Jacklyn Bell-The trouble of Carlos

*This story is underneath my folder titled “The trouble of Carlos”. Gacha Club character designs are under my forum titled “My character designs<33”. Enjoy!*

It was the middle of January, so once again, the students at Mellane High had to go to the auditorium for gym because it was “too cold” to go outside.

Jacklyn Bell was drawing pictures in her sketchbook of ghosts and ghouls, all manner of things creepy and unsettling, for outside was a cloudy, cold day, which was perfect weather to draw monsters! Her friends, Ashley and Skylar, were showing each other different songs in their playlist to pass the time. What Jacklyn wished would happen was for the school to turn on a movie for everyone to watch, but that hadn’t happened since elementary school and it seemed like school had ceased to do anything fun since then.

No matter. It was only January, but Jacklyn would still anticipate Halloween. She’d keep drawing supernatural creatures and dream of the spooks and scares that were to come, she’d keep watching her favorite Halloween movies after school, and she’d keep on planning out future costume ideas, for it was never too early to plan for Halloween, never too much to get into the frightful fun, never-

“I like your drawings, they’re so gloriously gloomy!” A boy’s voice gushed from behind her.

Jacklyn flinched a little, surprised that someone was talking to her and then she turned around and found…

Carlos Bardot. He was known throughout the school for his family dying in a car crash on Halloween night when he was twelve and having to be taken care of by his Grandparents, for losing people that he was dating every Halloween night since then, and for going to the local antique shop. He didn’t talk much to people and he had a look on his face as though he were permanently irritated, so people tended to steer clear of them.

But there he was, leaning over her chair, smiling at her, his green eyes sparkling with joy. He was talking to her, complimenting her, acknowledging her.

“I think this one is my favorite.” Carlos said, pointing at a drawing of a hunched woman in a tattered, rotten dress with cobwebs going from her head to her feet, like a shroud or a veil.

“Why is that one your favorite?” Jacklyn asked, curious as to what his answer would be, because no one, not even her friends, ever said anything about her drawings, so she wanted to know if there was anything deeper that was connecting Carlos to the drawing, anything more that made him love it.

Carlos’ eyes drifted off, as though he were deep in thought, trying to pry an answer out of himself that would be good enough to say, that would be good enough for someone to hear.

“Well…” Carlos started, “I like it because…because she’s still alive…even though she’s crawling out of the abyss. What about you? Which drawing do you like?”

Which drawing did she like? But there were so many of them that it was impossible to pick just one, for all of them were beautiful in their own way, all of them had their own value, all of them-

“This one.” Jacklyn said, pointing to a drawing of a clown girl who had haphazard hair sticking in every which way and a big, exaggerated lipsticked grin, her eyes wide and white.

“She’s just so expressive, so full of marvelous malevolence, that she doesn’t care what anybody else thinks, she just exists! She’s just herself!” Jacklyn beamed.

Her heart fluttered with elation as she was talking to Carlos about her drawings, for it just made her feel so wonderful, so alive, so real when she was at her element, when she was drawing, that when she talked about it, it felt like she was high up on a broomstick, flying through a black-purple sky speckled with white stars that winked and blinked at her like playful ghosts, a black cat sitting right by her on the broomstick, all of her Halloween haven dreams fulfilled, realized, come to life.

“I like that. That’s good. You know, I like making jewelry in my free time, so I get the whole being-attached-to-your-art thing.” Carlos remarked, a small smile on his face.

It was a ghost of a smile, a kind of smile that looked like it would get bigger with the many seconds to come. Everyone else in the auditorium was in their own world, caring not for Carlos and Jacklyn, so Jacklyn was left with looking at his twinkling green eyes and a hint of a grin, wondering how he could be okay after everything that happened to him, how he could still find it in him to beam and be nice, how he still had that spark of positivity in such a life of sinister shadows.

“Do you want my number, so we can show each other our art? I see that you are also a fellow Halloween enjoyer from your drawings, so we can talk about Halloween too! Does that sound good?” Carlos asked, breaking the silence, a smile still on his face, though his eyes were flickering with specks of panic.

Was he nervous to give her his number? Was he overthinking giving her his number? Or was Jacklyn imagining the “sparks of panic” in his eyes and he was just waiting for her answer?

“Sure, that sounds good.” Jacklyn said, taking out her cell phone from her backpack and going to her contacts app.

She wasn’t going to ask him how he felt. She wasn’t going to pass up a chance to get to know someone who liked Halloween and art like her, someone who she could get to know beyond what people around her may have said, someone with a sweet smile and black, choppy hair, with green eyes that were bright with vitality, yet dull with rot.

“Great! My name is Carlos, what’s yours?” He asked, handing Jacklyn her cell phone after he put his number in.

Either he didn’t know that everyone in school talked about him enough for anyone to know his name or he didn’t care, but Jacklyn wasn’t about to point that out. For all of the things people said about him, all the times people called him “terrifying” and said some ridiculous ideas about him “causing deaths”, he didn’t seem all that terrible with her, so why bring up bad memories from his past? He was a human being who deserved friends, who deserved romance, who deservedlove of all kinds, so-

“I’m Jacklyn. Thanks for the compliments, it means a lot.” She smiled, pushing down the fluttering feeling in her heart that intensified right after she introduced herself.

She was glad to talk to him, but there was no reason for her heart to be so full of glee that it felt like it was going to explode. He deserved love, but maybe he’d just see her as an acquaintance. Maybe he’d forget that he put his number in her phone, maybe their only interaction would just be that one January in the auditorium.

“Don’t mention it! Good art deserves praise!” He beamed.

All of the rainbow iridescent positivity felt like it was going to make Jacklyn’s soul fly out of her body to join the ghosts in a clouded cemetery, for how could he be so kind, so handsome, and charmingly weird all at once? His weird wasn’t even “weird”, it was just a great, cultured love of spookiness that Jacklyn could understand, that she could get behind, that-

The bell rang, signaling that it was time for them to leave the auditorium for their next class.

Jacklyn would send him a text later. She hoped that he would answer.