Fourteen (2 page)

“Yeah? Well, don’t. If I should ever need you for any fucking thing,” he scoffed, “you’ll be the first to know.”

I closed my eyes, and waited. He slammed the locker door shut a few moments later, and I listened to his footsteps as they faded down the hallway. I sucked in a few deep breaths and brought my wrist up to inspect the marks that were getting redder, letting a small shuddering sob escape my chest before I sucked it in and blinked rapidly to get rid of the tears. The bell rang, signifying that first period was about to start, and I walked back to the classroom. I kept my head down as I walked to my table, moved around the person sitting in the chair next to mine, and plopped down.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” a voice said from beside me.

I looked over to see Evan staring at me in disgust. I looked away and over to where he normally sat. Brittany and Grace were now seated at his table, snickering and pointing at me. He turned and glared at them, flipping his middle finger at Brittany when she blew him a kiss.

“All right! Good morning, class,” Mr. Streeter said, clapping his hands to get everyone’s attention.

I looked up toward the front, keeping my injured wrist in my lap and nervously twirling a lock of my hair with my free hand.

Just another day, Anna. One more day closer to graduation and getting the hell out of here. It’s just one more day. Remember—starting over.

“Look to the person you’re sitting next to,” Mr. Streeter said, holding his hands up in the air, palms facing out.

“Do I have to?” Evan asked, leaning forward and resting his head in his hand.

Snickers erupted throughout the room, and I looked down at my lap as tears flooded my eyes.

“This will be your partner for the project that I’m assigning.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Evan exclaimed, slamming his fist down on the table. I jumped, wanting to crawl into a hole when everyone laughed at me. “You want me to deal with
this
?”

“You will or you fail,” Mr. Streeter deadpanned, turning his back on us and walking to the chalkboard.

I kept my eyes on my notebook for the rest of class, barely hearing anything as the teacher told us the requirements for the upcoming science fair. I listened to Evan grumble about the whole situation the entire time. My jaw ached with the effort I used to keep the tears from falling.

I set my injured wrist on the table at one point and shifted uneasily on the uncomfortable stool. I heard Evan take a sharp breath, and I glanced over at him, noticing his eyes were focused on the marks that were rapidly becoming bruises. I pulled it back to my lap and stopped trying to get comfortable after that. I didn’t know what his expression meant, but if he wanted to hurt me again, I didn’t want to give him any more ammunition.

The bell finally rang, and I was quick to gather my things, minding my wrist as I juggled the books in my arms.

“Arianna, I’m—” Evan began, his voice low and quiet.

“I’m sorry that you’re stuck with me, Evan,” I said, cutting him off. “I’ll do all the work by myself if you prefer.”

“No, I just wanted to make sure—”

“I’ll be sure to put your name on it as well. I’ve got it covered.” I squeezed by him. I walked out of the room and hurried to my locker, grabbing the books I’d need for my next class. The day had started out badly enough, and I
really
didn’t want it to get any worse.

I trudged up the porch steps to the house, my book bag trailing behind me and bouncing against the steps as I walked.

My dad wasn’t home yet. He was almost never here when I got home, and for the first time in a long time, I was thankful that he wasn’t. I didn’t mind being alone in the mornings, but I really hated coming home to an empty house after school. I usually wanted someone to talk to because going through the day by myself only made me lonely.

Today, however, I welcomed the silence.

My wrist throbbed, and as the day went on, I noticed it was even a little puffy. I’d gone to the nurse in between third and fourth period to get an ice pack, stating that I’d fallen down and landed on it the wrong way. During lunch, I’d bought orange juice and set my wrist on the bottle the entire time. No one sat with me—Christina and Vince were nowhere to be found, and I suspected that they were breaking in the backseat of his newly-acquired Honda—so I didn’t have to worry about explaining anything. What could I say? I didn’t want to get Christina and Vince started. Upsetting the balance of the sports in this school would not bode well, and no one else would believe that perfect Evan Drake had stooped so low to actually
touch
me. It wouldn’t make a difference if they’d seen it with their own two eyes.

After grabbing an ice pack from the freezer, I made it into my room and set my book bag down by my nightstand. Plopping down onto my bed, I cradled my wrist and the ice pack in my hand and rested it in my lap. It was definitely bruised and still a little puffy, but it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.

I felt the sting of tears and leaned forward, resting my feet on the bed frame and burying my face in my knees. I crushed my wrist against my chest and wrapped my other arm around my legs. My tears fell and my sobs filled my empty room.

