She took off the t-shirt she’d been wearing and replaced it with her dad's.
"Red—"
"It's alright. I like to wear this when I’m feeling down. It makes me feel like my dad has wrapped me in his arms." She grinned at Vikki.
Vikki smiled back sympathetically, her bright red bangs flopping down in front of her face. She stood to her feet and wiped her nose, sniffing. "Alright, enough soppy stuff. We're going to take a trip into town. I have a plan that will help you get to be friends with Zaney boy." She put her hands on Red’s shoulders and led her out of the room.
Red held the picture of her parents in her hand and squeezed it, smiling. She could almost feel her dad comforting her, telling her to pull through, for the Force. That she was a big girl now, she could do it.
She left the dorm, feeling a whole lot better.
Chapter 12: Gray
"This will DEFINITELY help you get Zane's attention. He'll want you to be his friend in no time." Vikki grinned. Thrusting all of the clothing into Red’s arms.
She looked down at it. It looked an awful lot like the type of clothes Vikki wore. She had no objection to that, but she wondered if it would really help her get closer to Zane? Would a wardrobe change help that much?
"Sure it will," Vikki replied when she voiced her concerns. "Now you just need a little spontaneous color on that mop of yours."
Next, Vikki led her to a hair salon.
Luckily, Red had been to one to get her recent haircut, so nothing was unusual to her. She watched carefully as Vikki explained something to the hairdresser and then watched the hairdresser carefully as she made her way round to her side.
The hairdresser took only a small handful of the hair on the left side of her face, putting a strange substance on it before covering in foil. She watched in fascination, slightly confused.
"Hey, close your eyes, you're not supposed to see until the end," Vikki ordered, putting her hands over Red’s eyes.
Red smiled and screwed her eyes shut, so Vikki would take her hands off her face. "Alright, alright," she muttered.
She waited, hearing only the slight rustle of the foil, feeling a slight tug at her hair and seeing nothing but darkness.
Then she heard Vikki order her to open her eyes. She did.
Her mouth fell open and she raised her hand to grasp the now—bright blue streak in her dark, black hair. It looked incredible.
"Wow." She gawked.
Vikki grinned at her, meeting her eyes in the mirror. “You would think I would have had the beautician put in a bright red streak, you know…to match the name. But that was too obvious.” She grinned again and then ripped the plastic covering off of Red, dragging her by the arm out of the shop. "Alright, next stop."
It was about five-thirty when Vikki finished dragging Red from place to place. She'd been waxed, plucked, styled, given clothes, bought accessories, and at one point even taught about how to make friends with a boy. It had sounded suspicious to her. How often could you flutter your eyelashes and not look like an idiot? Then she had to smile in a certain way, leaning towards them. It was too confusing.
But, if Vikki said it'd work, it most probably would.
She carried all the bags, her arms aching with the weight as they crossed back onto the camp’s property.
Vikki grinned at her. "What does daddy think? Does he approve?" Her friend looked down at the t-shirt Red was wearing.
She let out a quiet laugh and smiled at her crazy friend. "I’m sure he does."
She felt her pocket start to vibrate. Her cell phone was ringing.
Muttering under her breath, she struggled to move all the bags to one arm to reach it. Vikki leaned forward quickly and took them from her, freeing her hands.
“I'll go drop these off in your room. Come back when you've finished." She tilted her head in the direction of Red’s pocket.
She smiled and nodded, picking the red phone out of her pocket and answering it. "Dexter?" Since he was the only one who knew her phone number, it was a pretty safe bet he was the one on the other end.
"Ah, Red. Just seeing if you kept the phone on you, glad to see you’ve got it. Any progress to report on your relationship with Zane?"
At the mention of his name, she got a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She'd been so busy that she hadn't had time to think about what he'd said yesterday. How was she supposed to make friends with someone who hated her that much?
She cleared her throat and forced a look of determination onto her face. "He told me he wanted me to feel so hurt and humiliated, that I’d want to leave and never come back." It was a lot harder than she thought to repeat his words. But her feelings weren’t important. The mission was. She needed to tell the mission leader what was going on.
She thought she’d said it confidently, and with no emotion. But her voice shook towards the end.
Dexter was quiet on the other end of the line. "Red, he's a very difficult person to get along with. It'll take time. As long as you keep an eye on him in the meantime, that's all that matters."
She nodded, and then realized he couldn't see her. "Okay."
He hung up. She hung up too and stood still for a moment, just letting her mind wander. Then she slowly walked over to a bench that sat on the outskirts of the camp’s forest. She slumped down on it, tugging at the t-shirt she was wearing.
"Dad, what am I supposed to do? What if I can't protect him?" she whispered to the shirt, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the picture. She lovingly straightened it out. She should have put the photo in a frame by now, to make sure it was never torn or damaged. But she'd found the picture in the shirt when she'd walked into the room at Headquarters on the day the other agents had cleaned out her parents stuff.
The picture had been in the shirt then, and that was where she planned on keeping it. It made her happy to see that her dad had kept a picture of the family in his pocket and in a way, she wanted to honor that memory.
