Adventures of the Puberties... part 2!

So last we left Dalziel with Amadea sitting alone on the bus… well not really, but we’ll just say he did…

Now the weekend progressed without occurrence. Dalziel gladly attended his conference, and was having such a good time that he had forgotten about the whole stressful, wonderful ordeal that had occurred on the bus. All was going along fine in Dalziel’s world until the conference came to an end, and Dalziel had to return to school.

He was suddenly slapped in the face with the realization of what would happen in school. There would be the awkward silences that he knew he could not alleviate with his minimal social skills. Those silences would be the ones that ripped him apart; he knew that just because he had not had the courage to deftly return the peck that these silences would happen. If he had just been faster by 5 minutes in making his decision rather than dilly-dallying his time away, if he had listened to his “BFF”, Alcaeus, who was sitting next to him (happy?) he would not have to deal with this dent in their old friendship. But of course all of this was just the musings of Dalziel within his own head. Would Amadea really feel different after the simple, unfeeling peck she had given away? Or did she put a lot of meaning into that motion? Dalziel had no way of finding out until he actually saw Amadea again in school.

That Tuesday, he returned to school expecting the worst, but he did not either extreme. He was not completely erased from Amadea’s life; she acknowledged his presence as he sat down next to her during 2^nd period history, but the normal flare behind her voice had lost its sparkle. So he was in the dog house as Tim from “Home Improvement” had called it. All he needed was to get out of the dog house and back into the real house and all would be fine again. Then and only then could Dalziel find someway to repay the wonderful gift he had received from the woman of his dreams.

Dalziel tried to act no differently from than before any tension had appeared between himself and Amadea. At first, Amadea was reluctant to talk to Dalziel as she had before, but Dalziel was determined to get himself out of the dog house and kept at it and finally after 10 longs school days, his relationship with Amadea was restored to where it had been before. They laughed together, completed class work using the same book, and joked around. Dalziel had successfully moved back into the old house.

8^th grade continued on normally, tests, homework, chilling, and then the end of the year reared its shiny, golden yellow head over hill and the hype of summer began enveloping the school and included in the hype, the 8^th grade semi-formal dance…

Dalziel knew that his would be the best of the best opportunities for him to redeem himself, but he had recently been noticing this other boy, Mogens, had been hanging around Amadea a lot. He knew that this other male was around to pick up some candidates for the semi, but Dalziel had to beat him to the chase and ask Amadea before Mogens did. Being as inexperienced as he was, Dalziel decided that he could not smoothly ask Amadea to the semi so he asked Parsifal for some help.

Parsifal was glad to help Dalziel and they developed a plan: Amadea’s locker was close to Parsifal’s and thus at the end of the day, Dalziel would calmly walk over to Parsifal’s locker as if he was going over to talk to Parsifal, but then randomly Parsifal would leave to get something and Dalziel would be alone with Amadea and there he would pop the question. It seemed like a perfectly good plan in Dalziel’s head, but whether or not he could follow through with his plan was the real question.

That night Dalziel spent the whole night tossing and turning with butterflies in his stomach. He felt as if he stomach would fly out of his stomach and onto the green carpeted floor next to him and then his dog Ladridia would come in and eat it being the silly, disgusting dog she was. But alas, his stomach stayed where it should be under his diaphragm. When Dalziel finally did get to sleep he dreamt about how the whole plan would unfold itself. He dreamt about rejections, happy acceptances, and everything in between, but the last one he dreamt about before he awoke was a horrible rejection…

Dalziel awoke to the ridiculously annoying, piercing beep of his cheap eight dollar alarm clock. He was shaking and could not remember why, until he remembered his terrible, terrible dream…

Dalziel walked into school and barely noticed what was happening around him, all he could think about was what he was going to do that afternoon. Finally that afternoon came and the plan worked out perfectly and Dalziel found himself alone in the hallways with Amadea.

“So you going to the semi?”

“No?” she replied with eyes shifting around the room followed by a nervous giggle.

“well, you wanna go with me?”

Sad look appears on her face. “Sorry, but I can’t”

Dalziel, down-fallen walked away and Parsifal came bursting out of wherever he was and asked, “How’d it go!?”

“I got rejected…” was Dalziel’s sad reply. Dalziel slowly walked to his bus shaking off the rejection where he met Ianthe, Amadea’s good friend.

“Yeah… just got rejected by Amadea…”

“Oh… how come I didn’t know about this? Well you know it’s not her fault right?”

“What?! What do you mean not her fault…?”

“Well, her parents won’t let her date other races…”

“Are you freaking kidding?!?”

“No…”

“Well… there goes a load off my chest…”

Dalziel continued walking and burst out in laughter of all the stress that had gone through his life in this short moment of time. He thought that he was the only one whose parents controlled him like a puppet when it came to interaction with the other sex. Other people just seemed to interact freely however they pleased, they did not have the same leash as he did. At least, Dalziel now knew that other people like him, no matter what race, had their leashes well hidden out of sight. Dalziel experienced something in life that his mother would never know about, and he had grown up and become more of a man than he was before. This experience would not become forgotten by Dalziel. It had shaped him and opened his eyes to the stark realities of this silly, silly world. Dalziel was a new man…