Little Battles (10 page)

“Thanks,” she said as she wrapped her hand around the mug.

I nodded back at her.

Her mug paused mid-air as she looked at me, narrowing her eyes in scrutiny, and said, “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head, my eyes closing for just the briefest of moments.

“Why aren’t you talking, Elliott?”

I sighed. Although it warmed me that she knew within the first minute there was something wrong, I couldn’t force myself to speak. My teeth clenched together as I wished I could just
talk.
There were
so
many thoughts that I wanted to share with her.

Suddenly her hands were in my hair and I closed my eyes again. “You don’t have to,” she whispered so low it was almost as if she’d never said it.

When I opened my eyes, I made the mistake of trying to touch her. Just my fingertips brushed her cheekbone before she turned away. She gripped her coffee mug tightly and the only sound beyond the squeak of the leather seats was my sigh. I swallowed back my disappointment and waited until she’d fastened her seatbelt before shifting into first gear.

When we parked at school, she turned back to me, her eyes narrowed again, studying me like Stephen or Robin usually did.

“S-ssssstop.”

She turned back around, grabbing the strap of her bag and the mug of coffee with one hand. “You going to be okay?”

I nodded. She covered my hand, still resting on the gear shift. “I’m sorry for…whatever’s wrong.”

She didn’t need to apologize for anything. It wasn’t her fault I was the way I was.

Her hand was still resting on mine, so I figured I’d try again, just in case this was the time she’d actually let me touch her the way she touched me, but she moved away just like she always did. This was what Stephen must’ve felt like with me. He couldn’t stop hoping, and apparently neither could I.

“W-w-w-why c-can you t-touch m-mm-mme but I c-can’t t-touch you?”

Sophie’s eyes widened for a moment before she turned away, then ran her hands through her hair, and bit her lower lip.

“I want you to touch me,” she said quietly.

If what she was saying was true, then it was no longer a risk, so I tried to touch her cheek again.

She sucked in a deep, shuddering breath and moved away, practically pressed against the door. “Not like that,” she said. “You shouldn’t want that.”

She was
so
confusing. “
I
shouldn’t w-w-want that?”

She had a dark look in her eyes before she closed them. “You shouldn’t want that from
me
.”

“SSS-SSSophie…”

She opened her eyes and reached for the door handle. “I have to go, Elliott.”

I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. I reached out and grabbed her wrist. For just a moment, she froze. She didn’t blink. She didn’t breathe. Then she pulled her arm free. “Don’t want what you can’t have. I’m not capable of giving you what you need.”

“W-w-what do I n-need?” It was a serious question, because I honestly had no idea at this point, and if she did, I wanted to know.

“Someone who’s good for you. I’ll ruin you. I won’t even mean to do it, but I will.”

Were we back to that again? “S-S-Sophie, I think…”

She scrubbed her face with the palm of her hand. “I got a job,” she said, her voice much lighter.

I wanted to congratulate her, but before I could even think of something to say, she was nodding toward the school, her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’ll see you in the greenhouse.”

Again, I wanted to say something to stop her, but my mouth wouldn’t cooperate and she was already out of the car. This was not how I’d wanted this morning to go.

After a few more minutes, I got out. Glancing over, I saw that David’s Scout, his prized SUV, was already parked in its usual spot, but no one was around it. I would have liked to have walked in with them like I usually did so I could remove the terror that hummed in my head and caused my heart to race just a little faster.

It was completely illogical to be frightened of walking into a building that I’d walked into hundreds of times before.

I felt stupid.

“D-D-Dalton!”

My stomach knotted as I saw Chris run up to me, a smile on his face. If I hadn’t known better, he would have looked like a friend coming to greet me. “She looks fantastic today. Her ass makes my dick ache.”

I hoisted my bag up higher on my shoulder.

“Did you at least feel her up on the way to school? Maybe get a hand down her pants?”

If I hadn’t stuttered so badly, I would have told him to shut up, but the only recognizable sounds I could make were “sh” and “ta, ta, ta”.

I winced as his fist connected with my already-bruised side again.

“You’re a fucking retard, D-D-Dalton. Even if you
did
manage to get her to spread her legs, she couldn’t have been that satisfied.” He chucked his thumb behind him. “She’s already in the woods with Fox. I guarantee you they’re not
just
getting high.”

I was already doubled over, so the elbow he shot into my side did nothing to help me breathe.

“What do you think he’s doing to her right now? I’ll bet he’s got her on her knees. I bet she likes that shit.”

I tried not to listen and when I failed, I tried to remind myself that he was a moron who was only saying this stuff because he wanted me to hurt for some reason. I wished he would just stop talking and hit me again. That would have been easier to take.

I stood up, waiting on Chris.

“Come on, D-D-Dalton. I know you’ve thought about it. She’s so small, right? I’m going to pick her right up and fuck her against a wall and when I’m ready to shoot my load, I’m going to drop her and come all over her face, just like Jason’s doing right now.”

Chris put the palm of his hand against my face and pushed. “Aw, don’t fucking cry, D-D-Dalton. You don’t honestly believe that you have a shot at her, do you?”

He laughed his wicked laugh and again I wondered what was so deficient in his life that he had to be so cruel.

I just looked at the ground, trying not to let what he was saying take purchase in my head. When Chris finally walked away, I felt my body relax just a little.

I swallowed hard, wondering if the whole week was going to go like this.

I passed Sophie in the hall just before the first period bell rang. Although she smiled at me, I wondered if she actually saw me at all. I wondered why no one else could see how high she was. Didn’t the teachers care?

