Chapter Text
Eight grade brought changes in my life. But the biggest one didn't happen at school. It happened at home. My grandfather came to live with us. All he does was staring at the window, but I knew he was looking at nothing. Mom said he stared like that because he missed Grandma. That was not something Grandpa would ever talk about with me. As a matter of fact, he never talked about much of anything with me.
That is, until Sansa Stark appeared in the local newspaper.
“Oh, Jon. May I speak with you?” Grandpa still sat on the same chair, the one that near the window which showed directly to the Starks front yard.
“What?” I was sat on the couch next to him, gulping on a coke to calm my nerves. I suddenly feeling awkward just by talking to him. We never really close before, even when my grandma still alive because my dad always find a reason to not visit them.
“Have a seat, son. Tell me about your friend Sansa Stark.” I was nearly choked on my drink, startled by his question.
“Sansa... She's not exactly my friend.” I wiped the spilled coke on the side table with my sleeve and staring at my grandpa, confused by his odd question. Why was he asking me about Sansa?
“Oh. Why's that?”
“Why do you wanna know?” I’m starting to feel annoyed by his question. It’s not like he teasing me or anything, but we never have a sit-down kind of talked before. This is the first time my grandpa ever showed any interest in me and when he did, he asking me about sansa. What was so special about her?
“Why isn't she your friend, Jon?”
“You'd have to know Sansa, Grandpa.”
“Well, I'd like to.”
“Why?”
“That girl has an iron backbone. Why don't you invite her over sometime?”
“An iron backbone? She's just stubborn,! And, and she's p...pushy beyond belief!” I was so angry I was almost stuttered. She is not special, she’s just an annoying stupid girl.
“Is that so?” Now he is teasing me, giving me that playful smile as he fold his arms to his chest.
“And she's been stalking me since the second grade!”
“Well, a girl like that doesn't live next door to everyone.” My grandpa took the coke from my hand and drained it in one gulp.
I scoffed. “Lucky them.”
“Read this. Without prejudice.” Grandpa smiled at me when he showed me a newspaper with Sansa’s picture in the front-page. I took it from his hand lazily. I don’t need know anything more about Sansa Stark. Just so you know, Sansa Stark did not wind up in The Winterfell Times for being an eighth-grade Einstein. No, she got front-page coverage because she refused to climb out of a weirwood tree.
Sansa Stark and that stupid weirwood tree.
She always thought it was God's gift to our little corner of the universe. I remember seven years ago when I rode my bike to run an errand for my mother. I passed the tree when I saw sansa and her brothers Robb and Bran climbed the weirwood tree.
“Hey, Jon. Wanna come climb the treewith me and my brothers?” She smiled at me brightly, showing those stupid white teeth while her red hair blown by the wind, almost blending in with thecolor of the leaves.
“No, thanks.”
Seven years later and she still asking me to climb up that stupid tree. “Jon. Come up here! It's fun.”
“I can't. My dad needs me to help him fix...a thing.” That's all I needed. Climb up a tree with Sansa Stark. I'd be dragged right back into the second grade. Jon and Sansa sitting in a tree, K.I.S.S.I.N.G. Why don't you just make me eat lima beans for the rest of my life?!
It still the same with the next morning. Sansa still climbing that stupid tree while shouting the arrival of the school bus to kids who care enough to listen to her.
“ It's three blocks away!”
“Two blocks!”
“One block away!”
“ Like that's valuable information” I rolled my eyes, Theon scoffed as he kicked a pebble.”I hate it when she does that.”
“I like to think there's at least a chance the bus won't show.” Said him as he look at the bus coming from the distance.
She jumped from the tree gracefully, with her hair still in one place and no scratch or wrinkle in her clothes. She was standing, so tall while smiling at me supidly. I standing straight so I didn’t look shorter than her. It didn’t help. Why she had to be so tall?
“I think the tree looks particularly beautiful in this light. Don't you?”
“If by "beautiful" you mean "unbelievably ugly," then, yes, I would agree.” Her radiant smile faltered right after I said that. That was probably the first time I ever saw Sansa looking at me in a different way. She used to looked at me like I was some kind of god gift or something, now she looking at me like I was a leper.
