by C L Walker
Pfft, so suspicious.
“What, bitch?” I asked to my own surprise.
He laughed as he shook his head, then he continued to walk backwards for another ten or so feet as he watched me.
I looked at the floor, and that’s where I kept my eyes even after he turned back around.
By the time we reached the library our class had already taken their seats inside the computer lab.
I followed Micah around book shelfs and in between tables never realizing that he had taken a strange path through the huge room, until he turned around again, and I ran into his chest.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No.” I passed him and entered the lab.
“Are you sure because you keep following me around and touching me?”
We walked past the rows of computers and I sighed when several people looked up at us in question.
I sat down at the last computer in the back row away from everyone else. “Can you not say things like that so loudly?”
He sat down beside me as I looked at the computer next to him pointedly to convey that he didn’t need to sit right next to me, but he shook his head and stayed where he was.
He put his elbow on the table as he faced me and rested his chin on it. “So, what I’m getting here is that you want me to be quiet because you don’t want everyone to know how you really feel about me?”
“No, I don’t feel any sort of way about you,” I said.
Why would he even suggest something like that so casually! Help!
I looked at him sheepishly and wondered if he was going to catch that one too but if he had he didn’t show it.
“Oh, I see, so you just like touching me then?” he asked.
Unbelievable. “That’s not it either!”
“Okay, what’s going on then, is your head in the clouds today?”
I scrunched up my nose and logged into the computer. “I feel like that’s something only relaxed people do.”
“Have their head up in the clouds?” He continued to watch me.
I nodded as I clicked on the search bar and typed in the name of a website that I had written down that seemed to have good information on World War II.
“Fair enough, so that’s not it,” he said thoughtfully. “Does my presence do something to you then?”
The way he asked had me turning in my seat to give him a hard look. “What are you implying with a question like that?”
“I’ve mentioned before that I noticed you handle yourself better around everyone else aside from me, so clearly I do something to you.”
AGAIN, with the suggestive tone!
He spoke as if he knew he did something to me as a matter of fact and if he did already know as much then why did he need to ask?
I nudged his arm that was in my space as he had laid it right next to my keyboard. “What’s with the obnoxious tone?”
“Nothing, I am just trying to figure this out.” He leaned back in his chair and spread his legs so much so that his knee brushed against my thigh.
I moved my legs in and faced them towards the wall as I said, “The only thing you do to me is piss me off.”
He laughed before he bit his bottom lip to tuck away his smile, but he succeeded not in hiding his amusement but in making my stomach drop because of how attractive he looked while doing so.
“Your words lack conviction as usual,” he said.
“Well, if you already know the truth then why bother asking?”
He gave me a dark look. “Because it will sound prettier from your lips.”
Gulp.
Wait…
Huh?
I couldn’t look away as I questioned why he would say something like that to me, and worried that he truly did know what my conflicting feelings were for him.
“What will?” I whispered, even though I hadn’t meant to.
“The truth.”
“Really? Why are you doing this to me right now?”
“I don’t know.” He looked like he meant it and that frustrated me because it did little to help me make sense of how he treated me. “I can’t seem to stop myself most days.”
I couldn’t bear the weight of his gaze any longer, so I huffed before I turned away and buried myself in reading material without responding.
But it still lingered in the background, with all our other interactions that were beginning to feel like they were little pieces of something that was going to change me.
He can’t stop himself…what does that even mean?
Again, I had to remind myself that nothing concerning Micah mattered. Just work.
By the time class was almost over I was so engrossed in my work that I absentmindedly pulled my hair around to one side and revealed my neck. Minutes had gone by before I realized what I had done, and once I did, I pulled my hair back around to frame my face.
I had put cover up on my neck but up close it would still look strange because she had left ugly red marks that were hard to hide, and her nails had cut into my flesh in a few spots.
I tried my best not to be obvious after I returned my hair to its rightful place as a cover, so I counted to sixty before I glanced at him and when I did, I found that he was staring at me.
Rather than respond to his inquisitive brow and knowing eyes I grabbed my bag and booked it out of the computer lab since class was over anyways.
I stopped by my locker to grab my jacket so I could leave straight after sixth period. After I shut it again and turned around, he stepped in front of me, and I was forced to back into the lockers.
I looked straight ahead and noted the red strings on his hoodie, then slowly made my way up and admired his throat of all things because anything was better than meeting his eyes.
Once I got to his mouth, I noted that it was a firm straight line, he was clearly not happy with me.
“Look at my eyes,” he demanded.
I chewed on my lip and slowly worked my way up and once he had my attention, he pinned me in place with his stare.
“You know, back then I convinced myself that you were telling the truth.” He paused as he glanced around the hallway, no doubt to gage whether we had an audience before he leaned in closer, close enough that everyone else would assume we were into each other if they didn’t already.
