The Same Old Song (formerly Eight Reasons Why I Kissed Hayden Beaufort) - Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE
Eugene seemed very impressed with his new haircut.
Me, not so much.
“Whaddya think?” he asked, as he jogged up to our usual morning meeting spot near the fire hydrant by the school gates. He pointed at his head and wiggled his eyebrows. That eyebrow wiggle was constantly making girls swoon, but I was immune from long exposure.
“Honestly?”
“Of course.”
“Well, frankly I think you look like a bit of a tosser.”
“Oh.” Eugene’s face fell.
“Hey, you said I should be honest,” I said, trying to tell if he was genuinely hurt. Eugene exuded a perfected laissez faire attitude, but considering the fact that he’d had an almost shoulder-length mop of hair ever since the end of primary school, his new, much shorter haircut that he had gotten over the weekend would likely be a touchy subject for a while. Much like the short-lived emo fringe he had in year seven.
“Yeah, but…” He grimaced. “You weren’t supposed to be like, actually honest. Like, the truth but in the nicest possible way.”
It was the emo fringe all over again.
“Would you be offended if I said that was the nicest version of the truth?” I teased, trying to reconcile the image of my friend that existed in my head with the one that stood before me. For a guy with such a dorky name, Eugene had always been pretty rock ‘n’ roll – unkempt and loutish, with a veritable aura of cool – but sometimes his decision-making ability left something to be desired. Like now.
“Lena,” he whined, and threw himself back against the school fence, and overly pained expression on his face. “So cruel.”
“Pfft,” I scoffed, punching him on the shoulder. “In my defense, I said you looked like a bit of a tosser. Not a total one.”
“You’re so supportive.”
“I try.”
“But seriously, it can’t be that bad, can it?” He frowned, subconsciously running a hand up to fix his hair, as though he could change how I felt about it by ruffling it. And it wasn’t the haircut itself that was the problem really, more the fact that it made him look like every other guy in the school. It wasn’t a bad haircut - Eugene just wasn’t a short back and sides kind of guy.
“Nah, totally dapper,” I said, and reached up to mess up his fringe.
He pulled a face and batted my hands away, but a laugh slipped out of his lips. “Stop it!”
“Dude, what the fuck happened to you?” Eugene and I turned to see our friend Thomas striding down the footpath towards us. He was only a few metres away but his voice so loud we could have heard him a couple of kilometres away. “What’s with the hair - and crap, did you iron your pants?”
I’d been so transfixed by the change on top of Eugene’s head I hadn’t noticed that his uniform was looking positively respectable.
“So?” Eugene asked, straightening his school tie. His shirt was tucked in for the first time since we’d started high school, and his pants, for once, didn’t look like he’d picked them up from his floor. Even his tie looked like it had been done up tight enough to restrict his airways. With his brochure-perfect uniform and newly short hair, Eugene was going to give Mr Branwaite a heart attack when he walked into class.
With our matching Monday morning messy hair and hastily pulled off the washing line shirts, Thomas and I looked scruffy by comparison.
“So,” Thomas said, “you’re full of surprises.”
“Is there a girl you’re trying to impress?” I asked. It was pretty much a rule of the universe that Eugene had to spend an extended period of time making sure he looked as though he had spent as little time as possible on his appearance. I didn’t think he even knew what an iron was.
“Stop looking at me like that you two,” he said. He started walking towards the school gates. He called over his shoulder, “Come on, we’re gonna be late.”
“Late?” Thomas and I gasped. We started to follow Eugene, pushing past a gaggle of year eights who were walking in the opposite direction.
“Since when have you cared about being late?” I asked.
Eugene shrugged, as Thomas and I caught up to him. I exchanged a confused look with Thomas. It was reassuring to know that he was just as in the dark as I was.
The three of us walked in silence until we reached the lockers. Eugene opened his without looking at either of us, and starting taking his books out.
“You guys practising tonight?” I asked, desperate to break the silence. Whatever was behind Eugene’s new straight-laced student look, there was no way he was going to tell us when he was in this mood. He’d tell me what was going on later.
