Happier Without You

by Nicole Thorn

  Everything felt hunky dory until I felt a sharp pain in my foot. I stopped, and cursed as I looked at the bottom of my shoe. What the hell was a nail doing in the grass? I hopped over to the edge of the walkway, and sat down. My feet hung over, and the drop to the parking lot looked to be about six feet down. Not bad, but I didn’t want to fall.

  I pulled the nail out, and tossed it aside for some other unlucky soul. When my shoe came off, I only saw a little blood on my sock. The wound probably wouldn’t kill me, so I decided I didn’t need a doctor visit.

  I saw the shadow as I put my shoe back on, but I didn’t know who came over to me, or why. Before I registered the body, it lowered down, and sat on my lap. Tammy smiled at me, and put an arm over my shoulder.

  Stunned wouldn’t have been a big enough word to describe me. I couldn’t move, or say a word yet. My instincts told me to shove the girl off of my lap, but she could have landed wrong and broken her neck. I didn’t need to add murderer to my resume of failures. Maybe Tammy wanted to bury the hatchet, and this was part of her personality. Cathy acted kind of weird too, but I loved her for it. This didn’t feel like that.

  “Hello,” Tammy said to me, a tiny smile on her face. “How are you?”

  What was I supposed to say to her? “Um, okay I guess. You?”

  She reached for my face, and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “Oh, I’m great. I actually decided something, and it made me feel a lot better.”

  God, I wanted her off of me. Almost bad enough that I could have shoved her. I’d caused enough problems in her life this month, so I kept my hands to myself. “What might that be?”

  Tammy smiled widely, and her fingertips brushed my cheek. “I’m going to destroy you.”

  My heart tried to escape my chest, crashing against my ribs as the air left my lungs. She couldn’t have meant that. Not with how happy her smile looked, and soft her voice sounded. Tammy had to have been fucking with me.

  “What?” I asked.

  She adjusted on my lap, and folded her hands on her own. “I’m going to destroy you. I’m going to make you wish that you could find a place to hide. Nowhere will be safe.”

  Before I could say another word, she leaned forward, and pressed her lips against mine for about two seconds. Stunned, I didn’t fight her. The girl smiled again, and got off of me. I didn’t even watch her walk away.

  I… did not know what the hell that had been about, but my hands started shaking. I assumed Tammy hated me, but that felt like a bit much. She might have been serious, and I didn’t know what that meant for me. If this had been something meant to scare me, then she nailed it. Not that I thought she would have killed me or anything, but the girl had kissed me against my will too. That wasn’t okay with me.

  I stood up, my legs wobbly as I rubbed lip gloss off. The lacrosse team sounded loud on the other side of the field as I started hurrying off. I could have gone to tell Peter. Or, I guess I couldn’t have. A couple months ago, I would have run right to him and he would have… Wait. What would he have done? He wouldn’t have gone to talk with Tammy. He wouldn’t have wanted to deal with the confrontation. He would have taken me home.

  Now, if I told Cathy, she would have killed the girl. Poe, he probably would have come up with some kind of revenge for me. Maybe involving peeing on her car. My friends would have had my back.

  But I didn’t go to my friends. I went to the office instead.

  Two secretaries sat, stationed behind the desk in the main room of the office. Several other rooms were attached to this one, like this was the damn Pentagon or something. The counselor’s office sat to the left, the principal straight forward, vice to the right, and a couple other doors I didn’t know about. Probably storage or where they did their virgin sacrifices. It wasn’t really any of my business.

  I went up to the lady at the desk, noticing that the other one wasn’t there at the moment. This one had dark hair, short, and a little curly. She smiled at me as I approached, and I put my hands on the edge of her tall desk.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Weevil?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I don’t really know who to talk to here. I was just threatened by another student. She kissed me—”

  “What?” the woman said. “She threatened you by kissing?”

  “No. I was sitting outside, and she came up to me.”

  “Who?” she cut me off again.

  “Tamara…something. I don’t know her last name.” I went on with the rest of the story, trying to remember as many details as I could, and say them as if they didn’t freak me out.

  “That sounds like the exact thing a teenage girl would say to get a rise out of someone,” the woman said to me. “She wanted to scare you.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “And she did. What do I do now?” I assumed there was a form I had to fill out, or someone else I had to talk to. I didn’t know how far this would go, or if the cops had to get involved. The thought made me want to throw up a little, and I wished I’d gone and gotten Poe.

  “Nothing,” the woman sighed. “Unfortunately, there isn’t anything we can do for something like this.”

  “Something like this,” I repeated. “Something like a student threatening another student.”

  She dared to sigh at me again. “To me, this sounds like some petty mind games. What, you steal her boyfriend or something?”

  I flinched back. “No, I didn’t. This person kissed me, against my will, and on campus. You’re telling me you won’t do anything about that?”

  The woman leaned forward, and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I know that some people have certain…problems, with kissing people of the same sex. But—”

  Much louder than I had been before, I said, “I don’t have a fucking problem kissing girls. I have a problem with someone sitting on my lap, telling me they’re going to destroy me, and then kissing me before they take off. You can try and make me sound as awful as you want to, but I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  The other secretary must have heard my fit, because a grey haired lady came out of nowhere, and sat beside the other one. She kept her voice calm, as if she tried to soothe a wild animal. “What seems to be the trouble here?”

