that go, “OMG, those shoes are so LIT!” and shit like that. I believe “valley girl” is the appropriate term in this certain context, or as I like to call it, “basic bitch”), and didn't think much of her at first. She didn't look like the type of girl a guy like me would be head over heels for; as a matter of fact (forgive me if the following analogy may sound rather crude, but here we go anyway...), Anna's appearance resembled that of a housemaid's, which slightly brought out a classist side of me that I never even KNEW existed (my classist side resurged once again later on in the school year during a event that required all students to clean up campus grounds. Not only her physical appearance, but the wardrobe she had on at the time was the icing on the maid cake).
However, all that shit changed on my first day of school. Long story short: by the end of my first day, I've narrowed down my crush to three candidates:
Number one: a rather short, light-skinned brunette who was about one grade (or two, I never bothered to check) above mine (let's just call her “Helen” from this point on so that I don't have to refer to her as “rather short, light-skinned brunette” all the time) As a matter of fact, the only reason I ever cared to join the school's art club was because Helen was part of the committe who was in charge of promoting the club.
Alas, Helen already had a beau, meaning I had to back off or suffer the wrath of her (not-so) sweetheart. And even if she WAS single, I'd probably have to fight my way through about fifteen of her OTHER admirers (who are most likely superior in terms of aesthetic quality AND personality. ME, on the other hand? I'm a Chinese midget with an accelerated growth spurt whose personality is as rich as a hobo's). Therefore, Helen was officially off the list of candidates. The funny thing is, I STILL haven't figured out her name UNTIL THIS FUCKING DAY. Not that it even matters now, but still...
Second in line was a light-skinned, bespectacled girl in my class who is about my height (to simplify things, let's just refer to her using the pseudonym “Marsha” before I start inventing nonsensical words to describe the girl). I met Marsha for the first time during my first day at school, and the more time I spent observing her, the more I noticed Marsha's many resemblances to my old crush (with the exception of stellar English skills, slim frame, her height and slightly sociopathic personality. By the way, my ex-crush's alias is gonna be “Ruth” from this point on). This struck me as both a good and bad thing.
Good? Her appearance reminded me of Ruth, which gave me a feeling of comfort due to the fact that I haven't changed much in terms of my standards for a suitable girlfriend. Bad? She reminded me of my Ruth, which brought back some REALLY painful memories of how she ignored the everloving hell outta me back in secondary school. Simply put, Marsha brought me a great deal of nostalgia, both in a good way and a very, VERY bad way. Thankfully, I didn't fuck up my relationship with her as badly as I did with my ex-crush, and that's saying A LOT. Unfortunately, I never really managed to hit it off with Marsha, mainly due to her preference of hanging around in cliques as opposed to my solitary nature, which often ended up in me isolating from the rest of my “friends”.
Just so you can better understand my situation, allow me to share with you guys a little analogy: according to MY standards, being someone's classmate doesn't mean you automatically merit to be their best buddy or some shit, so if there's ONE THING I avoid doing with a stranger at school, it's sitting with them at their table. Why? Because I regard sitting at strangers' tables as an invasion of their privacy, that's why. If I was sitting at a table all by myself and got disturbed by some random dude who wants to sit down, I'd let the fucker sit down, yes, but I'd honestly VERY MUCH prefer said dude to just fuck off and lounge on some other table that ISN'T mine (then again, it's not like I even have the balls to tell them to fuck off anyway; that's called being an asshole).
And as for Marsha, well, she was the kind of girl who'd just dive headfirst into a conversation with occupants of some random table in the cafeteria, and she wouldn't have to worry about finding shit to talk about, mainly because the occupants of that table would already know all about her through and through. On the other hand, I don't actually HAVE a group that I could “hang out with”; at most, I'd stick around a bunch of close friends who I ACTUALLY GIVE A SHIT ABOUT. So even if we DID somehow manage to hit it off, this part of her (completely reasonable and perfectly normal) personality would most likely become the cause of our break-up. I can see it now: two weeks after becoming a couple, I would dump Marsha's (allegedly) unfaithful ass on the grounds of making me feel envious as fuck after “busting” her for speaking with that one really popular, super-buff badminton player in the gym the other day (yes, this guy has a jealousy problem. No, he probably ain't gonna be fixing it anytime soon). Point is, the social barrier is gonna be a problem for the both of us, and my jealousy issue is gonna do anything BUT help smoothen things out.
