Diamonds, Loose: Part Three
Fast-forward a couple of days and that makes it a Friday, specifically one where the majority percentage of the school is in high spirits and sunny moods, smiles brought on by a small change in temperature that means no more unusual November scarves in the city, just some clouds and a light breeze that’s easy to deal with as the sun breaks through weakly. Personally, I’m feeling pretty damn happy. If I don’t think about home. So I just don’t.
The day after I slept at Spencer’s, I went to school straight from his house, and back to his again afterwards. I didn’t have to ask permission; he just steered me onto the school bus and yanked me to my feet (in the most caring way) when we got to his street, instead of leaving me there to carry on to mine. Once I’d been there for about forty-five minutes, though, my mom called, saying a simple, “Your dad’s gone out. Come home, have some dinner.” So I did. Ate in tense awkwardness, went to bed and to sleep before he came in.
Yesterday, the next day after that, everything was relatively normal. A sort of calm has settled, now, the way it does after he explodes like that; he retreats, like he’s unsure or wary of his luck running out so instead he quits while he’s ahead. I’ll never understand it, and frankly, I don’t give a shit. All I know is he shrinks back in on himself - still drinks, always drinks, but it’s like he’s resigned to it, giving himself over and just surveying me with dull, lifeless eyes before wordlessly dismissing me and turning back to the bottle at hand.
So, yeah. Today, I’m just looking ahead and not behind me, not acknowledging the place I had to come from this morning, and I’m feeling good. School, I know how to handle school. I can do this part.
Pete, on the other hand, seems to be the only one not smiling. Well, he was smiling his ass off like normal, all through Latin and Math and Gym, and presumably every other subject - until the one before lunch. Because, in Geography, about ten minutes in, Pete was hauled out of the class by the principal, Gardner. Literally hauled by the scruff of his dark, fairly tattered blazer, while Gardner growled out something about, “We’re going to have a little talk, Peter.” The guy’s pretty much built like the Hulk, only, like, a little less green and with added rusty-orange curls atop his head, and he’s not exactly something you miss easily, so the whole class was staring, gaping.
The last thing I saw as he was dragged out of the classroom was Pete’s black-lined eyes wider than normal with fear and confusion, and after a mouthed, “What the fuck?” he was gone for the rest of the lesson.
“I’m gonna fucking kill someone.” Now, Pete’s slumped down on one of the cold steps at the side of the school, the part no one bothers to go at recess. We’re all here, sitting or sprawling or leaning, and all somewhat gathered around Pete. “Don’t think I’m joking. Fuck, what’re my parents gonna say?”
William coughs and begins tentatively, “Are you sure they’re going to be inform-“
“He said he’d call them ASAP, didn’t he?” Pete snaps, and William wisely closes his mouth. “Fuck,” Pete says, “this is bullshit. Who even rats people out for smoking? Smoking? Everyone goddamn smokes.”
“Not everyone,” Jon points out lazily from where he’s stretched out along the top step, chewing gum in the most unconcerned way and looking at the sky.
“Shut up, Walker,” Gabe drawls. He looks at Pete, eyes narrowed. “You know who told on your ass?”
Pete breaks into a grin, not a happy one, more one full of a sarcastic cynicism that says yeah, and I can’t believe it’s not obvious. It’s accompanied by a little disbelieving shake of his head, and he raises his eyebrows as he murmurs darkly, “I think I can guess.”
“Who?” I ask, curious now.
“Brendon Urie.”
I almost want to scream, because why the fuck does he have to crop up in every single thing I do, every step I take in this godforsaken town? Fucking hell. Brendon fucking Urie.
“How’d you figure that one out, Christ,” William breathes, a bit in awe of Pete. He may be the one with the long phrases and the refined accent, but in general, in the everyday, William thinks Pete’s kind of a genius. The way he reasons and deducts. Even I can admit he’s got a great mind.
Pete shrugs. “He told me it was a junior, so. I think it was an accident, but he said it, anyway. I was listening.”
From the top step, Jon hums tunelessly, his eyes closed but his ears clearly open. “But there are a lot of juniors. I’m just saying.”