She sat on the bench for a few more minutes, listening to the distant noises and watching as a few other people entered the gate, coming back from their outings. She was so deep in thought she didn't hear the footsteps coming up behind her. Two pairs of hands grabbed her shoulders. Before she could let out a scream, a scrap of material was placed over her mouth and a blindfold was put over her eyes. Her hands were held by someone and she was pulled from the bench, and dragged along the ground.
"Shut it, Hart," a familiar female voice called out.
She couldn't quite figure out who it was and struggled as the hands gripped her tightly. She kicked out and tried to stop walking, but they kept on leading her away.
The picture was torn from her hands and she was shoved to the ground. Panic rose inside her. They could hurt her all they wanted, but the picture was all she had left of her parents.
A quiet ripping sound sent a wave of pure dread and horror over her. It seemed so loud in the silence of the forest. No. It wasn't being—
She was pulled back by the fragile t-shirt and pushed against a tree. In the same moment, the collar ripped. She didn't feel the pain of four manicured nails swiping the skin on her back, she only heard shirt rip. If she yelled, would she be heard? It was so dark; she figured she was deep in the forest.
"Don't you think this is going too far?" A quiet girl’s voice said.
She looked around, despite the fact she couldn't actually see anything with her eyes covered.
"Shut up. She deserves this. Every time I see her with Seth, this is the pain I feel. I just want her to know how much it hurts me."
She was shoved against a tree. She was being scratched all over, but she couldn't feel it. As the shirt was slowly torn and her hands were rendered useless behind her, she felt herself breaking.
It was being destroyed. She was being destroyed.
She sobbed, finally broken.
* * * * *
Zane didn't usually have visitors, especially on a Free Day. Casper went to visit his relatives who
were local and Seth just left without telling anyone where he was going.
So he was very surprised when he heard a knock at his door. It was a panicked, urgent knock. He swallowed down the nervousness he felt all of a sudden. Was it Red?
He approached the door quickly, opening it with his 'I’m—superior' expression on his face.
It almost fell off the moment he saw Icky Vikki, Casper's old friend. She was out of breath and looking very worried.
"I’m sorry, there's no one else I could go to. Red's missing. She's been gone for two hours. She wouldn't leave without saying anything. She wouldn—“
"Stop," Zane said suddenly. He stared at her. Did he just hear what he thought he'd heard? "Repeat," he ordered.
Vikki leaned against his doorframe with her hands, still trying to catch her breath. "Red's gone. She's been missing for two hours and I can't find her anywhere. She won't answer her phone."
Zane pushed her out of the way, running out of his door. She was missing? What if she had left?
"Hey, wait up!" Vikki urged her legs to run to catch up with the boy in front of her. Zane exited the dorm, looking around and running a hand through his hair, his bangs getting caught in the movement. It was dark, the streetlights bathing the trails and paths in dull light, so there were moving shadows he continued to mistake for her.
She wouldn't have left without saying something. She—
"You… don't… have… to run… so fast." Vikki puffed as she stumbled out of the doors to the dorm. He turned to her, alarm on his face. He stepped forward and gripped her shoulders.
"Where did you see her last?" He asked her, his cold gray eyes flitting with emotion. She was bent over and holding her stomach, struggling to breathe.
“I…we…by the bench… at the front gate."
And he was gone again, jogging towards the bench, taking time to stop occasionally and look around. What if someone had decided to take the bullying up another step? He'd told them not to hurt her. They wouldn't do something like that to please him… would they?
He reached the bench and stopped jogging, not even noticing that he was breathing heavily. He swung his head from side to side, his eyes examining every little thing. Any sign of movement, any rough ground that would show signs of—
—a struggle.
He saw it. A shoe. It was Red's shoe. He bent down and slowly picked it up, looking around him.
She was around somewhere, she—
He froze, straightening. Had he heard right?
A sniff and a muffled sob.
His heart leapt out of his chest and his throat clogged up with the wild emotions that ran through him all at once. Fear, guilt, worry.
He was too occupied to notice there was no hatred.
He looked deep into the forest and the shadows that made it look all the more ominous, and then started to walk quickly. His movement slowly increased to a jog. Then a run. He stopped and heard the sniff again.
It was right behind him.
Slowly, he turned around. Hiding in the dark shadow of a long, spidery tree, was Red. She was on her stomach, shreds of a black shirt hanging on her, bloody scraps all over her back. Her legs were spread out behind her and she was frantically searching the forest floor, picking up what looked to be tiny pieces of paper. Every so often, she would stop and wipe her eyes with the back of her dirty arm.
He couldn't figure out what he was feeling. It was too much at once. He felt dizzy.
She was so caught up, so upset, so hurt that she hadn't even noticed him standing there. He took a few steps forward and crouched, resting a hand on her shoulder.
Her trembling hand dropped all of the pieces and her watery, red, swollen eyes snapped to his.
Sympathy, pity, guilt and concern overpowered his senses, flowing out of the box of emotions he had sworn to keep locked up and hidden. Her expression was a look of complete pain and loss.
He didn't know how long they looked at each other. But she broke the eye contact first, sweeping his hand away from her arm, she turned back to pick up the bits of paper, clearly trying to control her tears. She sent him an incredibly forced smile as she picked up another piece.