The thought of him cornering me just the same but for other reasons sent chills down my spine even though my body had grown warm because his was nearly pressed against mine.
He lowered his voice as he continued, “But I forgot to explain to you when it is I realized that you were lying. When I moved back here, one of the first pieces of gossip I came across was about your mom. She’s a drunk I was told and when I heard about how she acted in the tavern I knew without a doubt that you had lied all those years ago. She fits the bill too perfectly and so do you.”
He tipped my chin up when I looked down. “We have a widowed town drunk that everyone turns a blind eye to, and her timid daughter who’s referred to by the town as a ‘poor little thing,’ so what else could be happening? You seemed okay at first glance, you walk around with your head held high and all seems well enough on the surface. But I noticed little things about you, and I knew almost immediately that you had lied.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but he put a finger to it and let it drop away slowly. Just because I was angry didn’t mean I didn’t notice with every fiber of my being how soft the pad of his finger felt as he brushed it down my bottom lip.
“I see it,” he said softly, and I could have sworn I saw empathy flash in his eyes before he pushed it away. “You’ve been breaking a little more every day.”
He paused but I didn’t know what to say.
“I see weakness every time I look into your eyes, and it pisses me off because I don’t understand how no one else noticed.” I was struck by the emotion in his tone.
I had always wondered that myself, the fact that she was a drunk should have been enough t
o warrant home visits and the curiosity of the community even though I always covered for her. But then again, I was a good liar and so was she.
In the end, some people only saw what they wanted to see. They were the type of people who closed their blinds when the world was burning all around them just to make themselves feel better about their silence.
I tipped my head up to let him know that I wasn’t scared of him and that I wasn’t going to back down from him every time he cornered me.
So what if he knew the truth, there was nothing that could be done about it. I was weeks shy of eighteen and it was certainly too late for a knight in shining armor to come to my rescue, I didn’t need him.
I got right back in his face. “You have no right to call me weak, especially not when you have both parents and a home, you have everything.” He had somewhere he belonged while I belonged nowhere and with no one. “You may see only weakness but the fact that I am still here today and about to be free of her is also a testament to my strength.” When he glanced at my mouth I had to stop and take a breath, as I feared that my words would get stuck in my throat if I didn’t.
“I know there is strength in you.” He lazily dragged his gaze up to my eyes again. “I said as much before, but hiding isn’t using your strength, you just don’t get it.”
“I may not have it all figured out, and I know I am lacking in many ways as you keep pointing out, but I’m trying.” I stood straighter and brought my face closer to his in the process.
“Well, it’s not good enough,” he hissed through his straight white teeth. “Being choked out and showing up to school the next day with soulless eyes while you walk around acting like everything is all good is not okay.”
“I knew you were going to cause problems for me,” I said angrily, as I was beyond trying to hold myself back with him in that moment. “Why can’t you just let it go?”
“I’m not causing problems; I haven’t said a thing to anyone. You’re just mad that I see what others don’t.”
When I sighed my chest brushed against him and his eyes shot down to look so I took a small step back and gave him his space back. Although, being a foot apart still wasn’t much, I could still smell him and feel his breath on my face when he spoke.
“Whatever. So, what do you want me to do?” I asked breathlessly. “Since you seem to know all about what I’ve been through.”
“Leave now. Fight back. Don’t let her touch you again. Anything besides this.” He brushed his fingers across my neck, and I sucked in another breath. “Just do anything other than what you have been doing for years.”
“I have no choice but to take it right now, have I not been clear about that?”
The oddest thing happened as the words spilled from my mouth, and it happened so fast I convinced myself in the end that it was my imagination. His irises had lost all their color, the brown turned as black as his pupil and I could feel the anger rolling off his body as if it were a tangible thing and I could run my fingers through it. But then he blinked, and they were brown again and the feeling that had just overwhelmed me fell away just like that.
I must be losing my mind… or its my lack of sleep…
He squinted his eyes as I searched his for what I thought I had seen. But if it had been real, he tucked it away neatly in a place that I couldn’t reach.
“At least we know what you’re good for,” he said, and looked away.
I couldn’t tell what his aim was when he said things like that to me because it was obvious that no one liked being pushed around or hit. But whatever his reasons were, he made it clear that he found me to be of little value and it made me feel ashamed. I didn’t need his judgement.
“Get out of my face, Micah!” I pushed against his chest and rather than move he grabbed my hands to stop me.
“No, I’m not done with you yet.” My heartbeat quickened as his fingers pressed against my chest and he held my wrists between us. “Now, what about that guy, who is he?”
“I already told you who he is.” I tried to pull my wrists from his hands, but he was immovable.
“You lied.”