I wasn’t a bad person. I’d done my best to be nice to everyone in our school, and they just didn’t care. They were so concerned with the way I looked that it didn’t matter to them if we liked the same things. It didn’t matter if our favorite bands were the same, or if we felt the same way about something that we’d heard on the news. I wasn’t thin, and I wasn’t popular, so I had to become their target.

It wasn’t as if I was the only heavy person in our school. Yes, it was a small school, but not everyone was as thin as their group was.

I didn’t know how long I sat there crying, my tears and sobs a product of everything that had gone wrong during the day. I heard a series of loud knocks on the door downstairs, but I ignored it, hoping that whoever it was would go away. I wiped the tears from my face and did my best to get my breathing under control.

But the mystery visitor continued to pound on the door. I finally huffed with annoyance. Keeping my wrist close to my chest and placing the ice pack on my bed, I rubbed the heel of my other hand in my eye as I walked down the stairs. I yanked open the door and caught my breath when I saw Evan standing there.

“C . . . can I help you?” I asked, my voice trembling as I gripped the doorknob tightly and wished that my father were home.

Not that he would do anything about it, anyway. He adored Evan’s father and the rest of his damn family. But at least he would’ve been there, and Evan wouldn’t have been able to—well, I didn’t know what he wanted to do. But either way, he wouldn’t have been able to do it with my father home.

Evan shifted uncomfortably, shuffling his feet on the blue welcome mat that had been there ever since I could remember. He gripped the strap of his book bag, looked at his feet, and shrugging one shoulder.

“I just thought that maybe we should start on this thing. The sooner we do, the sooner we get it finished.”

The sooner you get to stop associating with me.

“I told you that I’d take care of it.”

“I’m just as capable as you are, Arianna,” he snapped, looking up at me and glaring. “I’m not a fucking idiot.”

I looked down at my feet.

“You know
nothing
about me.” He sounded on edge.

I instantly shied away from him, shielding myself behind the door, and tried to control the sudden flow of tears.

“I just thought that . . . since you obviously don’t want to work with me, I could . . . you wouldn’t have to . . .” My voice caught, and I hid my face from him, working myself completely behind the door. “Can we not start this tonight?”

“Shit, Arianna, I want to . . .” He slapped the doorjamb, and I flinched, my hand tightening on the doorknob. “Let me see your wrist.”

“It’s fine. Please leave.”

“It’s
not
fine because you’re still being careful with it. Let me see it.”

“Why? You want to make it worse?”

“No!” he shouted, and I needed that hole to open up and swallow me now. He huffed out a breath and seemed to stand up a little straighter. “I just want to see it.”

“I don’t—”

His shoulders slumped, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed hard.

“Just let me see your wrist. I won’t hurt you.”

I didn’t move, my entire body shaking as I stood on the other side of the door, wondering why it was so important. It was easy to see that I was of no importance to him, so why was he so adamant about seeing my wrist? What did he want to gain from it? He said that he wouldn’t hurt me, but I never believed he’d do it the first time—why would I willingly hand over the same part of my body he’d already bruised?

“Arianna, I promise that I won’t hurt you again. I just want to see it.” His voice wasn’t as hard as it had been before.

“Why?” I asked, my voice trembling.

“I want to make sure it’s okay.”

“It’s fine. I told you that.”

“And I told you that it wasn’t.”

“Will you leave then?”

“If you want me to.”

“I do.”

“Then I’ll leave after you show it to me.”

I cautiously stepped out from behind the door and pulled it open a little more.

“Can I come in?”

“Why?”

“It’s getting dark out here. I won’t be able to see very well.”

I stepped back as he pushed the door open and walked in, closing it behind him and dropping his book bag to the floor. I held my arm out to him, and my heart thundered in my chest as he gently grabbed my hand. He flexed my wrist back and forth, his face blank, but that was before he pressed two fingers against the bruises. I cried out and immediately pulled my hand back from him, holding it to my chest. He stared at my wrist, reaching up to rub the back of his neck.

“Will you put it against your other one?” he asked, finally meeting my eyes again.

“For what?”

“Will you just do it?” he snapped.

I flinched, and his face fell.

“You should uh . . . you should put some ice on it,” he said. “It won’t be so puffy tomorrow if you do.”

I was at a loss for words. He actually seemed concerned.

“Okay.”

“I guess I’ll go now,” he mumbled, reaching down and grabbing his book bag. “We should figure out something to do for the science fair, maybe tomorrow in class or something.”

“Yeah.” I looked down at my feet.

He hesitated, and I looked up at him. He hastily pulled the door open and walked out. I closed the door behind him, locked it, and walked back up to my room.

Maybe there wasn’t anything more to Evan Drake after all. Maybe I just wished that there were because I really wanted there to be something more underneath the shallowness and the pretty face. Maybe I just wanted someone like him to be a good person because there weren’t very many at my school.