"Hey Zane, what brings you out here—"
"Don’t?" he snapped at her. When her head dropped down, he raised a hand to lift her face so she met his gaze.
She should have been surprised, but instead the hurt swamped her.
He let out a humorless laugh. "How can you still force a smile at a time like this? Look at yourself!" He swallowed and released his hold on her face. Cursing, he ran a hand back through his hair and his eyes darted around before finally settling back on Red.
She had stopped moving, her short, black, hair cropping her face. He saw a dash of blue.
"I’m sorry," her quiet, weak voice said into the silence. She sniffed again and wiped a hand across her eyes, before returning to picking up the pieces of paper.
Zane watched her in silence.
Even in her current state, she was still apologizing. He watched her pick up another piece of paper.
"What's so important that you have to stay out here, looking like that?" He couldn't say what was running through his mind. He wanted to, but no matter how much he tried, his old self always showed through.
Red stopped moving for a second. "This was the only picture of my parents that I own."
Zane looked down at the pieces in her hand. If how she’d looked hadn't done it, this certainly did. He quickly searched the ground for other pieces, and then grabbed the wrist of her hand that was holding onto the scraps with his left hand. He took the miniscule pieces of paper from her with his right. He shoved all the pieces they’d gathered into his pocket, then leaned forward and placed his arm underneath Red's bent legs and wrapped an arm around her back. He hauled her up into a bridal carry.
Red didn't refuse. She gripped the front of his t-shirt and scrunched her face up, as though trying to block out whatever she was thinking and the emotions behind those thoughts.
He would have complained about the trouble she was causing him. He would have left her where she was, finally happy that he had made the annoying, smiling girl totally miserable. He told himself he really would have left her there, if she hadn't been just like him.
Chapter 13: Purple
She wasn't in her room. She knew that, because she could smell him. Zane.
She opened her eyes slowly, feeling hands on her arm. A warm liquid was being rubbed into them, easing the stinging throb. The figure attending to her arm was blurry, so she couldn't see him clearly, but she would have noticed the mop of blonde hair anywhere.
"Casper." She said his name, not really intending to ask him anything specifically. She was confused.
"Red? Red!" Casper stopped what he was doing to her arm and sat up higher on his knees. "Guys! She's awake!"
She licked her lips and swallowed, and then attempted to slowly sit up. A pair of hot hands wrapped themselves under her arms, helping her. She looked up to see who it was, her eyes wide. Seth smiled warmly at her, pulling his hands away before resting one hand on her head. He didn't have to say anything.
She blinked, tearing her eyes away from him. Strangely, seeing him had made her feel better.
"Red? Oh, thank God you're okay, when we saw Zane carrying you here all torn up like that, we were so worried." Casper rested his forehead on her shoulder and then lifted his head up to grin. "You've only got a few scratches on your arms. We would have also done your back, but you weren't awake and it'd be really weird if we…" he trailed off, staring at her uncomfortably.
She smiled at him innocently. "If you what?"
"He's trying to say that treating your back would mean we had to take off your torn t-shirt. It probably isn’t the best idea…having a room full of guys, strip you down."
Her chest constricted unwillingly. It was his voice. She peeked over the top of the sofa and saw him sitting on the floor, his knees pulled up with his elbows resting on them. He was star
ing directly at her.
She quickly sunk back behind the safety of the sofa, her cheeks feeling strangely hot. Why did she feel obliged to thank him for something?
"Hey, Red, do you want to talk about what happened?" Casper rested his arms on the sofa cushions, looking up at her expectantly.
Her face dropped. "Huh? Something happened?" She looked at Seth, then back to Casper.
The blonde frowned at her, opening his mouth to say something, but stopping when a shadow loomed over her.
Zane gazed down at her, his hands shoved into the pocket of his casual suit. "The forest?" He raised an eyebrow in question, his face blank.
She stared at him like he was crazy, then let out a nervous laugh and glanced at Casper. "Forest? What are you talking about?" She straightened up and scrambled out of the blanket that had been put over her, feeling hot. She went to lean backwards against the sofa, but then jumped forward again, hissing under her breath. She tried to look over her shoulder. "Ouch."
A hand roughly squished her cheeks and pulled her head around. Her eyes locked with Zane's as he closely examined her face.
"You don't remember anything at all?" He said slowly, like she was a child. She shook her head, her blue eyes wide. He released her and straightened up, folding his arms over his chest. The shocking gray orbs never left her face.
Casper shifted his gaze to Zane, frowning in confusion. "You think she’s concussed?"
A hot hand cupped her cheek gently and her head was moved to her right. She swallowed when Seth moved his face close to her own, staring deep into her eyes. She couldn't move as his eyes shifted from side to side, studying her pupils.
"It's like she blocked it out," he spoke so quietly, it was a wonder anyone in the room heard him. He brushed his thumb along her face, totally oblivious to the fact that he was making her heart beat uncomfortably. He was too focused on trying to look deep into her eyes.
"Right, well, maybe that's a good thing," Zane spat, the tone of his voice completely different to the one he'd been using moments before.
Sunnyside Up with Red Ketchup Page 11