  Before the dumb woman could answer, I cut in, and repeated my story word for word. I told it exactly like it happened, trying not to sound biased or anything. I didn’t want to give them any ammo against me, since it looked like at least one of the women wanted to paint me as crazy.

  “Honey,” the second lady said, and I already gave up hope. “This is normal teenage girl stuff. She’s not going to hurt you.”

  I honestly thought that these people would have jumped on this, trying to help me out. Instead, it almost sounded like they barely believed me, and I realized I had no one on my side. It shocked me a little, this response so opposite to what I thought I would have gotten. I thought schools were supposed to have a zero tolerance on bullying things. Though, this didn’t come across as bullying to these people.

  “You don’t know that,” I said, trying one last time. “She said she was going to destroy me. That doesn’t sound like she wants to be friends.”

  The women exchanged a look, and they felt like a little army against me. The first one leaned forward again, and I already wanted to take a stapler to her fingers. “I understand that you got a little spooked, but I’m sure this is nothing. I hear about things like this all the time. Nothing ever comes from them.”

  Except for when they do, and people got hurt. This time, it was me up on the chopping block, and I couldn’t get these people to see reason. Fine then, I didn’t need them.

  “Is there someone else I can talk to?” I asked. “I bet the principal would want to hear about this.”

  Woman Two raised her hand at me. “I wouldn’t bother him with this, honey. How about you head home and relax. Cool off, get some rest. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  So now I’m crazy… Great. I needed mo
re people to make me think what I already knew. But of course, I could have lived with that. It was the fact that they denied me the right to tell someone who might have cared. Now I had to cross my fingers and hope that Tammy didn’t want to take this any farther. Or that if she had something planned, it wouldn’t kill me.

  “Sure,” I said, scratching my temple. “Thanks so much.” I’ll have my parents send you the funeral bill.

  “Bye, sweetie,” bitch one said to me.

  I smiled, and then walked out of the office before I could shatter all the glass in the room.

  Chapter Twelve: Refuted

  Pacing wasn’t much better than lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, so I started cleaning. I dusted my bookshelf, and started reorganizing. They’d been set up before, but I needed to fix it anyway. I made everything straight, put together by height and series, and then it looked okay, and I could breathe again. Next came making the already made bed, and then vacuuming. I stopped dead when I saw a picture in my closet that I’d forgotten about.

  I stared at an image of me and Peter that I meant to get a frame for a while ago. I had set it in the closet, and forgotten it existed. It was supposed to be for the blank space on my wall, right above my dresser. A prime spot, where I would have seen it always. I had a lot of pictures in my room that I didn’t want to look at anymore.

  Standing there, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I went around to every single picture I had up, and I shoved them into my dresser drawer. I had so many more than I would have guessed, and each one stung to touch. Same as the wood carvings. I hated seeing it. Memories of things that meant so much to me, and so little to Peter in the end. Happier without you. So easy to replace.

  The clock made me more aware of the time than my surroundings had. The sun had gone down a while ago, but I didn’t notice it until all the pictures had been tucked away. It pushed ten at night, and I wondered where the afternoon had gone. Getting force kissed by Tammy really took the wind out of me.

  The house had gone quiet, since the kids had to go to bed. With the school week over, they’d sleep in tomorrow, letting me get an extra hour without being woken up by their screams. When I’d gotten home today, I saw both of my parents in the living room with them. No one said hi to me, but that didn’t shock me.

  A tapping on my window had me dropping my dust rag on the floor, losing my breath. Instead of screaming, I calmed down, and reminded myself that if Tammy wanted to come kill me, she probably wouldn’t have knocked.

  I pulled my blinds open, and saw a boy smiling at me. Poe leaned on the windowsill, grinning and staring right at me. I opened up the window so that we could talk. Once the screen popped out, I dropped onto my knees, getting eye level with him.

  “Evening, miss,” he said. “And what are you doing tonight?”

  “Cleaning.”

  Poe leaned his head into my room, looking around. “Pretty good job. You just finish?”

  I wasn’t close to done, but I realized that my room would have seemed fine to any normal person. If I told him the truth, he would have thought me insane. “Yup.”

  He lifted an eyebrow at me. “Your walls are crazy boring.”

  “You only think that because yours are packed with a billion pictures.”

  “Like it should be,” he grunted, beginning to climb through the window. I had to move out of the way, and he dove inside without grace. He batted my hand away when I tried to help. “I got it. I’m a grown man.”

  I snorted, and stood from the floor. When Poe finally got righted, he made himself at home. I watched him slip into my bed like it wasn’t anything at all. He had removed his shoes first, so I didn’t have to hit him.

  “Comfy?” I asked.

  Poe turned and fluffed my pillow before lying back on it. “Fuck yeah.”

  I laughed, and slunk to my door. With a little peek outside of it, I saw that the house was pitch black. Everyone had gone to bed already, and I thanked the lord. Then I turned around, and saw Poe in my bed again. At night. All alone with me. Peter always got sent home before eight, so this felt terrifyingly new.

