The Darkness Within

by Taylor K. Scott

  “I don’t wanna eat anymore,” I respond truthfully and let my sandwich drop to my tray. “Talking about people’s uglies is not appropriate lunchtime conversation, I hope you know!”

  “Oh, come on! I bet you’ve thought about Matt’s penis?”

  She chucks my fry back at me, but I swat it away with the back of my hand, letting it fall rather sad and limply to the ground. Given what we’ve just been talking about I don’t want to eat the rest of my sad-looking lunch, so push them away towards Mercy, who conversely, is more than happy to bite into them, one by one.

  “Don’t mention me, Matt, or penis, in the same sentence again, Mercy,” I reply and take a moment to swallow hard. “There was an incredibly awkward moment over the weekend, all thanks to Bowie! Did you know Matt had a thing for me?”

  “Duh!” I wince over her reply. God, am I that blind compared to everyone else?! Mercy takes no note of my forlorn expression and pushes for more, “What happened? A threesome with you, Matt, and Bowie?” She raises her eyes excitedly to mine. “Because that would be every girl’s wet dream!” she gushes and pretends to go off into la-la-land again. She’s only sixteen but talks about sex and blowjobs like they’re an everyday occurrence for her. Is it just me or is that totally insane?

  “Look at me,” I say, sounding deadly serious, “does that idea seem remotely possible given the girl you’re talking to right now? The thought alone makes me want to gag and run for the hills. Please don’t let my brother ever hear you say something like that about me.”

  “Why? Would he hurt me?” she says seductively, and I begin to wonder if something unnaturally bizarre happens at some random point over your high school career. Do your hormones suddenly wake up and start having a party, thus rendering all your rational thoughts drunk? Is that why they call it sweet sixteen? Can I just stay a child forever-more?

  “Christ, Mercy, you should have been born a man, you really are horny all of the time!” I reply on a sigh, then begin to gather my things to get going. She just laughs and follows suit, only slowing down when we walk past Grant who is now pulling Sam closer into his body with a ridiculous grin on his face.

  It’s warm outside when I take a seat on the bleachers, waiting for Matt to finish up at football practice. The usual sounds of grunts and shouting infiltrate my ears when I look over to the hulking great big figures in their football get up, charging at one another with aggressive enthusiasm. I have no idea what’s going on when I watch them all running around in erratic patterns across the field, but I have followed Matt’s games since he started playing years ago. From what I can see, he’s really good, brilliant those in the know say, but I couldn’t tell you from my own fraction of knowledge about the game. In fact, right now, I’m struggling to decipher which of the helmeted players is him, seeing as they all look like tall, broad athletes, who could easily overthrow a tiny person like me. Everyone knows not to mess with the football team, they’d rough you up as soon as look at you if they thought it necessary. Not to mention if any one of them is threatened, they all rile around one another like a secret, highly protective club.

  A few minutes into a make-shift game amongst the team, I finally see one of them hold up their hand to me, a customary wave from Matt to let me know where he is. I smile, return the gesture, then get out my math homework. He knows I can’t stand to watch him getting beaten about for too long, and never appears to mind when I stop paying attention to do my own thing instead.

  Five questions into algebraic equations, a loud clattering sound from beside me causes my head to jerk up to see what on Earth has made such an obnoxious noise. As soon as I see what it is, I begin to wish I’d kept my head down, for there, looms the large and foreboding figure of Bowie Phillips parking his arrogant ass down next to me, sitting out of the game for a few minutes while the grunting continues on the field. He makes no attempt to look at me, merely leans back with his arms stretched out wide on the bench behind us.

  Perplexed by his sudden presence, especially because he’s choosing to sit next to me of all people, I nervously fiddle with my pen for a moment or two before returning to my studies. I figure it’s best not to engage with whatever it is he currently has in mind.

  “Come to see your boy play?” he asks with his unflinching gaze on the game.

  Even though I could have put money on the fact he was going to torture me in some way, my heart sinks over his judgmental tone of voice. Why else would he park his butt on the very same bench as me? Not for a friendly chat, that’s for sure.

  “What?” I reply with an irritated sigh, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the numbers and letters before me. Unfortunately, they make even less sense than they did before.

  “Your boy, Matt,” he chuckles and points to him on the field. I follow his point of reference and see Matt’s body slamming into someone else, causing me to shudder in sympathetic pain for whoever it is he’s just attacked.

  “He’s not my boy,” I reply quietly and return to my homework in such a way I hope he’ll give up and leave me alone.

  “He’d like to be,” he says nonchalantly, and I feel his gaze all over me. As tempting as it is to meet his glare, as is the natural instinct in all of us, I don’t look up. Instead, my eyes remain fixed firmly on my algebraic equations. “But you know that don’t you?” he tuts when I give no response.

  “What exactly is your problem with me, Bowie? Is it my friendship with Matt? The fact that my brother is dating your sister? Or is it just me personally? Because I gotta say, I’m trying my very best to stay out of your way, and yet here you are being a massive irritation to me yet again!”