My feet automatically carried me through the day as I felt like my mind had taken a vacation. During Study Hall, I watched as Sophie talked to Aiden, the look in her eyes resembling something I’d seen before. Then she left early like always, following Jason Fox.

Chris’s words echoed in my mind and I wondered if they were
just
getting high. No matter how much I tried to remind myself that she wasn’t mine, it still hurt to think about her like everyone else did.

I didn’t want to picture that in my head. I didn’t want her doing those things.

But she wasn’t mine, and according to her, I shouldn’t want what I couldn’t have.

Still, I knew that even though she thought she wasn’t emotionally available to me, somewhere deep within her, she wanted to be. Otherwise the back and forth nature of our relationship wouldn’t be there. She wouldn’t run away from me only to come back, ready to expose herself and her deep riverbed of secrets just a little bit more.

She was
so
high during Horticulture, she teetered on the edge of moving too much, and not enough. I didn’t know what she was on, but it wasn’t just pot.

She reminded me of my mother.

I’d known early, very, very early, that my mother never really “lived.” Her life was nothing more than one high after another, her addiction driving her every move. Her eyes were never right. All they did was change from one cloud to another. When she was really high, they were frantic, and when she was coming down, they were heavy, like sludge. When she really needed a fix, they were panicked and frightened and more than just a little crazy.

Sophie’s eyes shifted back and forth dangerously between a quiet calm and raging panic.

Her hands kept moving, and at one point she was drumming her fingers so hard against the edge of the table that Mr. Reese kept glaring at our desk and the other students looked like they were about to shoot daggers due to the annoying rhythm she was tapping out.

Even though I knew she didn’t like me touching her, I reached out and stilled her fingers, then brought our joined hands down from the table. I expected her to withdraw again, to pull away like always, but she sighed deeply as she coiled her fingers around mine and gripped them tightly. Her breathing slowed until it was almost what other people would call “normal.”

The bell rang, ending Mr. Reese’s lecture, but Sophie didn’t get out of her seat and she didn’t let go of my hand.

We sat there until everyone was gone and the new students filed in. I stood up and grabbed my bag, and nudged her to get up. When she finally moved, she dropped my hand.

Out in the hallway, she turned toward the gym and mumbled a goodbye, but I couldn’t just let her leave. Again I risked touching her by reaching out and encircling her hand, only letting it stay for a moment before dropping it a little and keeping hold of just her pinkie finger. If she was scared or worried, she would be able to pull away and break the connection easily.

I wanted it to be comforting to her. I didn’t want to take the choice away or make her think that I was forcing her to be touched.

“Have to go,” she said while never trying to remove her finger from my hand.

If she wound up going to P.E., she probably wouldn’t do much more than stand there. She was pretty out of it.

“D-do you w-want to go?” It was a loaded question.

She shook her head in response.

I should have been clearer for her, because I didn’t know if she was saying that she didn’t want to go to P.E., or that she didn’t want to go someplace with me.

“Can we go to your house?”

Relief washed through me and I nodded. It took less than ten minutes to tell Mrs. Peters that I wasn’t going to re-stock the books for her today, and get Sophie into the car. After she buckled herself in, she drew her feet up and wrapped a protective arm around her bent legs.

“Are you o-okay?”

She shook her head, but I couldn’t see her face. “I feel sick.”

As I drove, I thought. Was she sick like my mom was when she was coming down? Was she sick because everyone else in school seemed to have the stomach flu? Or was she sick because she hadn’t eaten much? Sophie was thin. A little too thin. When I thought about her during Study Hall today, I realized that she hadn’t even nibbled on a Pop-Tart or eaten an apple like she usually did. Sophie never went to lunch, and I doubted she ate in the woods with Jason.

“You d-d-didn’t eat,” I said, forgetting that I hadn’t wanted to talk today.

Sophie’s head snapped up. “Yes, I did.”

I shook my head. “N-n-not in the library you d-didn’t. D-d-did you eat o-o-outside?”

“Fuck,” she exhaled as her whole body launched itself into motion. I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she grabbed the blood sugar monitor from her bag and tested her glucose level. It was only moments after her machine beeped that she asked, “Is it okay if I eat something at your house?”

I didn’t even try to respond verbally, instead just nodding as I focused on my driving. Sophie wasn’t taking very good care of herself. The instability of her blood sugar seemed to pop up more and more often. I was sure it was the drugs that made her forget to eat. I couldn’t exactly bring it up to her now, though.

When we got to my house, I led her straight to the kitchen where she flung open the refrigerator door and grabbed the orange juice. I got her a glass and set it down on the island. She filled it up, gulped it down, and filled it up again.

After a few minutes, she looked better. The color came back to her face and she wasn’t visibly shaking anymore.

“I th-thought d-diabetes w-was
high
blood sugar, b-but you k-keep eating th-things w-with a lot of c-carbohydrates.”

She finished off the second glass and then rinsed it out.

“Diabetes
is
about high blood sugar, but I’m on insulin, so it’s also about low blood sugar. If I take the same amount of insulin and don’t eat, or if I eat the wrong foods, my blood sugar drops.”

“W-w-why d-didn’t you eat?”

Just like I figured, she said, “I guess I forgot.”

“You sssssshould sssstop.” She looked up at me. “F-f-ffforgetting.”

She sighed, running her hands through her hair, and said, “Yeah,” and then closed the dishwasher as she stood up and chewed on her lower lip. “Can we go to your room?”

“You hhhhaven’t eaten yet.”

“I’m okay, Elliott.”