Whipping his head round to fix Jon with a glare, only to let his face fall in disappointment when he realises Jon can’t see it, Pete says slowly, “Ye-es, but there’s only one Junior who’s not, like, too scared of me - or us - to say something like that.” He sniffs, curling his upper lip a bit. “Plus, it’s got him written all over it. In Sharpie. That shit’s permanent, man.”
“So what’re you gonna do?” Gabe asks, a smile growing slowly, one that says that if Pete doesn’t have a plan then he sure does.
“We,” Pete says, flicking his eyes around at each one of us in turn, “are going to get him.”
I see Jon crack open one perma-sleepy eye, look straight at the back of Pete’s head, and he closes it again, seemingly indifferent, as William lets out a nervous laugh and says, “Ah, what does that... entail, exactly?”
“Don’t you worry, honey, no one’s asking you to punch anyone,” Gabe replies, smirking.
Pete laughs, “Bilvy couldn’t even punch a kitten.”
Taking on a genuinely shocked expression, Gabe places his hand over his heart and says earnestly, “I could never punch a kitten.”
“You’re about the only person who would, Pete,” Jon comments with a jovial smile, and Pete frowns and shrugs.
“Look, whatever,” he says. “After school, right? We’ll wait for him.” My stomach churns.
William still looks unsure, and starts, “Um, so, what precisely-“
“We’re going to hurt him, Bill,” Gabe sighs wearily, rolling his eyes in William’s direction, and everyone but William laughs. I join in a little late, but I’m still there. Their obsession with violence, it’s not something I get along well with. I mean, okay, sometimes I initiate some little threats - like with Brendon - but only when I have to; any other time I’m violent is when I’m sucked into it by these guys. I know it’s something I have to do, but it doesn’t mean I enjoy it.
Still idly chatting, we get up from the steps after a professor yells at us from a window above to “stop loitering,” and as we wander away I’m feeling an overwhelming rush of anxiety, sudden and unexpected. It’s kind of wrapping itself all the way around my head, veiling my vision and snuffing my senses so that it’s all I can focus on. I can’t physically take it anymore, and I feel like I just need to break away. I sigh heavily, pinching the bridge of my nose as I walk along, the sharp sensation doing nothing to channel my thoughts elsewhere. If I actually look beneath my own skin for a second, I know what I want to do, and I’ll be damned if I can stop it.
“Guys, I’ll catch you later, yeah?” I blurt out, loud enough for everyone to hear. They all turn fairly nonchalantly with casual questions on their lips, and I make something up. “I, uh... Bathroom. I’m going to the bathroom.”
“’Kay,” Pete says, “we’ll be around.”
I turn and walk away, opposite direction, as fast as I can without seeming conspicuous. Don’t let yourself think, don’t let yourself, that’s all I can hear whispering through my brain. I filter everything else in my mind out apart from two things; the aim, and the reason.
The aim: Find the kid, give him a heads up.
The reason: Fuck knows. I’ve no clue, but I just know it’s something I should do, something I could actually do right. Whatever.
It takes me a while to find him, but I remember hearing something about him hanging out around the music rooms during his free time, so I make my way down to that corner of the school. The corridors here are dimly lit, the few bulbs in the ceiling casting only a low glow, and it gives it both a sleepy and neglected feel, a kind of mist. To be truthful, it’s my favourite part of the place, the music rooms. I just never get the time or the opportunity anymore.
“Brendon!” I call out, catching sight of his silhouette down the darkened hallway, bending down to inspect something at the foot of a guitar rack standing against the wall. The hall seems to get narrower near the end where he is, but it’s probably just the light.
He springs to his feet and spins round, and I notice how his eyes are really bright, even in the gloom. “Oh, um,” he says by way of answer, sounding caught-off-guard, and I push the doubts and prejudices out of my mind as I take decisive steps towards him. By the time I get there, he’s gathered himself again, regarded me with a cool, lofty air. “Stalking me.”
“I. What?”
“You’re stalking me. You’re everywhere.”
“No, that’s you-look, that’s not. I need to, uh.” I scratch at the back of my neck awkwardly, fingers reaching under my shirt collar as I realise I never actually planned how to phrase this.
