Chasing After Infinity (17 page)

It’s a good thing that Dad thought that my bruises were from dodge ball when we were eating breakfast and he was reading the newspaper or else he would’ve freaked out. My morning classes pass by as blurs. I can’t focus on anything. A few times, I catch people staring openly at me, but they quickly dart their eyes away when I focus on them.

At lunch, it’s the worst.

I carry my overflowing tray to our usual table near the bay window. Then I immediately freeze.

I’m confronted with Adrian and his group of friends, who had took over our normal table and kicked all my other friends out.
Invaded our
territory.
Hayden and Kara are absent; I don’t see a sign of them anywhere.

Adrian looks up at me and stops talking when he sees me storm over. When I approach, he smirks. “What a lovely surprise, Miss. Rivers.”

I count to ten mentally to keep my temper steady. This has been a horrible week, and the Advil pills that I’ve swallowed this morning don’t help the aching in my cheek. “Not much of a surprise when you know this is where I
normally
eat,” I say, drawing each word clearly.

He looks mockingly surprised.
“Oh, no!
Really?”

I shove his tray over and replace it with mine. “Get up. I’m not eating with you.”

“Why not?
According to everyone else, aren’t we supposed to be going out, monkey?” A smile breaks out in his face. His green eyes laugh at me. His buddies grin knowingly to each other.

I gape at him, bewildered. “Whatever made you think I would ever—” He stops me by pulling me down next to him and slinging an arm around my shoulders.

“Keep your STD-infested—”

His voice is near my ear, whispering. “Look over there.” My eyes follow his to where Graham is sitting in the table with a couple of his stoner friends, staring at me, eyes narrowed. Fear, the tingly kind, whizzes through my veins as I remember. Adrian makes his voice low. “If you’re by my side, Michaels won’t dare to attack you again. You’re guaranteed free security.”

“I don’t need your ‘security,’” I whisper back.

“Fine.
Next time, I’m not saving your pathetic ass,” he says, pushing me back.

I glare back at him.
“Fine.”

The rest of lunch, Adrian and I ignore each other. While he talks to his football team mates or pay a slight bit attention to the girls fawning over him, I try not to watch him while he laughs and talks. Every girl in the group is cleverly competing for a conversation with him, and a redhead is running her hands through his hair, tousling it while she giggles.

“You’re staring.”

Valerie Fieldings, the girl I met a few weeks ago in the library, pulls me back from my examination and I look into her wide blue eyes as she subtly smiles. “Doesn’t he ever get pissed off that all the girls are all over him?” I ask her in a low voice. “I mean, c’mon, it must be annoying.”

A guy, one of Adrian’s friends, seems to overhear my remark. “Amazing patience is the only answer.” He smiles at me, his gold-flecked eyes trailing over me. “So you’re the one that everyone’s talking about…?”

“Infamous now, I see,” I say, sighing.

“Blake’s just exaggerating things,” Valerie says to me, glaring at him while he grins. “Don’t worry, it won’t last long. The rumour mill is never stable.”

I stay quiet, eating my own lunch.

“Besides, Adrian cleared everything up this morning.”

The tardy bell rings just then. I’m confused. “Cleared up what?”

Valerie looks at me, getting up to throw out her tray. “You don’t know? He made Michaels say the truth about where he got the pictures from.”

Dumbfounded, I swing my eyes back to where Adrian is already leaving the dining hall, his arms around the redhead, his back to me.

“Huh,” I say softly.

chapter
fourteen

AVENA

For the next few days, I’ve settled into a familiar routine. Eat, go to school, sleep. I felt relieved that I’m no longer the centre of attention and the rumours were beginning to die away. My bruises are fading into bluish yellow and the ache is dulling. Adrian and I are finally starting to get along and life, it seems, is fairly simple. Things have been going quite peaceful, the majority of my days were spent with Hayden and Kara chilling in the school back lot or trying to enjoy ice cream with the cold wind blowing.

Minutes melt into hours, days melt into weeks, and now it’s the first week of October. Time passes too quickly, autumn is already here. I
can tell by the swirling, browning leaves in the acrid, crisp air.
The birds’ chatter beginning to fade away.
The trees in their summer splendour changing to red and gold.
The afternoon sun, once hot and scorching, now abruptly soft and mellow on skin.
I walk along the concrete path along the quad by myself, trying to soak up the last few rays of the daylight sun.

The yelling breaks my earlier autumn trance. I spot a familiar figure underneath a dapple tree as I pass the courtyard. Adrian. He’s arguing with a girl, his hands gesturing everywhere as he tries to explain, the girl screaming at him. A few people have paused mid-step to glance at the unravelling fiasco but then again, it’s just another episode of
Eiernhill
drama. I immediately identify it as break-up drama.

Intrigued, I come closer and find that the girl is Stacey Abrahams, Adrian’s conquest of already a month. Heavy mascara drips around her blue eyes as she cries. Adrian tries to separate her from him but she clings to his shirt. I catch glimpses of their argument.

“—No, it’s not over just yet,” she yells, still clutching him. “You said it, I know you did, you said you loved me! Y-you…”

I barely suppress a laugh as she spits out “Bastard!” and hits him on the head with one of her heels. He staggers back, taken aback. Stacey gulps, shoots him a hateful look and then realizing what an audience she’d gathered, tries to regain her composure and storms away from him. She elbows away the snickering people watching her.

