I didn't know what to think of our ecounter in the locker room. I didn't even know what to call it. Encounter? Meeting? Rescue? Nevertheless hatever it had been, it completely changed my look on Blaine. For about a month I only saw him twice, in the only class we had together, gym and religious studies. I was, as Dougman had put it, a geek, and spent most of my time in the science lab, and in the math block. Like Blaine, I preferred to be away from the social events that people liked to call lunch and other "lessons". Our school wasn't the best in the county, it wasn't the worst but it was nothing to brag about. It was average. There were plenty of rich kids in our school, only becasue we were the closest school in New York City to 5th Avenue. I wasn't a rich kid. If you were a rich kid, people knew. It wasn't exactly something you could hide. My mom was rich, we used to live in a big apartment on Main, but then she died, my Dad couldn't keep up with the rent, so we had to move out. Our lives had changed a lot since when I was five, when my mother had dies of terminal breast cancer. I like to believe it was quick and painless..she was so drugged up by the end of that long year, I doubt she felt anything when she finally passed away at some hour of the early morning on Thanksgiving Day. My father had returned home to the news that my Mother had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer put a downer on the fact that he had just helped win the war. He had done the best he could to make sure I got through the stage easily, telling me 'Mommy's gone to a much better place now', which was probably true. America at that time was a terrible place to live. I was so young I coped, but I did know what was going on- it took me about six months after she died before I finally returned to my own bed. Despite the 'tragedy' as some would have called it, that I went through in the fifth year of my life, it didn't affect my ability to love- unlike what most therapists will say nowadays.
Blaine walked in to English about a month later, he had changed noticeably in that short time that had passed since our first encounter. He was wearing a black blazer, which I had never seen anyone wear before in school, black boots, the same denim shorts and a plain white t shirt. It wasn't so much to do with his style as it was to do with his walk. It was far less upbeat than what I had previously, and adapted in my head to seeing.