Entry #516348, added on 03-01-10 @ 3:46 pm EST
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| Chapter Four | Entry #516348 |
Blake raises his hand but doesn’t wait for our Pre-Cal teacher to call on him before shouting, "I don't think we should have to come to school!”
“And why is that?” Mrs. Sheppard sighs and turns from the problem she’s writing on the board to look at him. I can’t help but be amazed at her patience.
"Because of the weather! It's been freaking black outside for a week!" He motions at the window, where the parking lot and the black clouds above.
Mrs. Sheppard’s eyes journey to the window, as do the eyes of the rest of the class.
"Blake, shut up," I hiss at him. "You're getting on my nerves."
He slouches back in his chair to look over at me. "What's your problem?"
Where to start? I have a million problems and the most recent seems to be the absence of the sun for the past week. It’s enough to make anyone want to sit in a corner and cry. I put my head on my desk and wait, wait for the sunshine to come back.
But something inside me says it won’t be coming back anytime soon, and the idea makes me die a little inside.
“My problem is you. Can you please just shut it?”
Even though I don’t lift my head, I can feel Blake’s eyes on me. “Jerk,” I hear him mutter.
“Beth, don’t be rude, and get your head up.” It seems Mrs. Sheppard has much less patience when it comes to me.
~*~
When I find a text message on my phone after my last period from Morgan, saying she doesn’t need a ride home, relief rushes through me. I so badly want to go home.
I don't even think about it when I pass Wren in the hall. It's been like this for the past three days. He watches me in the parking lot. He watches me in lunch. Then he watches me walk out the door after school. And I can't figure it out.
Today is different. Today he doesn't just watch me; he starts to walk after me. I try to pretend that he isn't there. He's not following you, I try to tell myself, but I know he is.
I can see the double doors at the end of the hallway. It’s not as if he can do anything to me here in the middle of the school. Students stand all around us, hanging out, talking, and looking on. There’s no way.
When I reach the door, I throw it open and speed up. I suddenly wish I had parked somewhere else. I always park on the side entrance, the one that barely anyone uses, and soon, there will be only him and me. I make my way through the grass, toward the parking lot. Has there always been so much of it?
I hear the thunder rumble in the distance, but it doesn't surprise me anymore. It seems like the thunder is never-ending, constantly following me everywhere I go. I can’t escape it.
I hear his footsteps on the concrete behind, and I suddenly can’t remember the last time I was this afraid. I’m not afraid he’s going to murder me and leave me behind a dumpster or anything, but I can’t possibly know what he wants with me. It’s not like we’ve ever been friends, and the last thing I need is a creepy stalker.
"Bethany!"
My heart speeds up. I can hear my pulse in my ears. I didn’t even know he knew my name. I’ve never stood out in school the way he does. My only claim to fame is my relationship with one of the most popular guys in school, and since that ended I might as well be invisible.
"Bethany!"
I spin around, clenching my hands into fists. "What?" I yell. "What do you want? Why are you following me around?" My stomach jumps up into my throat, because I really hadn’t been planning to say anything to him.
Wren looks startled by the outburst . As I stare angrily. waiting for an answer, a wind that I didn't feel before blows his blond bangs away from his face to reveal a brown eye. Who knew his eyes were different colors?
"I heard about your accident." For a stalker, he seems pretty calm. It's the first time I've ever heard his voice. It's deep and surprisingly steady, as if we were exchanging small talk instead of engaging in an awkward confrontation.
"That's great," I answer, sarcasm making my words sour. "That's why you've been watching me?"
He shakes his head slowly, never taking his eyes off me. "I want to help you."
I roll my eyes. "I don't need help." I turn to leave and add so that he won’t hear, "I think you do."
"You've noticed it!" He yells out to me. "I know you have! Something’s wrong, and you’re not sure what!”
Spinning back to him, I can’t contain my anger and disbelief. “What are you talking about?” I demand. “You don’t even know me!” A gust of wind blows my hair in my face. I brush it away.
"Go ahead," he says, looking around at the sky, "Get mad. See what happens."
I suck in a sharp breath. "What's that supposed to mean?" My head whirls a little at the situation I find myself in. Here I am, standing outside of school with a boy who everyone thinks is some sort of lunatic, and he’s what exactly? Telling me that, I don’t know, if I get mad something bad is going to happen?
"Whatever." He shrugs. Then he's walking away, leaving me to think about him and this weird encounter. He doesn't know me, I tell myself. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He really is just as weird as everyone thinks he is because what he’s implying in impossible.
