Star by Eliza Witte - HTML preview

25

‘Hey, thanks! You know – you may check this room once in a while. Usually I’m always here after 6 p.m. Maybe we can get together here for a jam some day.’ He winked at her and gave her a grin. Annie had the strength just to nod in return.

Back in the corridor, on the other side of the door, she almost collapsed. She kept on listening to Stu’s rehearsal a little bit longer and gradually the song became better and better. In the end, he played it perfectly, ‘YESSSS! That’s more like it!’ Annie was completely satisfied. She made her way through the corridors to the outside at the moment when Stu with a face expressing a superior self-content closed the piano.

XV

Annie found Jessie sitting on the stairs of the main building. She was surrounded by a gang of guys, all in their sports gear; one of them had a ball in his hands. They were laughing noisily, pushing and pinching each other and Jessie just observed them thinking

‘Oh, well, boys with toys,’ but in fact her eyes didn’t miss for a moment the tall blond guy with the greenest green eyes in the world. She knew him – he was the Capitan of the soccer team and played in some college band. He also seemed to be interested because while Jessie waited for her friend he didn’t take a part in the conversation with the others although he had made himself notorious for his caustic remarks especially towards representatives of the opposite sex as was the case now. Instead of this his eyes were fixed rather boldly on Jessie’s face. Someone shouted, ‘Hey, Pete, who are you with?’

Pete laughed but didn’t answer. He just teased, ‘Well, guess?’

‘He got the best chick again.’ Someone replied instead of him.

‘Hey, Pete, the babe is cool! See to it that we both partner her.’ Another one chipped in.

‘Forget it! Hands off her!’ Replied Pete and the entire company burst into laughter.

Taking a moment off Jessie’s eyes, Chris asked, ‘And you, Steve, who are you going to the annual ball with?’

‘I still don’t know. There are two twinnies in the freshmen’s class. Maybe I’ll invite them both just in case,’ he grinned and this gave room for more speculations on behalf of the others. At this moment Annie went out of the building and picked Jessie up. Jessie a bit reluctant left after her, making her reluctance quite clear for Chris to see. She granted him a sad smile and in his turn, he blew her a kiss. However, Annie who was marching ahead didn’t see this all and even if she had, she was too busy with her own thoughts to be interested in Jessie’s matters of the heart.

‘Annie, where have you been?’ Jessie asked.