Then there's the language barrier (yes, as if being socially inept wasn't enough bullshit for me to put up with. Life is beautiful that way). I've been given several opportunities to speak with Marsha, and every single said opportunity has led me to one glaringly obvious conclusion: I can't speak in fluent Indonesian to save my goddamn LIFE. I realized this during the class's very first history lesson, where Marsha and a few other members of the class were kicked out of the lesson for forgetting to bring our history textbooks. I sat near Marsha in an attempt to engage her in a friendly conversation, but not before she hit me with this dumbfounding question (which is translated into English for clarity's sake):
“Where's your history textbook, Jason?”
The second she said that, I literally froze. My mind knew the answer to Marsha's question, but I wasn't able to translate my answer into Indonesian in time for me to respond to Marsha's question. You know how most people have trouble speaking to their crush because they can't find the correct words to say to them? For ME, this wasn't something that I had to worry about at the time. Instead, I had to worry about answering in the language of my people, which I was hopeless at (I believe “hopeless” is somewhat of an understatement, but I hope it'll suffice to describe the pain I feel when I'm being forced to speak in Indonesian). Ever since that moment, I decided to call off the quest to impress Marsha.
Last but not least, there was the main gal herself, Anna. After our discussion at the parking lot, Anna and I soon found ourselves in the same class. I first took an interest to Anna after witnessing her speak fluent English with a socially challenged classmate. It didn't take me long to realize that the girl was the same one that was part of our group during the induction day, which came as somewhat of a surprise to me. Who would've ever thought that a chatterbox like her would be so kind and caring to her less capable compatriots?
I still remember the very first genuine conversation (and the ONLY one we ever had, come to think about it. Any attempts to converse with Anna from that point forward have ended in either me running out of shit to say or Anna promptly ditching my ass before I'm able to come up with something else to talk about while I'm with her. Yeah, I'm really THAT bad) Anna and I had. I was passing the canteen on my way to the classroom, where I saw Anna sitting down on a bench with her chemistry books open to study for an upcoming chemistry quiz.
During that point in my life, I still haven't developed a yandere-ish infatuation with Anna yet, so I was able to approach her without having my heart race as fast as a F1 racecar. I sat down beside her and accompanied her studying, We managed to cover a great amount of the material together, and Anna even walked with me to the classroom shortly after we had completed our studying session. On the way to the classroom, we discussed the difficulties of the academic system, and parted ways once we reached the classroom.
A few weeks after our chemistry studying session, I showed Anna a diary I had been working on during my time at school (which I had been writing during lessons, which basically meant that I spent almost every waking moment in school working NOT on my academic shit, but instead on my diary. I'm a lazy asshole that way), and she told me something along the lines of “you're gonna be a famous writer someday” (not to brag, of course...). She was also one of the few people who rubbed my hairless head the very first time I went bald (in the new school. I've already went bald about a year ago in my previous school). Again, this was ALSO back when I wasn't head over heels for her ass (well, not JUST her ass, but you get what I'm trying to say here), so I didn't feel as if my legs had turned into jelly whenever Anna spoke to (or touched, and certainly NOT IN THAT WAY) me; I was still in a phase in which I regarded her as a friend, someone whom I could speak to as a regular human fucking being.
Cut to about a week (or two, I'm not sure; my memory's shit) later, about one night before a chemistry test. Remember that one chemistry quiz I had been talking about? Well, being the inept fuck that I was, I naturally got a low grade on the quiz. Like, “DIDN'T FUCKING PASS”-level low grade (I'm not sure why the hell I even capitalized all three words in the quotation, but hey, what's done is done). Fuck it, I'll just be straight up with you guys and say that I flunked. There (Jesus Christ, why the fuck didn't you just say that like, about two or three sentences ago? Coulda saved us a few ten words, amigo. Speaking of efficiently using words, I should probably stop hogging so much words that could be better used to tell the story more easily. GO HYPOCRISY!).
Thankfully, the quiz wasn't my chemistry grade's primary harbinger; that would be the TEST. In simpler terms, this meant that I still had a small chance of showing my chemistry teacher that I wasn't a COMPLETELY useless human being, which I had to prove by getting a decent grade in this test. The test took place several weeks after the quiz, meaning that I had a reasonable amount of time to study all the shit I needed to study. I had a firm understanding of the topics that were going to be discussed in the test, but that didn't mean that my studying experience was completely stress-free; for someone like me, understanding test material through and through meant revising my lesson notes, CONSTANTLY.
As a result of my incessant studying, I grew more and more worried about the upcoming test and that I would do shittily on it. My stress levels reached an all-time high during a study session at home a night before the test. I had my face buried deep inside my chemistry notebook, and my sister was helping me memorize the names and formulae of various chemical elements and compounds. Nevertheless, I was still steadily shitting myself over the impending assignment (human nature. Gotta love that sonuvabitch, eh? Unforgiving, ungrateful, narcissistic, what more could you want in a typical human being?).