  Screw it, ignoring him isn’t working so I decide to face this head-on, but all he does is shrug with indifference. I huff loudly and slump back over my work.

  “I mean, after all, he’s kind, warm, funny, intelligent, familiar, handsome, safe and you’re a fucking idiot!” he echoes my own words back to me, causing me to bolt upright and look at him with the same horrifying expression one might use when witnessing a car accident. He enjoys my reaction, slamming me with a smug and taunting grin, one of his most wicked to date. “But then there’s me, a bully, cruel, wicked, manwhore, arrogant, gorgeous. I especially like that last one, Amelia.”

  Oh, holy shit! I close my eyes slowly, realizing the biggest asshole in the school has found my diary, my personal thoughts, hopes, and rants, and is now using them to taunt me for his own amusement. My heart hits rock bottom in my chest, while bile simultaneously works its way up my throat. Disgustingly, I swallow it back down again, only because I know bringing it up would make him laugh harder. The bastard would no doubt take a picture and post it around the student body just for kicks!

  “What do you want?” I ask quietly, hoping that this never, ever gets out to anyone, especially the likes of this douche’s girlfriend. If it does, I’m out, done, transferring to another school or leaving altogether, trying to make it as a busker on the streets, most likely a mime, because I never bothered to learn an instrument. As my mind runs away with me over all the painful ramifications of keeping something as normal as a diary, I notice him rub his thumb along his jaw, all the while grinning at me with the usual cockiness he always has. He clicks his tongue and I know this means he is currently thinking of how to be the biggest cretin possible.

  “I don’t know yet,” he shrugs, “maybe a blowy behind the bike sheds?” he replies nonchalantly, staring back out over the field and flashing his teeth like a hungry shark.

  “Trust me, Bowie, I’d be likely to bite it off!” I sneer and begin frantically shoving my things back into my bag, desperately wanting to get as much distance from him as I can. My brain tries to think of any possible solution to this epic fuckup, telling myself that I’ll go to Grant, or maybe Sam, Matt if I have to, but I have to get that diary back.

  “You are one evil bastard, you know that?” I grit out before turning to leave.

  “Now, now, Millie, we both know you have a soft spot for me,” he
chuckles and waves my diary in the air.

  Knowing it’s a futile effort, I still turn to try and grab at it, but as could have been predicted, he holds it far out of reach, so high I don’t even have a chance of touching it. I sigh in defeat before he jumps up suddenly, grabbing my chin between his finger and thumb, then leans in to talk eerily quietly to me. All his taunting smiles are gone, instead, he turns his expression to one akin to a classic serial killer.

  “You will do anything I ask of you because if you don’t, I will start copying pages out of this oh-so-interesting little book and paste it all over the school walls. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Why?” I ask him with genuine confusion, because why does he have such a beef with me? Did I poop on his parade without realizing it? I don’t think so, but I also have no other reason to cling to.

  “Because I can sweetheart,” he grins, and then, like the psycho he is, he releases his grip on me and returns his attention to the field. “Don’t worry, I don’t want anything sexual…not from you, anyway.”

  “Hey!” a breathless voice calls out to me, “What are you two talking about?”

  “Nothin’ much, are we Mils?” I’m still staring at the monster in front of me just as he casually begins chewing on a piece of gum like the last ten minutes hadn’t happened at all. “Are you ready to hit the showers man?”

  Matt gives him a stiff manly nod and watches as Bowie saunters over to the changing room, with a real swagger in his hips, like he’s the star of the latest R’n’B hit.

  “Come here you!” Matt says affectionately, breaking me out of my homicidal thoughts.

  Relieved that Bowie has finally left the vicinity, I smile, knowing Matt’s about to hug me, only so he can cover me in all of his gross sweat. It’s a kind of ritual we have. Usually, I would scuffle along with him and then we’d have a good laugh about it. This time, however, I remain rigid inside of his rather pungent arms, because a) I’m now aware of his feelings towards me, and b) I can see Bowie turning back to grin smugly at the mess he’s just left me in.

  After Matt’s left me smelling like a man who’s just been running laps around the field in the late afternoon heat for at least an hour, we part ways. I arrange to meet him at the gates after he’s showered with the rest of the smelly cavemen in the locker room. I really don’t fancy running into Bowie, who could well have shown the entire football team my innermost thoughts by now.

  However, the boy is persistent and is the first to come out to torment me before Matt can come back to the rescue. Even when I turn my back on him as he strolls over my way, it doesn’t stop him from honing all of his determination to ridicule me.

  “By the way, little Miss Fridge,” he says, swinging my shoulder around with ease, so I’m now facing him whether I like it or not, “don’t even think of asking someone to help you out of this little fix you’ve now found yourself in, because you know what the first thing I’ll do will be!”

  He clicks his tongue, waving my scruffy, little, black book in the air, before walking away up the road with his football gear slung across his broad back.

  “You ok, Mills?” Matt asks as soon as he appears beside me, smelling a lot nicer but now looking all kinds of concerned. I guess I must still look like I’m in a deep state of shock when I turn my attention towards him, so I quickly shrug it off and plaster on my best fake smile, throwing out the obligatory ‘fine’ his way.