“Spit it out,” he instructs me, amused.
“You told on Pete for smoking.”
“Oh, yeah, that.” He holds his palms up, a what-else-can-I-do gesture, and goes on, “It’s against the rules. I’m not gonna just pretend I never saw anything.” He’s holding his head up pointedly, defiant chin raised.
I eye him. “God, you’re fucking ridiculous.”
“I’m only right.”
“You need to watch out,” I mumble suddenly, staring at the carpeted floor. Brendon’s wearing one hundred percent regulation school shoes, shiny and black and flawless. Of course.
“Is that, like... threat of the day? Or?” He guesses, and when I look back up at him he’s tilting his head to one side.
“No,” I say fiercely, then lower my voice after glancing over both shoulders, confidentiality. No one’s supposed to see this. If no one does, then it didn’t happen. That’s the rule. “Pete and Gabe, and everyone, they’re gonna be waiting for you. Pete’s pissed, dude. After school today. I just... thought I should warn you, you know. ‘S’only fair.”
He’s staring at me, the crease between his brows becoming steadily deeper as I talk, and when I’m finished I hold my breath, wait for whatever snide comment or put-down is coming my way now. I’ve done it, I’ve said my part. That’s a wrap. “I see,” he says, slowly, like he’s still comprehending it. Something in his eyes has dulled. “Uh, well. Thanks for telling me, I guess,” he murmurs thoughtfully, but he looks like he’s brushing it off, dismissing it as a nothing, and it’s not, he needs to know that.
“Listen, I’m serious,” I stress, and he takes an automatic step back that causes me to change the tone of my voice. “Just. Be careful, God, I don’t think you get what they could do to a kid like you.”
Brendon laughs, then, laughs, practically in my face. “Well, I dealt with you alright, didn’t I?” he notes, like a reminder from up on his high horse, and I flare inside.
“I wasn’t ever intending to beat you to a pulp,” I grind out through gritted teeth, trying to hold it back because here I was trying to be relatively nice or at least civil to him, still goddamn trying.
He scoffs, says, “You implied something like that, though.” He smiles sweetly. “Bluffing, were we? Knew you didn’t have it in you to be like that. Anyone can tell if they look hard enough.” And, well, I don’t know what to say to that, because he’s kind of-well, he’s not got me all figured out, no, he’s not quite hit the nail on the head, but the hammer’s getting pretty fucking close. I thought this version of me was impenetrable, but there’s always a loophole, and maybe I’m just unlucky enough that my one’s shaped like him. Brendon raises an eyebrow at my lack of speech and continues, “So, looking out for me?”
I flash back to full attention because, hey, no, that makes it sound like I actually like the guy, what the fuck. “What?” I ask blankly.
He grins, playful and sly, like he knows something I don’t. Bullshit. “Are you warming to me, Ryan Ross?”
In an instance, I see red, throbbing angrily behind my eyelids, and I shut him out, shut everything out. As I turn on my heel and make my way down the too-dark corridor, all my efforts going towards not letting my feet trip over themselves, I realise I haven’t answered him yet, so I throw him a glare over my shoulder, flick my hair out of my eyes. “Fuck you, no.”
* * *
In my last lesson, a note is passed from hand to hand, thrown half-heartedly onto pages of notes and open workbooks, until it eventually stops at me. I look at it disinterestedly. It’s got my name on the front, so I unfold it, darting my eyes around to see Pete looking at me. He jerks his head in acknowledgement, and I lower my eyes to the crumpled scrap. It reads meet me at my locker after this and then, underneath, you better still be in on this:)
The fact that he signed it with a smiley face is more than a little contradictory, but I look up and he’s still staring, waiting, so I nod quickly across the hushed classroom, mouth, “What do you take me for?” and slump down in my seat as soon as he’s turned round, too lost in thought to continue working.
* * *
There’s a line of shops near Bishop Gorman, if you come out of our school gates and take a left, against the headstrong current consisting of practically our entire school that streams to the right every day. It’s a little run-down pocket of the town, slightly dirty and cramped-feeling, claustrophobic, and there are generally better places to go so it’s like a ghost town most of the time.
