Beautiful Bedlam (5 page)

After that day she stopped laughing as much, limited her friends only to Rose and Noah who must have on some level felt her pain. They both must have known about her love for him although they
never
brought it up. It was an unspoken truth. Her first love, the boy who had taken her heart and ran away with it was back in Haven Falls, back in her high school, back in her life and she just didn’t know how to handle it.

“Miss Rivers?” a voice called snapping Sienna back to reality.

“Yes?” she replied as she glanced up at Miss Bloom, her calculus teacher.
“The answer? Come on, we’ve all been waiting.” She said huffily knowing full well Sienna had no idea what on earth she was talking about. Sienna felt a little guilty she hadn’t been paying attention. If she could, she would have. It was just current life event kept drawing her attention to other places but its not like she could exactly explain that to her teachers, they didn’t care. No one ever did.

“Right.” She murmured and sat a little straighter in her chair and looked around at the amused smirks all around her. She looked at the whiteboard hoping the question was on it. It was not. “Yes, the answer. I’m sorry, what was the question again?” she asked and smiled at her sheepishly causing her peers to chuckle a little. She was met with a grim look on Miss Bloom’s fairly pretty face.

“Do you think you’re funny, Sienna?” she asked with raised eyebrows.

“Not even remotely.” She replied instantly, her face deadpan.

“Question three, page thirteen.” Bloom spat out. Jeez, someone had a serious case of PMS and was taking it out on the students again. Sienna looked down at her calculus textbook, which seemed to be written completely in Japanese. She blinked. Yep, still Japanese. She turned the book around realizing it was upside down. This was met with some laughter. She was apparently hilarious today. Who knew?

“Question three.” Sienna mumbled and began scribbling on her notepad working out the equation. “See, you don’t know. You’ll see in the SAT’s at the end of the academic year just how well students who don’t pay attention in class do in comparison to students like Bethany. Bethany can you tell me the answer?”

“I’ve got it!” Sienna exclaimed a little too cheerfully for Miss Bloom’s liking.
“Too late.” She replied tersely.

“But you only gave me a few seconds.” Sienna said confoundedly. 

“Bethany, the answer.” Bloom commanded sternly, ignoring Sienna. Bethany Simmons, cheerleading royalty, the black haired blue-eyed devil that she was, turned around and smirked at Sienna before turning to her book.

“Question three? Okay, let’s see.” Bethany murmured as she began solving the problem. She was smacking her lips as she chewed gum openly in front of everyone even though chewing gum in class was clearly against school policy.

“But I know it now.” Sienna shouted out incredulously much to the surprise of her classmates who barely got a word out of the girl since the eighth grade.

“Sienna, one more word out of-“ Bloom warned.

“Its two ex plus four.” Sienna said abruptly and leaned back in her chair defiantly glaring back at Miss Bloom who stared back at her bewilderedly.

“She’s right.” Someone else muttered from their seats. The bell rang for lunch break.

“All the questions in that chapter for homework by tomorrow. You can thank Miss Rivers over there for that.” Bloom shouted over the sound of her students scrambling their belongings together. Her sudden announcement was met with disgruntled moans and groans and pointed glares at Sienna who felt guilty but not enough to show it. She remained seated in her chair as everyone left knowing she would have been called back anyway. Bloom sat in her chair behind her desk and sighed.

“Sienna, what’s with the attitude?” she asked with a shake of the head. Sienna knew what question was coming next. “Is everything alright at home?” she asked as she leaned forward. “No. Why would you think that?” Sienna asked incredulously as she grabbed her bag and began walking towards her.

Sienna wondered if she had to come limping in to school with blood smeared all over her face before someone thought ‘Hmm maybe this girl is lying to us?’ The truth was something Sienna had discovered years ago. Teachers were too busy with their own grown up problems to care about fickle little teenaged problems.

“Honestly, miss? Its all these numbers, they get so jumbled up in my little head and I get so confused.” Sienna sighed forlornly with slumped shoulders.

“I knew it! I knew you must have gotten that question wrong.” Miss Bloom exclaimed a little too zealously.