I can barely hold back a laugh now, shaking my head. Is this a prime time soap opera or what?

Adrian is left blinking, standing alone. Then his eyes carefully land on me watching him and I walk over to him.

“So you’ve witnessed everything, huh?” He says, exhaling, lighting a Winston cigarette.

“How--” I stop and shake my head, sighing. “You date them, use them, make them think that they can
tame
you and then leave them. What kind of person does that make you?”

He trains his gaze on mine, holding the hot end of his cigarette towards me.
“Those girls.
They know exactly what they’re getting into.” He squints at me. “And besides, for most of them, they’re not looking for true love, if you get my meaning.”

I roll my eyes. “What about the others, the ones that are?”

He shrugs. “They know full well what I’m not the type of person they should be in love with.”

“So what type are you then?” I challenge.

“You really want to know?” A half-smirk is on his curved lips as he blows the smoke into my face. I fan the smoke away, glaring at him.

“Stacey was right about you then,” I say crisply.

“I can’t help being this way.” Adrian shrugs again.

“Ha!” I point my finger at him. “There’s your problem. If you’re not going to make yourself change, then you’re never going to. When you’re done snivelling around and whining, maybe you can finally take responsibility for yourself.”

He blinks at me in one slow second.
Then a slow smile.
“Well, well. Nicely said little speech, monkey.”

Monkey
makes me twitch. “The name is going to have to go off,” I reply firmly.

“Nope, it stays.”

I narrow my gaze at him. “You
wanna
bet?”

He tosses ash from his cigarette, stubbing its end out. “Make me.”

Without thinking, I move my hand and swipe his cigarette from him.

I smirk.
“Oh yeah?”
I stick my tongue out at him without thinking.

“Little vixen!” Adrian laughingly tries to reach for me but I dance out of his way, stubbing the cigarette out with my foot. Jumping to my feet, I rush to the other end of the quad.

“Hey, there!”
He calls out and I cackle as I run, passing a blur of faces that turn.

He starts to chase after me, catching up to me in no time. Shit.

Adrian then decides to tackle me to the ground, I feel his weight crash into me from behind, and we both fall, taking the other down with them.

The wind is knocked from me as my back hits the dirt. I wince.

He stares at me, the smile wiped from his lips. “Hell, are you okay? You were hurt before--”

“Fooled you!”
I laugh, watching his face grow from hesitant, to surprised, then amused.

His legs are holding mine to the ground and his hands are pinning my wrists together, I can feel his compact body over mine, making a hot rush of blood go to my head. He leans against me until our lips are barely touching and our breaths are mingling. Yet he doesn’t move, just watches me with those green flecked eyes, an evil smirk on his face.

“Up for some payback?”

Then he does the undeniable. He starts to tickle me. At first, I’m surprised but then as his fingers travel down my side, I shake and start writhing.

“
Ahahahaha
, stop it,
hahaha
, I mean it!” I choke back, gasping.

“Are you sure?” Adrian replies, smirking.

I just can’t seem to control my laughter. Tears pool up and stream down my face as I wheeze.

“Do you surrender?” Adrian asks, continuing to tickle me.

I can’t stand it anymore. “
Hahhaha
, yes,
mwhahaha
, stop it!”

He starts to get off of me but I still keep on laughing.

“Did I break you?” Adrian stares at me laughing hysterically. I can’t catch my breath as I choke and gasp, still in a heap on the ground.

Through laughs and tears, I whisper, “I’m already broken.”

***

At lunch, Kara, Hayden, and I hit Denny’s right off by crossing to the mall in front of our school, sliding into our favourite red booth by the window. We share our avocado burritos and split the poutine fries, digging in. I laugh when Hayden has a smear of ketchup across his chin, and he pretends to have a moustache, all of us clowning around. Then everything goes downhill fast as we stop eating and start talking.

“How’s life as one of the golden people?” Kara teases me, with a mouthful, poking me with one of her manicured fingers.

“What are you talking about?” I snort.
“Golden—what?”

“You know, being Huntington’s latest girl.”

I choke on an avocado slice and gag. After I spit it out, I look at her. “
No.
No. Who told you that?”

“I heard it from a couple of guys during a track meet.” Kara waggles her eyebrows. “I knew it! I knew that there was something between you two.”

Hayden looks at me, raising an eyebrow, half-smiling. “So are you officially one of his fan girls now?”

I roll my eyes at his teasing, swishing my napkin to hit him. “Oh, shut up. And I, for one, am
not
his latest girl or whatever. We’re just…” I try to think of a word that suits us.
Enemies with a truce.
Friends who also hate and piss off each other.
Finally, “Friends.”

Kara shrieks.
“Friends, yeah,
with benefits
!”

“Rivers,” Hayden says seriously now, mock offended. “I thought I was your friend with benefits. It just hurts me too much that you’re leaving me…” He can only keep it up for a few seconds before we all erupt in loud, raucous laughter that gets the other customers looking at us in a strange way.
Teenagers
, I can hear their thinking.