I was struck once again by the impossibility that he consistently saw through me. “How the hell do you know I was lying?”
“Because I can always tell.”
Always? Impossible!
He read the look of disbelief on my face, so he said, “Always.”
There is no way that is possible.
“Who is he?” he asked again.
“None of your business.”
“Are you sleeping with him or something?” His face crinkled with disgust at the idea.
I couldn’t believe he would even suggest something like that when Jack was old enough to be my dad, and while some people were into that sort of thing, I was not.
I wanted to scream, we were at school and he was confronting me on several issues that were far from appropriate given the setting.
My face snapped back to his. “Seriously?”
“Are you?” His eyes searched mine with near desperation.
“No!”
He looked down the hallway as he too seemed to remember where we were, so he let go of me and stepped back.
“As you have finally realized this isn’t the time or place for this, so we are done here. Goodbye!” I started to walk away, and he followed closely behind me.
“Then when is a good time? Maybe when things have gone too far and there’s no getting you back?”
I swung around and I hit his chest for the millionth time, and his eyebrows shot up as he gave me a look that told me he definitely believed I liked touching him.
I stumbled back and sighed beside myself. “I don’t want to talk to you about it ever. In fact, I don’t want to talk to you period. Leave me alone.” I stabbed my finger into his chest. “Or else.”
“I can’t do that,” he said. “I can’t seem to leave you alone.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Can’t stop, won’t stop.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said again for the second time in an hour, which made absolutely no sense, especially since he said it as if he were powerless to stop himself and I happened to know he had more control than that.
Just when I thought I was going to explode Sai showed up, and I noted that he had a hall pass, so I looked around me and realized that I had missed the second bell and was late to class.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked merrily as he failed to read the room.
At the same time Micah and I said, “Nothing.” Then we turned and walked in opposite directions.
“Skylar,” Sai said from behind me, so I stopped because I was acting like an ass just because I needed to get away from Micah.
“I’m sorry, I have to get to class.” I looked at the time on my phone, I was already more than ten minutes late and that meant I was going to be marked as absent even if I did show up.
“Okay,” he said, “but are you good, because I mean… you don’t seem okay and neither does Micah?”
“I’m fine and I couldn’t care less about whether he is angry or not right now because as far as I am concerned, he is an unfeeling bastard who deserves any misery that comes his way.”
“Wow, okay. I suppose this will have to wait.”
“Yeah, sorry. I’ll see you in an hour. Bye.”
“Okay, bye.”
I got to class and did the weirdest thing. My teacher was rude when I said sorry for being late and let me know that I was already marked absent and that she wasn’t going to change it as was the school’s policy. But I already knew that, and she had no reason to sound so rude when I was a good student, so I told her that I might as well be absent then and I walked right back out the door.
But it got weirder still.
I walked through the parking lot and as I approached Micah’s car, I got a bad idea that I acted on without considering the consequences. When I walked past it,
I threw all my body weight into his side mirror and dropped to the ground on purpose, so it looked like I fell, and I took his mirror out with me.
I got a piece of paper out of my backpack for the sake of the cameras to make it look like I left a note to take responsibility, but I didn’t really write anything. I just drew a sad face on it and left it under the blade of his windshield wiper.
I felt justified because I was angry, and I ignored the voice inside my head that said, “This isn’t you,” because for a moment I wanted it to be me.
I wanted to be bad.
I walked down to the lake and waited for Sai to get out of school because he had texted me and offered to take me to get some food.
Forty minutes later when he arrived, I got in his car and he drove out of town to a small city just fifteen minutes up the freeway so we could get sushi.
During the ride there we sat in silence as we listened to music which suited me. It gave me time to think of how I was going to explain what he saw happening between Micah and me. The only problem was it wasn’t enough time to think of a way to explain it to him without revealing too much information.
Once we sat down and ordered our food, he folded his hands together and said, “So.”
“So,” I said in return, and I copied his movements.
“What’s going on with you guys?”
I took a sip of my water and resigned myself to my fate.
“Would you believe me if I said nothing?” I asked.
“No, and especially not when he was looking for you after school like he intended to settle a score.”
Great.
“We were arguing again.” I leaned across the table and readied myself because I needed to be honest. “You know, it really gets to me how he thinks it’s okay to insert himself in things that aren’t his business.”
“What things?” He must of saw the hesitation in my eyes because he gave me a comforting smile and said, “Things you don’t want to discuss with anyone.”
“I’m sorry–”
“It’s okay,” he said before I could launch full send into a lengthy apology. “I realize there is more to your story because you don’t talk about any of it, you’re largely a closed book so I’ve always figured that there has to be more. But I’ve tried my best to respect that because at the end of the day you seem okay to me and I know that you are genuine so what goes on at home has never mattered to me.”