Yearning to vent some of my stress (no, not by yelling, but instead by asking someone for advice. I'm not ENTIRELY sociopathic...), I remembered Anna and that one time she spoke to a socially awkward classmate, which confirmed her capability to speak English (AKA The only fucking language that I feel comfortable speaking in whereas approximately 90% of the school community doesn't). Realizing that someone like Anna might be capable of helping me with my dilemma, I contacted the girl via a messaging app (which shall remain anonymous, just like almost everything else in this book that has any correlation to real life. Well, except for the little references that I scatter here and there throughout the book) and informed her about my issue.
I sent my message in the evening, and received my reply as nighttime drew near. I remember little of what we had discussed during that night. However, I DO remember for a fact that that night, I realized how much of a great and helpful friend Anna might turn out to be, provided that she's given enough time to prove herself. Long story short (and it's not even like I remember much of the story anyway, so I guess the base story is already short as hell all by itself), I told her about my difficulties in studying for the test and overall issues about managing stress, and she gave me several tips on how to deal with both. After hearing what she had to say, I became a lot more calm and reserved for the upcoming task, which I worked my ass off for that night.
Amazingly enough, the test wasn't as tough as it was all cracked up to be, and with a little tenacious studying, I was able to conquer the perils of the assignment and get A PERFECT FUCKING SCORE on the test. The teacher congratulated me on a job well done (which is a rarity coming from a dude like me, to say the least. Having me work hard for an assignment I give zero shits about is quite a legendary feat, in the least sense of the word), and so did the rest of the class (footnote: if there's something ELSE that I like about my new school, it's that the community is much more accepting than in other schools. Shout-out to you, people in my latest school. You rock in that certain aspect).
A few weeks later, I went through pretty much the exact same process, under the exact same circumstances: chemistry test, brutally disciplined studying process (is that even an appropriate adjective combination? Is “adjective combination” even an appropriate adjective combination? I'd better stop before I start undergoing a grammar crisis. In that case, forget everything I just wrote in this bracket). Once again, my effort to ACTUALLY FUCKING STUDY for the test earned me a phenomenal score (but THIS time, I got a 99% score instead of a perfect grade like I did in the last one).
After I had received news of my nigh-perfect test grade, I was bursting with pride (being the shy, introverted fuck that I am, I kept the sensation of euphoria to myself, of course) and gratefulness for the rest of the day. Later on that evening, I fired up my phone and told Anna about my consecutive “good grade” streak in chemistry, and she congratulated me for my recent improvement and gave me a few more tips on how to maintain my healthy studying habit and apply it to other subjects (I probably shoulda told you guys about this sooner: just because Jason was a boss at chemistry didn't mean he amounted to anything when it came to just about every other subject. Yeah, he's THAT bad. Plus, he's a funny guy that way). I thanked her for sticking with me throughout the entire process, and from that point on, Anna had officially earned the title of “Jason's impromptu go-to counselor for any problems that he might have, whether she wants to listen to said problems or not” (that title came off a tad more vulgar than I intended it to be, but I guess it'll have to do).
From that day on, I've been trying my best to get on Anna's good graces, to the point where I (poorly attempt to) actively help her in every single aspect of her life, which Anna has been describing with words ranging from “kind of creepy” to “helpful” (the former adjective being her impression of me during the first few days of school, and the latter adjective being what she eventually saw me as after a few months into our surreal relationship). Actually, fuck the subtlety: I'm just gonna be straight up with you guys and tell you the truth: the deeper we went into our relationship, the more and more infatuated I became with her, to the point where I actually organized an overly complicated birthday party for her and gave her study notes for subjects she wasn't able to participate in (among many other things).
I eventually ended up asking Anna out, to which she rejected (unsurprisingly, considering the fact that I wasn't exactly her closest friend and that she liked someone completely different). Oddly, instead of feeling a sensation of sinking despair, I felt a sensation of freedom wash over me. I felt as if there were no more secrets between Anna and I. Or maybe it was because the LAST TIME I confessed my love for a crush of mine, she gave me the silent treatment until...today. Yeah, I suppose my fate IS pretty lax when you compare it to Anna's reaction, isn't it? Either way, I was grateful not to have my ass COMPLETELY cooked.
I've got many more tales to tell about my exploits with Anna (half of 'em involve me fantasizing about banging her. Big surprise), but I'm afraid we'll have to talk about it some other time, because I've run outta space for this chapter. Some other time, maybe. Plus, I'm sick of talking about the same thing for about 4000+ pages. It's time to get back into the story. Until then, amigos.