by N. K. Smith
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 gluc
ose 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.”
“You ssshould eat.”
She sighed again, and began rummaging through our cupboards until she held out a granola bar. “Can I have this?” I nodded.
When she was finished, I was going to take her up to my bedroom like she asked, but when I passed the grand piano, the pull proved to be too much.
“D-d-do you w-w-want to hear the Chopin p-piece now?”
“Sure,” she said, sitting down on the chaise lounge that Kate used to like.
I sat down at the piano and played, hoping that she would like it and wishing that I had enough courage to play her the song that ran through my head every time I thought of her.
While I played, I mused that had she not been in my life, I wouldn’t have uttered a word all day. She was the only person I wanted to talk to. Now that she’d admitted to me what her mother had done, I wanted her to admit that she coped with it by using drugs, and possibly sex. The thought grew in my head until it became my next goal, my next little battle to win with her.
Once we were in my room, I wanted to kiss her again, but I had no clue how to make that happen.
The thought of just going for it made me feel a little dizzy.
Her eyes were closed and she was sort of swaying. Without thinking I just blurted out the first thing that came into my head, even though I already knew the answer, because I’d asked her before.
“W-w-why d-do you get hhhigh w-when you know it’s n-not good fffffor you?”
Sophie’s eyes slowly opened and she let out a breath before giving me a slow smile. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Liiiiike w-what?” I was so tired of being confused. I wanted whatever was going on between us to be out in the open. That way if she was going to reject me, I could get it over with. But I didn’t think she was going to reject me and that was almost as bad, since she’d probably cover everything up and run, just like she always did.
“W-why can’t I t-touch you?” It boiled over because I felt like I needed to know if she felt anything at all for me, or if it was just sympathy, and why she kept running.
“I told you.”
I shook my head, indicating that she hadn’t really told me anything other than that I shouldn’t want to touch her.
Sighing heavily, she ran her hands through her hair wildly.
“Being touched is kind of…I mean, it’s not…Touching is fine, but the way you do it is…” She closed her eyes again and the pain etched across her face reached out and burned me like the lash of a leather belt across my skin. “…uncomfortable,” she finished in a breath.
“I-I-I d-d-do it w-wrong?”
She shook her head and seemed to fold into herself even more.
“No, it’s just…why do you do this shit, Elliott?”
“W-w-what do I do?” I asked, wondering why she sounded so breathy.
She didn’t answer me. I really wanted her to. I deserved to know if I was imagining things or if Anderson was right.
“W-w-why…”
“Why, why, why, fucking why? Why do you ask all of the questions that no one else has ever asked?”
Here was the moment I had to say it. I had to be deadly honest or everything would continue on in the same fashion, leaving me somewhere in-between.
“B-b-because I liiiiiike you,” I said quietly. She exhaled sharply but I forged on. “I w-w-want to kn-know you.” I saved the most important part for last. “I w-want you to kn-know m-mmmme.”
Sophie continued to run her hands through her hair as she drew in measured and even breaths. I was still standing by my door, watching her closely, when she stood. Panic gripped me. I thought she would run for sure now, and I couldn’t swallow, just as I couldn’t breathe. I wanted her to stay with me just for a little while longer. I wanted her to open up and show me the little bits and pieces inside of her that had broken so long ago.
I wanted her to let me touch her face so that I could smooth away those little lines on her forehead. I wanted her to let me make her smile and shoulder just a little bit of the pain she tried so hard to mask.
I didn’t understand why she held onto it so steadfastly. It wasn’t fair for one person to have so much weight pressing down on her. If I could just take a little piece of it and carry it for awhile, she wouldn’t need to do all of the drugs she did.
Because no matter what she told me, I knew that she’d been doing a lot more than smoking pot on a daily basis.
I was aware this girl - this broken girl whose pain too closely mirrored my own - didn’t want me as a boyfriend. She’d been clear about that, but I couldn’t help but want to protect her from all the bad that seemed to live inside of her. I wanted to protect her from herself; I wanted to keep her safe from the demons that had consumed my mother.
“D-don’t go,” I whispered, desperation clearly present in my tone.
“I can’t give you anything.”
I moved toward her, keeping my motions slow. I knew what it was like to feel caged and out of control of the situation, and I didn’t want her to feel like that with me.
Ever.
“I don’t w-want anything.” The chemical exchange between us, the unspoken energy that surged and zinged, spurred me on. As awkward as it was, and as much as I thought Anderson might be right about me being a worthless loser, I had to do this.
“You don’t hhhhhave t-to run aw-way from me.” I was very close to her now and extremely aware of how her body was reacting. I brushed my fingers along the back of her hand. I wanted so badly to feel her comforting touch, but in this moment, I also wanted my touch to be comforting to her.
Her eyes were cast down to the floor as I took my last step, bringing my body so close that I could feel the heat off of her.
I needed her.
I needed her in a way that was foreign and uncomfortable.
I needed her in a way that would make me take chances that I would have never even thought about before.
“I w-won’t hhhhhurt you,” I whispered, knowing that she’d hear every minute nuance in my tone.
She gripped my fingers tighter and I could see her body visibly tense up as I raised my other hand, slowly bringing it toward her face. Sophie’
s breath caught, and her lips parted as my fingertips grazed her cheekbone.
I closed my eyes slowly as I concentrated on the feel of the smooth skin until I heard her gasp. I nearly jumped, my eyes immediately opening when she quickly flinched away. Her chest was heaving, her legs buckling and straightening rapidly, as she pressed her lips together, but the fact that she still let me hold her hand was not lost on me.
I felt horrible as I realized she was on the verge of tears.
“I don’t like…”
When she didn’t continue, I felt the need to prompt her. “You d-don’t liiiiike w-what?”
Sophie lifted her face and looked me in the eye, and the pain dwelling within her was almost too much for me to stomach.
“My face. I don’t like it when you touch my face. It’s…uncomfortable.”
“B-b-but I can t-touch your hhhhands?” It took her a moment to respond. It looked like she was deciding what her answer would be right then and there. Finally, she nodded and so I wasted no time and took her other hand.
“I-I-I d-don’t liiiike to be touched either, b-b-but it’s niiiiiice w-when you d-do it.”
She gave me a little smile, but her body was still tense.
“I d-don’t w-want you to get high ssssssso m-much, S-Sophie,” I admitted quietly, hoping it wouldn’t upset her.
“And I want you to beat the shit out of Anderson.”
She always did that; threw it back to me. Eventually she sat back down and pulled me onto the couch next to her.
I broke one of my hands loose and carefully brought it up to run through her hair. It was like silk, soft and smooth between my fingers. With a gulp, she nodded. “Hhhhhide from e-e-everyone else, b-but not from mmmme.”
Sophie’s amazing blue eyes widened and her breath was shaky.
“I w-worry about you.”
With a raspy breath, she shook her head.
“I w-won’t hhhurt you,” I promised again.