I drive home feeling angry at Wren and even more angry at the stupid weather that won’t just settle down a little bit.
When I pull up in front of my house and see the familiar black Escalade parked in the driveway, I let out a groan. If there is anything that can make my day worse, it’s Eric, my mom’s boyfriend. He makes hate seem like a pleasant word.
"Mom?" I call out when I unlock the door. The house sounds empty but the smell of dinner wafts from the kitchen.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Eric approach the living room from the main hallway and suppress a gag at his slick, dark hair and his khakis and polo. "Good afternoon, Bethany," he says to me with a fake smile as he sticks his hands in his pockets.
"Hello, Eric." I try to mimic his tone, but I'm pretty sure that disgust creeps in there somewhere.
"Your mother invited me for dinner. I hope you don’t mind.”
It’s a little crazy how strong the urge is to say, “Of course I mind, now get out of my house.” But somehow I overcome and don’t have to say anything when my mother comes into the room.
“Of course she doesn’t mind. Don’t be ridiculous!” She walks around me to stand by him, looking the perfect arm candy in her adorable little sundress.
Yes, mother, how ridiculous it would be if I didn’t want Eric around.
He leans down to whisper something in her ear and she giggles before I have the good sense to roll my eyes and leave the room.
~*~
"So, Bethany, how's school?" Eric asks politely.
"Beth," I correct him without taking my eyes off my lasagna. I wish it was his head I’m poking with my silverware.
Even without looking up, I can tell he has fixed his cold glare on me, as if he can somehow pulverize me with his eyes.
Beside him, my mother sighs.
Because I know it bothers her how much Eric and I openly dislike each other, I say, "School's fine."
After a moment, he asks another question, this one as innocently offered as the last one. "Don't you have a boyfriend?"
I look up at him, sitting across the table. He knows about Sean. I know he does because I heard mom telling him about it. I grind my teeth together and keep my mouth closed.
When I don't answer him, he asks, "Sean, isn't it?"
I wait for my mom to speak up, to offer some sort of declaration that shows she’s on my side, but I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath. "Sean and I are no longer together."
"Aw, why not?" He feigns interest and cocks his head to the side.
"That's none of your business."
"Bethany!" my mother scolds, as if it was I, not he, who was being rude and intrusive. "That was disrespectful."
“He was being disrespectful." I jerk my head in Eric’s direction.
My mother opens her mouth to answer, but Eric speaks over her. "I was only wondering what went wrong." He doesn't meet my gaze, just looks around the room as he speaks, like it’s some new wonder.
"You know what went wrong," I mumble.
"Excuse me?" he asks, cupping his hand behind his ear.
"I said, you know what went wrong.” I barely manage not to shout at him across the table. I expect my mother to say something, to try and break up the argument, but her mouth remains closed "I know mom told you. I'm not stupid.”
"I never said you were stupid." He sounds much more clam than me, but I know from experience that he could explode any second. The thought gives me a chill.
"You don't have to say it. I know what you think of me." At this, I slide my chair back and stalk out of the dining room. He follows me. My mother doesn't.
"I don't appreciate you speaking to me that way in front of your mother." His voice follows me down the hallway until I am standing in the doorway to my room.
I spin around to meet his dark, cold eyes. "You are not my father. Don't tell me what to do." I'm not yelling anymore. My voice is low, dripping with hatred.
He moves forward before I can stop him and grabs hold of my wrist. This is the first time he has ever laid a hand on me. It makes my heart hammer in surprise. "I'm your elder. You respect me." His voice is rising, but he doesn't scare me. Not in the least.
I rip my arm from his grasp and take a step back. "I hate you," I whisper, knowing that if my mother found out that I said this to him, she would probably disown me. I turn back to my room and try to get the door closed before I have to listen to another word.
It doesn't slam before I heard him call out, "I'm not here for you! I don't need you to like me!"
The rest of his reply is muffled behind my closed door.
I sit on my bed and wait for my mother to come in and deliver her usual speech. She'll tell me that I have no right to yell at the man that she loves. She'll say she loves me, but that doesn't mean I can be disrespectful to Eric. Then she'll close by saying that I should apologize, but she won't make me do what I don't want to.
And since she gives me this choice to make for myself, this little slice of freedom, I never apologize. I have no reason to.
My door creaks open and I see a familiar livid expression on my mother's face as she steps into my room.
"Bethany Nichole James!"