“I could tell you were struggling. You know you don’t have to be ashamed if you find this work a little too challenging for you. You just have to tell me. You don’t need to do the entire chapter. Just do as many questions as you can.” She said patronizingly and gently squeezed her shoulder as if to say ‘Oh you poor dumb child who can’t even differentiate, don’t despair, there’s always a McDonald’s or a diner you can flip burgers at’. Contrary to popular belief, not
everything
taught at school is needed for everyday life.

“Come on, don’t look so down and don’t be thinking you’re stupid because you’re not!” Miss Bloom said ardently oblivious to just how condescending she was.

“You’re right, I’m not.” Sienna said sweetly and beamed up at her. She walked towards the door but quickly came back unable to walk away meekly like before.

“Oh and one more thing.” She said and grabbed the board pen and began crossing one of the equations that Bloom had done wrong. Instead, next to it she wrote the correct answer with its working out shown. She put the pen down and smiled condescendingly at a bewildered open-mouthed Miss Bloom and gently squeezed her shoulder.

“That’s just been bugging me all lesson.” Sienna remarked with a wicked mischievous glint in her brilliant green eyes.

“Thanks for letting me off the homework. I can always count on you, Bloom!” Sienna shouted over her shoulder as she left the classroom and entered the hallway. Bloom called her name out after her, which she promptly ignored. Sienna put her hood up and put her earphones in drowning out the bustling, murmuring, humming human sounds all around her, replacing it all with Lana Del Rey. It seemed as though she was the only one on earth who seemed to understand her these days.

4.

“Sienna! Hey, I’ve been calling you for ages.” Rose shouted as Sienna pulled her earphones out. She had just made it to the high school cafeteria. Rose sat down next to her, closely followed by Noah. “Oh my god. You will not believe the amount of girls that have been checking Noah out today. It’s unbelievable! They all think he’s a new kid or something!” Rose laughed.

“Really, stud?” Sienna laughed along.

“Oh come on, its not that funny. And I’d hardly call it unbelievable!” Noah commented but looked down at his tray of food abashed.

“Uh oh! Looks like somebody’s getting a big ego.” Sienna shook her head slightly with a huge grin on her face.

“Not even close. You know there’s only room for two women in my life.” Noah said courteously.

“Yeah, your mom and your grandma.” Sienna remarked causing Rose to snort with laughter.

“Hey, how are your mom and dad? Are they still fighting?” Rose asked after a brief pause realizing Sienna hadn’t talked about them for quite some time.

“Mr. and Mrs. Rivers fight? Since when?” Noah asked incredulously. The shock was evident on his face. He had on countless occasions come by her home and not once did he sense even a smidge of tension between the couple, nor had he ever heard Sienna complain of any fighting.

“I thought your parents were…I don’t know…happy? They’re practically the same as that couple on Modern Family.” Noah said lightheartedly trying to lighten the tense mood. She could see how people would see it like that especially given her mother’s stunning Colombian good looks and her Caucasian father.

“They are. They just fought that one day. I don’t know why I was so worked up about it.” Sienna said airily and shrugged her shoulders like she didn’t have a care in the world. She was going to tell them about her father, about how he left last night, it was right there on the tip of her tongue but she just couldn’t get the words out. Instead she began spewing out lies, something that usually didn’t come easy to her yet now she seemed to have no problem.

“They’re so disgustingly in love. Its…nasty…cos they’re old.” Sienna stuttered and chuckled softly and took a sip of water from her bottle.

“Ukh, do old people even do it after forty?” Rose asked and wrinkled up her nose in disgust, her expression as always priceless. Sienna almost choked on her water and began coughing suddenly.

“Ew! Rose! Images are forming in my head! I-“

“Cut the crap. What’s really got you upset? And don’t pretend you’re not because I know you are.” Noah quickly cut in and stared at Sienna with those familiar worried warm brown eyes. She opened her mouth as if to say something, to refute his absurd claims, to laugh indifferently, to say something,
anything
, but nothing came out.

“Nobody listens to this lady in the day without a sad psychological need for therapy behind it. So come on, spew your lovely guts out.” Noah told her briskly as he held her earphone up. She glanced at Rose for some help trying to communicate with her through some sort of female intuition best friend bond telekinesis. It looks like Sienna was all out of Jedi mind tricks for the day. She sighed in defeat as she saw Rose give her the same curious worried look. He meant all business. He wasn’t going anywhere without a confession. For some reason her heart raced. Should she say it? Why shouldn’t she say it? It’s not a big deal. People’s fathers leave all the time.