Maybe I just needed to stop hoping for things. It never got me anything but hurt, and I was
really
tired of hurting.

Dad came home around six-thirty, explaining that they’d gotten a huge case and he hadn’t been able to call. He handed me the food he’d bought on the way home and then sat down in front of the television for the rest of the night while I did my homework.

He didn’t ask about the ice pack I held to my wrist. He didn’t ask how my day was. He didn’t ask if everything was okay when it clearly was not.

I wished I could be as invisible to my classmates like I was to my father sometimes. It would make my life a hell of a lot easier in the long run.

I kept my head down, and my hands shoved into the pocket of my hoodie as I made my way up to the front of the school the next morning. When I woke up, the last person I wanted to see and deal with in my first period class was Evan. So I’d spent most of the morning, trying to convince myself that, yes, I did have to go to school today.

I’d decided last night that I was done liking him. Whatever I’d witnessed when he was with his family clearly was only for show, there wasn’t any part left of the little boy I used to play with, and there was nothing more to him. I was the idiot that had wasted entirely too much of my life, wishing that he’d open his eyes and see that I was an actual person.

Something everyone else failed to see because I didn’t participate in sports or any extracurricular activities, and didn’t offer up the answers in class unless the teacher called on me.

I made it into the school, raced to my locker, shoved my things inside, and grabbed my books before walking to the classroom. I had made sure that everything was where it was supposed to be before I left the house so that I could avoid a scene like what had happened yesterday. The less time I spent alone, the less opportunities Evan had of bruising my other wrist.

It wasn’t puffy anymore, but there were still bruises, and it was difficult to shower the night before. I’d managed to hit it on every surface in the bathroom, and by the time I crawled into bed, it was throbbing again.

On top of that, I’d had dreams about him. In one, he was pushing me off a cliff and laughing maniacally as I fell. In another one, he was taking care of me and making sure that my wrist was okay. He’d actually—I sighed and plopped down onto the stool, leaning forward, and burying my face in my arms—he’d actually kissed it and apologized to me, saying that he didn’t mean it, that he was just having a bit of a rough morning, that he’d never meant to hurt me, and then he’d kissed
me
.

I guess that’s why they’re called dreams; the most impossible things can happen when you’re lost in your own head.

I tensed when I heard the stool next to me slide against the linoleum floor, and I slowly sat up and stared straight ahead at the chalkboard. I placed my hands in my lap and looked at the clock on the wall. It wasn’t hard to recognize
him
sitting next to me, even from the corner of my eye.

It wasn’t even time for the warning bell to ring yet. What was he doing here? He had a ton of minions waiting with baited breath for the next word out of his mouth, and he was in his first period class before anyone else? I couldn’t believe that he’d come in here just to speak to me and briefly wondered what excuse he had made to the aforementioned minions so that they wouldn’t follow him in here.

When he said nothing, I flipped open my human physiology book and scanned the pages so I had something to do. Just sitting here with him was like a neon sign that said,
She’s pathetic! She thinks Evan Drake would actually talk to her if she just sat here!
Even though I didn’t.

I didn’t even
want
him to talk to me. I didn’t want to be his partner. I didn’t want to talk to him ever again. He wasn’t the person I thought he could still be, and I’d seriously fooled myself into thinking anything of the sort. I was unbelievably mad and frustrated with myself. I had always believed that I was smarter than the other girls that I’d heard stories about. It turned out that I was just as foolish as the rest of them.

“How are you this morning, Arianna?” he whispered.

“Peachy.”

“How’s your wrist?”

I switched arms, immediately hiding the hurt one underneath the desk and draping it across my lap as I stared down at a diagram of a frog.

“It’s fine,” I said, flipping through the pages.

“Can I see it?”

“You saw it last night.” I looked over at him before looking back down at my book. “You don’t need to see it today, too.”

“Look, I get it. I fucked up yesterday. I’m trying to be nice, Arianna.”

“Why now? I’ve known you my entire life, and it takes something like you bruising me to make you talk to me again? Why couldn’t you have tried to be nice to me before?”

I looked over at him when he failed to answer and found him staring down at our lab table, his hands braced against the edge as if he needed something to keep him upright. I opened my mouth to say something else, snapped it shut, and looked back up at the chalkboard. He didn’t have an answer, and I had nothing left to say.

“What did you want to do for this stupid thing, anyway?” he finally grumbled a few moments later.

“I was looking online last night and found something about a lie detector test. I thought it seemed interesting,” I said, shrugging.