I cross my arms and watch her point a bony finger at me where I sit on the edge of my bed. Her slim face is flushed and her fluffy brown hair is trembling in a heap on her head.
"You have no right to yell at the man I love just because you feel threatened by him..."
Right. Threatened. I let my mind wander, not wanting to listen to her say this again. I glance behind me out the window. The sky is a light orange color, a color I've only seen once in my life. I ignore it and the wind throwing around the branches of the crate myrtle in the front yard to let my eyes fall on the clock atop my nightstand. 6:15.
The whistling of the wind is dangerously close to drowning out my mother's angry rants.
"I love you, Beth, but that doesn't mean I'm going to give you free reign..."
Maybe not quite.
My mind wanders to Wren Stoner. His blue eye, his brown eye, and the blonde hair covering one of them.
Go ahead, he'd said to me. Get mad. See what happens.
Was he serious? What was he saying to me? Did he expect me to believe that if I got angry he was going to get struck by lightening or something? Come on.
"Now I can't force you to do anything, but I think you should apologize…"
~*~
I step out of the shower later that night and hear Eric's voice in the living room.
"You shouldn't let her get away with stuff like this, Katherine." I hate that my mom lets him call her by her full name. She doesn’t let anyone else call her Katherine.
"She's an adult. She can make her own decisions." I can hear that my mother is distracted. Her voice sounds bored, and I can imagine her moving around the kitchen, cleaning while trying to convince him of her point.
I listen on curiously, letting the water drip down to the tile floor.
"She lives under your roof. All you have to do is enforce the rules."
"She's leaving in two months. She's not going to listen to me." There's a pause. I can see her stopping in front of him, finally looking him in the eye. "She's only like this when you're around. You provoke her."
I scrub my head, drying my hair, and letting the towel brush over my ears so that I don't have to listen to his reply. This is the worst part about having a bathroom in the hallway right outside the kitchen.
When I throw my long hair back and pull the towel around my body, I hear the front door open.
"I'll come by on Sunday. Is two days long enough for her to cool down?"
My temperature rises, as if my body is rebelling against his words. As far as I am concerned, I'll never 'cool down' around him.
My mother doesn't answer this. "I love you," she says instead.
"I love you, too."
I want to hurl. The door closes and I step into the hallway, the steam from the shower no longer envelopes my skin. I shiver as the cold air hits me like a wall and hurry to my room before my mother spots me watching her saunter back to the kitchen.
I change into an old shirt and a pair of boxers and crawl into bed. I flip off my light, but keep my TV on, the light from the screen filling up my room. I like to watch TV before bed to help me fall asleep. Otherwise, I can stare up at the ceiling for hours. When I get to the local news station, I stop flipping through the channels.
I listen to the reporter, a woman with blonde hair and too much makeup, tell about a car crash on the highway down the road from my house. The story changes, and a photo flashes on the screen of a mobile home lying in two pieces, as if an earthquake just ripped it in half. I turn up the volume so that I can hear it clearly.
"At 6:05 this evening, a tornado touched down unexpectedly, tearing through a house in Sunnyvale, just miles from Mesquite."
I sit up in bed, resisting the urge to let my mouth fall open.
"This is the first tornado that has passed through the Dallas/ Fort Worth area in quite some time. One man, who lived in the damaged house with his wife and daughter, was killed. Mr. Avery was only 38..."
I block out the rest of the story by muting the TV.
6:05. 6:05 PM, tonight. The thoughts going through my head don’t even make sense. They can’t possibly make sense because that would disprove everything I’ve been raised to believe. And yet, Wren’s face pops into my head.
And that's when a bolt of white hot lightening rips through the night sky. The flash is so bright I slam my eyes shut and shudder when I hear the resulting thunder.
My heart slams against my chest, as if it’s trying to escape. There’s no way. There’s just no way. I think of Eric, of him telling me I have to respect him and that he’s my elder. I think of him telling my mother about Sean as if it’s his business.
The wind howls outside. I can hear it, but my mind ignores it. It’s too busy being angry at my mother’s boyfriend.
He has no right to bring up my personal life, to butt into it and try to use it against me. I feel myself breathing speed up as I slowly get angrier and angrier.
I gasp when I hear the window rattling under the force of the wind. I take a deep breath and listen as the wind dies down. I lay completely frozen in my bed and slam my eyes shut.
That's it. |
© Copyright 2010 GryffindorGurl (UN: magicfreak11 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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