Hell, there’s a whole entertainment business profiting solely from it, Sienna reckoned thinking about strippers or ‘exotic dancers’ as they preferred to be called. For some reason Sienna didn’t want to admit it. Admit the fact that she had just been added to the unwanted abandoned pile. She couldn’t even tell her closest friends about because if she did, then she’d cry, and if she started crying she was afraid she’d never stop.

“Its about…him isn’t it?” Noah asked and leaned back and rubbed his jaw as if he were angry or something. Sienna frowned at them in confusion. Perhaps her friends weren’t exactly the Sherlock and Watson she had allowed herself to believe.

“Logan,” Noah said softly. “Its about Logan, isn’t it?” he asked.

“It always is.” He muttered under his breath as he leaned back in his chair. Well, he’d figured out one out of the two, so she had to give credit where it was due she supposed.

“
What?
I-“

“Oh come on, Sienna! You can cut it out now! We know. We’ve always known.” Rose groaned clearly frustrated by holding in this secret for so long. Sienna could tell that her best friend had just been itching to address the elephant in the room in perhaps years but had the good sense not to knowing it would completely freak Sienna out in to muted seclusion.

“You’ve had a crush on Logan Jackson since forever.” Rose practically cried out in her usual overly loud tone.

“Keep your voice down!” Sienna hissed and looked around worriedly. Thankfully nobody was within a two-meter radius.

“Everybody has.” Sienna countered lightly.

“I beg to differ.” Noah quickly interjected with a hand held up high as he took a bite out of his brilliant green apple.

“Everybody knew you had a crush on him. It’s no big deal.” Rose said casually.

“Wait…nobody knew.” Sienna retorted adamantly. She had gone to extraordinary depths to conceal her biggest darkest secret all the way from burning pages from her diary and almost burning down the kitchen one time frightening her parents in to thinking she was some mentally challenged pyromaniac to never admitting the truth aloud to anybody, least of all to herself in fear of saying it in her sleep.

“Everybody knew. Even your mom knew.” Noah added.

“My mom didn’t know!” Sienna exclaimed then paused thinking back to her childhood.

“Oh my god, she knew!
Oh
! Everybody knew! I thought I was so discrete about it…like I could have been a Russian spy in another life, you know?” she moaned and rested her head on the table in disgrace and shame.

“Well if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think he knew. He was probably the only one who didn’t notice.” Noah consoled her kindly.

“Thank God.” She sighed a breath of relief.

“You know my dad said his father is running for Senator!” Rose whispered gossipingly and glanced around her as the cafeteria was quickly becoming more and more filled with loud bustling students. This was news to Sienna. She knew Logan’s family consisted of a bunch of lawyers. They were excessively wealthy and popular in the community. It shouldn’t have come as such a great surprise that they were political.

“Sienna, Logan left without so much as a goodbye. He never even called you. No Facebook messages.
Nothing
. He completely ignored you whilst still keeping in contact with
everybody
else. He even replied to some of my tweets and I hardly knew him!” Rose whispered quickly and fervently as she leaned on her elbows, her head close to Sienna’s.

“What’s your point?” she asked coldly, her voice detached, her eyes distant as if she were daydreaming again. This drove Rose utterly insane.

“
Nothing?
No reaction? Honestly, you scare me sometimes. If you continue bottling all this emotion up, one day you’ll explode.” She chided and crossed her arms evidently displeased with not getting the overly dramatic romanticized reaction she had so obviously hoped for. What did she expect? Sienna to gasp, mumble inordinately, blush, giggle, squeal, cry? What? Who knew?

“What? So he left without a goodbye? So what? He didn’t owe me an apology. He had no existing debts to pay me. We had no tangible reason to stay in touch. We were merely friends due to the universe thrusting us together at opportune moments in our lives. We were friends of convenience, that’s all. People come and go. Its no big deal.” Sienna remarked astutely and ran her fingers through her long silken dark locks. Rose glared at Sienna and shook her head clearly furious with her. Sienna didn’t understand why.