  I stayed all the way at the other end of the room.

  “You stop by for a reason?” I asked him. “Or were you bored?”

  He lifted his head up. “Watch out, honey. Your insecurity is showing.”

  I stared at the floor. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t say sorry for that. I wouldn’t want you thinking that I’d only come here because I had nothing better to do. I wanted to see you.”

  And there went keeping my pulse steady. Though Cathy had sought out my company before, and it hadn’t done this to me. I didn’t understand it.

  “Why?”

  Poe sat all the way up, watching me with a perturbed look on his face. “You’re my friend, and I like being with you. Plus, it’s a short walk.”

  Ah. I nodded. “So it’s convenient.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yes, but that wasn’t why I came—did you hear the other part? The part where I said I wanted to spend time with you? Or did you choose to ignore it?”

  I said nothing.

  Poe scooted over to the edge of my bed, and held his hand out. When I did nothing, he gestured at me. “Come on. I have some damage to fix.”

  I took his hand, not knowing what he had planned until he yanked me toward him. I stumbled, but he caught me before I got tossed into a pile of pillows. Poe laid back down with me, and threw a leg over mine.

  “There,” he said. “I have claimed you. Now you cannot assume I’m here for anything but my interest in you.”

  “Sorry,” I said again. “It’s just kinda hard to think that people would choose to spend time with me.”

  That got me hit in the face with a pillow. “You said that you spent almost all your time with your prick of an ex. He only wanted to be with you, so why is it that you can’t see someone wanting the same?”

  I looked away from him, choosing to stare at the wall. “He never actually said he liked spending time with me. He did it because there wasn’t anyone else.”

  “What? No way did he not tell you once that he liked it.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. He wasn’t like that.”

  I heard Poe sigh, and he pulled my arm over his shoulder so we could snuggle. “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be. Peter didn’t really talk about his feelings. I didn’t need him to tell me he liked me, or that he thought I was pretty.”

  Peter put his head against my shoulder, sighing again. “Tell me that he said he thought you were pretty.”

  “Nope.”

  He looked up ever so slightly. “Ever?”

  My cheeks turned pink as I realized I said something wrong. I didn’t want to have to say more, but I didn’t want Poe thinking Peter had been a total monster. “It’s not like he wouldn’t come near me or anything. We kissed sometimes, and cuddled when we watched TV.”

  Poe really had a thing for sighing, because this one lasted longer than the others. “Where to start… First off, it doesn’t matter if you knew he was attracted to you or not. He should have said it a few times, because clearly you need a boost.” I didn’t know Peter was attracted to me, but I couldn’t make myself say that. “Second, you’re not telling me anything that makes me feel better. He only kissed you sometimes?”

  “It’s fine. I don’t like kissing.”

  “Why?”

  I cleared my throat, trying not to laugh. “Peter wasn’t a great kisser. I didn’t like his…style.”

  “Dare I ask?”

  “He did this thing where he opened his mouth all the way, and then just kinda wiggled his tongue around, keeping my mouth all the way open too. It was…uncomfortable to say the least.” It felt like assault, if I wanted to be honest. “I would lay there until he was done.”

  “I don’t even… I don’t know what to do with that. Sex must have been amazing.”

  I blushed deeper. “We didn’t do that. I wasn’t ready, and I’m sure you ca
n imagine I didn’t think it would be the most fun of activities. But don’t think that I hated being with him. I didn’t. We’d sit in here, doing nothing, but we’d be together. He was nice. Called me Sweets. We had good times.”

  Poe eyed me doubtfully. “Was he all that nice if he didn’t treat you right? I mean, he didn’t have to give you constant reassurance, but occasional would have been kind. He also manipulates you a lot. Even now. He tried to guilt you into staying friends with him, even though you told him how hard that would have been. He didn’t drop it.”

  I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t fight his point. Peter also broke up with me as cruelly as he could have. The boy knew exactly how to destroy me, and he did it anyway. He shattered me, and then asked me to do him the favor of being his support.

  “He didn’t do a good job of being there for me,” I realized out loud. “I couldn’t talk to him about anything without it getting all turned around. Sometimes he would take it all personally, if I felt bad. Like he wasn’t good enough to fix it. Or, Peter would make it about him, and then I’d be stuck feeling like death, and having to talk him down.”

  Poe held my hand, giving me a supportive smile. “Don’t take this as me trying to make you hate him, but he did some messed up stuff. He knew you have self-esteem issues, and he didn’t do anything to make you feel better. I don’t get it.”

  “Me neither, and I guess I never will.”

  He pulled me to him, turning so we could get all cuddly. I liked being there, curled up with him. Having spent so long alone, this seemed to be what I needed.

  “I’m not doing this only to make you feel better,” Poe said. “But you’re a very pretty girl.”

  Now I got to roll my eyes.

  “Clover,” he admonished.

  I looked down at myself, and poked my not so flat stomach. Peter said he never minded that I was overweight. He called it chunky, because he thought it sounded nicer.

  “Knock that off,” Poe said, pulling my hand away.

  “I can’t help it,” I defended. “I know what I look like.”