  “Just bored of waiting for you,” I eventually elaborate, even if it is a lie, then pick up my bag from the pavement. He immediately pulls it away from me and slings it over his own back, just like he always does, and we begin the laid-back walk home, where there are no cool kids and no pretense, just us being friends. “Now you mentioned ice-cream. I’m seriously in the mood for lashings of cream and chocolate!”

  “Bad day?” he asks sympathetically.

  “You have no idea!” I reply with a sigh but choose to take Bowie at his word and not risk mentioning the debacle over my diary at all.

  Chapter 3

  Amelia, 15

  Not even lashings of chocolate ice cream can break me out of my funk. In fact, I hardly eat any of my sweet treat. Instead, I push a lone cherry around the plate where the ice cream has melted into a sticky and rather unappetizing goo. I become mesmerized by the chocolate sauce swirling around into the fresh, white cream and audibly sigh when it eventually merges into one.

  I feel Matt’s warm hand covering mine and it makes me jump in shock, even though I know he is there and that this is something he would normally do when I’m feeling down. He laughs over my skittishness and I end up smiling with him, but when I still look all kinds of forlorn, his concerned frown soon returns, and I know I’ll have to give him something to explain away my piss poor company this afternoon.

  “What’s up, Mils?” He eventually nudges the back of my hand with his thumb pad, “I’ve been trying to snap you out of it all afternoon!”

  “I’m just worried we’re drifting apart, is all,” I reply as a half-truth, “things were really weird at the weekend and you’re getting more and more into girls and the cool kid gang. I guess I miss my friend.”

  “You will always have me as your friend, Mils, and I couldn’t care less about any of the other girls at school,” he says and now begins to circle the back of my hand with his thumb. “You remember when we stormed the castle of Cair Paravel? I was Asland and you were the Ice Queen because I always had to be the goody! We fought one another and I landed on top of you and my parents ripped me to shreds over it!” His trip down memory lane has me giggling over our little role plays from the past. “And you couldn’t understand why they were giving me such a hard time, because to you, we were both equal in size and strength.”

  “God, I was really angry with them over that!” I cringe over the memory of openly showing his parents disrespect. “They were giving my best mate a hard time over a game we were both playing, and I wanted to shout at them to leave you alone.”

  “I realized two things that day; one, you were, and still are, the coolest girl on the planet, and two, I couldn’t risk sparring with you anymore. I was getting bigger, and I didn’t want to hurt you…ever!” He smiles warmly and it makes me feel much better, and all from reforming a memory I never want to forget.

  “Well, looky here!” Bowie interrupts our happy little memory with his tale-tell I’m-the-king-of-the-world tone of voice before he suddenly appears at the end of the table. He then grabs an unsuspecting chair and turns it backward, before straddling the metal frame with his usual confidence written all over him. We break apart from one another just as Melody shows up, clutching Bowie’s shoulder with her recently manicured hand. “Budge up, we’ll join you…unless this is a more intimate occasion?” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively at Matt, even though he is currently glowering at him.

  “Actually, we’re leaving,” Matt replies with a healthy dose of irritation, before shuffling out of the booth and waiting for me to join him by flinging my bag over his shoulder. “I’ll catch you tomorrow!”

  “Sure, ok, we’ll nab your table then,” Bowie shrugs and pulls Melody to sit down with him.

  Her wide grin shows she is only too happy to oblige, that and the fact they begin to mash tongues with one another, much like Grant and Sam do on an hourly basis. With one eye still open, Bowie stares back at us and pulls the corner of his mouth up into a smirk. He then proceeds to fondle Melody’s breast, right in the middle of a busy ice cream parlor. While I grimace over the little grope fest, I turn to Matt who almost looks on in awe. He soon shakes it off before pushing his hand into the small of my back, ushering me out of the shop and onto the safety of the street.

  “Matt?” I ask when we slowly pace home, far from the stifling atmosphere of the parlor.

  “Yeah?” he answers casually, looking to the floor as he scuffs his trainers over the concrete below.

  “Why does Bowie hate me so much? Is it because of Grant dating his sister? Or because of our friends
hip?” I ask in between heavy sighs. “I just don’t know what I’ve done to piss him off so much. He seems to enjoy taunting me!”

  “He thinks you look down on all of us,” he answers bluntly and with a shrug, “because you don’t seem remotely interested in the boy, girl, hooking up thing. Neither do you attend my parties, nor join in with the general teenage fornicating and such. I guess he thinks you’re a snob.”

  “Really?!” I’m genuinely shocked by this and subsequently begin to panic that this is what Matt thinks too. “Is that how I come across? I don’t mean to. God, is that how you see me?”

  “No!” he almost laughs at the accusation. “I know you’re just feared of all that, more than anything else.”

  He takes in my worried expression as I look to the floor, being too embarrassed to face him right now, but then surprises me by letting out a loud chuckle.

  “Amelia Thomas is anything but a snob. She’s the best girl there is!”