“You're just visually challenged. I feel sorry for you.” She flicked her hair as she walk into the bus, didn’t bother to wait for me and beats Theon so she could sit next to me in the bus like the usual.
Visually challenged? Visually challenged? This from the girl who lived in a house that was the joke of the neighborhood? They had bushes growing over windows and weeds all over the place. It bugged my dad bigtime.
“Oh, there he is. The bricklayer who thinks he's a painter!” He sipped his coffee while looking at Mr. Stark painting what it looks like to be the image of his truck. “That truck's not ugly enough in real life? He's gotta make a painting of it?”
“No, he does landscapes. Sells them at the county fair. People say they're beautiful.” Rhaenys is close with Robb and Bran, and she always defending the Starks everytime my dad had a chance to mocked them.
“Landscapes? Let me tell you something. The world would have more beauty in it if he'd do a little landscaping on that piece of crap he calls a yard.” My mom stopped dusting the coffee table to rubbed at my dad’s arm to calm him. She knew once he talked about Ned Stark he wouldn’t stop talking about him for hours.
“I feel bad for his wife. She married a dreamer. Because of that, one of the two of them will always be unhappy.” I know she only said that to make my dad happy. My mom is close to Mrs. Stark, she always lend her vacuum cleaner when hers was broken and let her borrowed some sugar or flour everytime Mrs. Stark running out of supplies. In return she always send us a delicious chocolate pie.
“Yeah, fine. But why do we have to be unhappy?” As annoying as the yard was to my dad, it was nothing compared to how annoying Sansa Stark was in that tree. Every morning we had to listen to the sound of her blow-by-blow traffic report.
Theon was talking me about the new girl named Ros as we walked to the bus stop, but I got distracted by the commotion near the weirwood tree. There was a big truck and a buldozer with a lot of men in hard hat, one of them talking through the megaphone.
I ran to the tree even though I knew it was Sansa that they were talking to. That stubborn girl! Why was she putting this much danger on herself just for that stupid tree? She could got hurt. I know the men weren’t serious about cutting her down, but she could still hurting herself when she climbed that tree, she could’ve fall.
“Listen, girl, I'm this close to calling the police.You are trespassing and obstructing progress on a contracted job. Either you come down, or we're gonna cut you down.” One of the man taunting her as he showed his chainshaw to her, but she didn’t scared, she looked back at him and shouthing from the top of her lung.
“Go ahead! Cut me down! I’m not coming down! I never coming down!”
“Jon! You guys, come up here with me. They won't cut it down if we're all up here!” Sansa was frantic. They wanted to cut down her tree. I couldn't understand why that mutant tangle of gnarly branches meant so much to her.
“Jon, please, you don’t have to come up this high, just a little ways.”
“Bus, bus, bus!” Theon grabbed my arm to pulled me into a bus, but I stopped him, I couldn’t take my eyes off Sansa. Her blue eyes were filled with tears, her hair musseld up from hugging the branches too tight, and I think she got splinter on her finger. But she doesn’t seems to care, I don’t think she realized that she’s hurt.
“Jon, please.” I couldn’t stand looking at her like this. I prefer her smiling at me as she stalked me from school, or when she used to chasing me around in the playground. I never thought that I missed those annoying smile, and her laugh.
Please stop crying.
“Jon, please don’t let them do this’ She cried and cried, her voice was breaking and her face is all red. Somehow I felt drown to climbed that tree. Like I was in a daze of her. But then I felt a hand yanking the back of my jacket, dragging me back to reality.
“Leave her!” Said Theon between his teeth. “You weren’t going to cut school over it!”
I was still standing at the bus door, stopping theon to pulled my jacket. “Come on!” Now he grabbed my collar shirt as he nod to the bus driver to close the door.
Sansa wasn't at the bus stop the next morning. Or the morning after that. She was at school, but you'd never know it. I told myself I should be glad about it. I mean, isn't that what I'd always wanted? But still, I felt bad for her. I was gonna tell her I was sorry, but then I thought, hey, no that's the last thing I needed: Sansa Stark thinking I missed her.