He always did.
Thomas groaned. “We were supposed to be.”
“What happened?”
“What do you think?” Thomas said. “Freddie flaked out on us again. Got shit on, apparently.”
Between us, Eugene slammed his locker closed.
“You good?” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he replied, and stalked off towards homeroom. I watched his retreating back, stunned.
“I swear to God, I’m going to kill the kid someday,” Thomas grumbled. “Freddie, I mean.”
Freddie Atkins, the bane of Thomas and Eugene’s existence, was the drummer of the guy’s band, Pugnacious Dogma. They’d formed about a year ago, and were pretty good, no thanks to Freddie and his antics.
“What’s his excuse this time?”
“Hell if I know.” Thomas rolled his eyes and opened his locker. “Apparently he called Eugene last night and said he couldn’t make it. Excuses are beneath him.”
“Well, if I meet a decent drummer any time soon I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“Thanks pal.” Thomas smiled.
I opened my locker and threw my bag in, and grabbed my stuff as the warning bell rang. I waited for the electronic dong-dong-dong­ to become silent, then said to Thomas, “Guess we better be going. Wouldn’t want to be late, would we?”
.
I didn’t get to talk to Eugene again until recess. He was walking back to his locker from maths, books in hand when I caught up with him, and, judging from the absent expression on his face, it was clear he was deep in thought.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi Lena,” he replied, without enthusiasm. He barely glanced at me as I fell in step with him.
“How was maths?” I asked. Usually, this question would be followed by an animated rant about Eugene’s maths teacher, and whatever interesting metaphors she’d come up with to try to teach the class quadratic equations. Often there were impersonations.
“Fine.”
Great.
“You know, I reckon the whole grungy rockstar aesthetic’s days are numbered,” I piped up. “You’ve got plenty of rock bands who dress nice but are still pretty cool.”
“Uh-huh,” Eugene said, possibly in agreement, possibly because he wasn’t really listening to me.
A moody Eugene wasn’t anything unusual. He wasn’t averse to a bit of teen angst, but he’d always been a communicative sort of moody - with me, anyway.
“You wanna come over to mine tonight?” I asked, trying a new topic. “Seeing as you guys don’t have practice?”
“Wish I could,” Eugene said with a grimace. He adjusted the books he was carrying. “Family’s over from Sydney. And, well, Mum overheard me talking to Freddie, when he called me about not making practice, y’know. So now I’ve been roped into a family dinner, and that’ll go from the time I get home until midnight, probably.”
“Sounds fun,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice barely perceptible. He readjusted his books again.
“You right with them?” I asked, nodding towards his school books.
“It’s fine.”
“Okay then.”
“Listen, Lena, I’ve got a dentist appointment after lunch. If Ms P gives us homework, could you let me know?”
If I’d been shocked when Eugene had stressed about being late this morning, it was nothing compared to hearing him worry about homework. Homework. Eugene was the kind of student who revelled in missing a class, and the getting out of homework that came with it.
I frowned. “Who are you and what have you done with Eugene?”
He opened his mouth to respond, when I heard my name being called from across the school yard.
I turned to see Chris Stephens, the year twelve who was in charge of the sound equipment at school concerts and assemblies. I was one of the few people he let help him out, and last I’d seen him he’d been talking about the lunch time concerts the music department were planning.
Usually, I enjoyed talking to Chris, but I wished he’d chosen a better time to find me.
“You got a moment, Lena?” Chris asked, jogging up to us. “Hey Eugene.”
“Hi Chris,” I replied, while Eugene just nodded.
“My arms are killing me,” Eugene said, gesturing towards his books, more, I suspected, for Chris’ benefit than my own. “I’ll catch you later.”
He walked off without another word, and I tried to listen to Chris as he talked about plans for getting his whole team of sound lackeys together to organise some school event that I was only vaguely aware of.
As I nodded and mumbled in all the right places in our mostly one sided conversation, I came to the conclusion that Eugene wasn’t going to explain why, over the course of the weekend, he’d turned into a perfect, short-haired student.
I was going to have to find out for myself.