“Fine. Great.” He slid his stool back and stood up. “Did you print it out?”

“Yeah,” I said, and then listened as his footsteps echoed in the empty room as he walked out. I slumped over my books, crossing my arms and burying my head in them again.

Just a few more weeks and I wouldn’t have to talk to him about anything ever again. We’d finish this project and go back to our separate lives, pretending that nothing had ever happened. And I could pretend that everything he hadn’t said to me hadn’t hurt like a bitch.

“So . . . did you want to come over tonight to work on this some more?” I asked, closing my book and stuffing the information I had printed out back into my folder.

“I have practice tonight.”

“Okay.” I stacked my books and placed my arms on the table, surrounding them, staring at the back of Steve Forrester’s head as I waited for the bell to ring.

We’d been given the entire period to get our projects sorted out so that we could get started on them. The science fair was in three weeks, and while not every class would be dedicated to the project, a good portion of our future ones would be. We would still have tests to take and other homework to do, so working outside of class was crucial.

Neither of us was very happy about that. “I’ll get started on it tonight, then, and fill you in during class tomorrow.”

“I can come over after practice,” he said in a low voice, and I stared at him as he looked around the room as if to see if anyone had heard him.

“Whatever you want to do, Evan.”

“We finish around five. I’ll be there around five forty-five.”

“Sounds good.” I stared straight ahead and looked away from Steve as he turned around to talk to Evan.

“How’s it going, dude?”

Evan shrugged.

“Has she tried to like . . . molest you or anything? It’s not like she’s ever had any action.”

I clenched my jaw and looked out the window, placing one arm in my lap and resting my chin in the other.

“No, she hasn’t. I’m keeping my distance.”

“Don’t let her get too close. She’ll sit on you. Probably crush your entire body while she’s at it, too.”

I sucked in a deep breath and grabbed my books. I slid off the stool, walked up to the front of the room, and leaned over Mr. Streeter’s desk as I waited for him to look up at me.

“Can I leave a little early, Mr. Streeter?” I asked, embarrassed when my voice shook.

I had never cried during school before. Things rarely happened that hurt so badly that I couldn’t wait until I got home at the end of the day. I had dealt with Steve Forrester and Grace Alcott screaming out fat jokes without crying. I had dealt with Brittany Feldman pointing and laughing at me as I changed for gym class without crying. But in the past two days and all thanks to Evan Drake, it was like I did nothing
but
cry. It was just one more thing that kept me infuriated with myself.

“Is everything all right, Anna?” he asked, his eyes darting from me to what I assumed was my lab desk.

“Yes, I just have . . . um . . . can I please go?”

“I suppose so. Feel better.”

I offered him a shaky smile in thanks before walking out of the room and to my locker, breathing deeply as I switched out my books for my next class.

What had I ever done to any of them to make them say things like that about me?

I scribbled a note to my father just in case he came home early and grabbed my keys and iPod from the table. I placed the ear buds into my ears, pushed play on my iPod, and stuffed it and my keys into my pocket before I locked the door and walked out of the house. I jumped down the stairs, taking a deep breath and spreading my legs, leaning over and stretching before standing back up and jogging down the road.

I tried to run at least three times a week. Not only had I shed two sizes since I’d started, but it had also helped clear my mind a little. And after a day like today, a little clarity was something I definitely needed.

For the rest of the day, I had managed to keep my emotions in check. It also helped that Evan wasn’t in any of my other classes and all I had to deal with was Brittany and Grace, laughing and pointing and making snide comments like they always did. I had learned early on how to block them out, and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t do the same thing with Evan.

Why did
his
insults hurt so much more than anyone else’s jibes? He wasn’t saying anything new; in fact, it was all getting pretty old. Honestly, I’d stopped caring and listening to them for the most part.

What was it about him that just made it hurt so much? My self-esteem had always been low, but he’d completely destroyed any I might have had left. I get that I was nothing to him; I was nothing to any of them. But I’d never seen the use in insulting the people I didn’t truly know anything about, and I didn’t understand why they thought they had a right to do the same to me.

I jogged by Brittany Feldman’s grandmother’s house, briefly wondering if she knew about how much of a cruel bitch her granddaughter really was.

I concentrated on the music flowing from my ear buds as I continued down the street.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now. I hadn’t had a bad day at school. I hadn’t had to deal with anyone that couldn’t come up with an original joke. I hadn’t come home to an empty house and a heavy heart. And I most certainly hadn’t cried because Evan Drake had agreed with Steve Forrester this morning.

They didn’t know me. They didn’t know anything that was going on in my life, so them making comments like that and saying those things were not important. It didn’t matter.
They
didn’t matter to me.