Six or seven small, sagging shops and convenience stores with peeling signs make up the line I’m talking about, all leaning on each other. Somehow, Pete’s got some tip that Brendon comes here most days after school gets out. My feet are dragging, feel like lead. I’m kind of caught up in the middle, Pete and Gabe on either side of me, their respective arms brushing and pressing against mine as if to keep me in place.
No one was sure where Jon had sloped off to, and William’s opted out of so many of these ‘issues’ before that we didn’t bother to ask if he wanted to come. He would have managed to tag along if he’d wanted to, anyway, knowing him.
Me, though, I don’t get a decision.
It seems that one of the strongest staples attaching me and pinning me in place is, well, this. This act.
“Shit, look,” Pete says suddenly, interrupting Gabe’s ramblings about Spanish football, and he grabs at my arm, pointing in what he probably thinks is a discreet manner. I reach over and lower his outstretched arm, muttering something about being casual, and then cast my gaze over to there he was directing. And. Okay, what.
Brendon’s there, leaning against the side wall of the last shop in the row, texting on his phone. We can’t see his face from where we’re standing, but the hair’s clear, the way it hangs down with the bend of his neck, and his cocky posture and his weirdly neat uniform and, yeah, that’s Brendon.
I fucking told him. It’s like he’s asking for it.
“C’mon,” Pete says, and Gabe nods without hesitation, bouncing on the balls of his feet, brimming with energy. I look at his hands; already balled up into fists. Then they’re making their way towards him and I’m following, of course I am, only half a step behind; Gabe gently directs us around in a way so that we’re not seen as we get closer, as he comes more into view, the oddly-placed streetlamp pooling him in yellow glow that’s not really needed in the still-light afternoon. It’s like a spotlight. Or a searchlight, locked on target.
Just as I’m wondering whether this is going to be dragged out, stretched to beyond the limit until it finally snaps and all hell breaks loose, or whether it’s going to be sudden, fast, Gabe leans down and whispers into my ear, “Camisado.” A word derived from Spanish that he taught me a while ago: a sneak attack by night. The sun’s still up, is most of the time when he uses it, but I still get it.
“Hey, Urie,” Pete calls, swaggering over to him. Brendon pockets his phone, looks up with wide, doe eyes. They flick between Pete and Gabe a few times, and then land on me. I feel weirdly scrutinised, x-ray machine paranoia.
“What,” Brendon says coldly, and Pete sucks in a mocking breath through his teeth.
“That’s no nice way to talk, is it, now?” he says, advancing on him, and Brendon’s already pressed up against the wall, nowhere to go. Gabe’s shoulders are set, he’s almost prowling towards him, and I’m just reeled in further too. We surround him, no escape. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, quick as anything, and he can’t seem to decide who to look at. Pete grins wickedly. “We could have been civil,” he says, punctuating it with a shove into the wall of the shop that knocks the breath out of the kid, “but you just went and ruined that.”
On some hidden signal from Pete that even I miss, Gabe moves forward and grips Brendon’s shoulder like a vice, keeping him there, and Pete does the same using a hand high on his chest. Brendon’s breathing hard, a little panicky underneath it all, and my gut twists.
Low into the kid’s ear, Pete growls, “No one fucking tells shit about me, you got that?”
Brendon nods, not looking at him. He’s looking at me. I’m surprised he’s not putting up any more of a fight, really, for someone always so full of himself, so arrogant.
Then it starts. Pete curls his lip in disgust, and then. “Don’t,” a shove, “fucking,” a punch to the side of his gut from Gabe, “mess,” a mirror image from Pete, “with me.”
Here, he stops, and Brendon’s hands are clutching at both his sides now, a small groan escaping him but nothing else. Trembling fingers dig into where the punches fell, and it must make it hurt more, it must do, but he keeps on and on.
Before I can consider what’s happening, Pete’s leaning in closer than close, whispering something into his ear that I can’t hear, and then he steps away a little, pulls back his fist and lets it power forward at lightning speed, an upwards curve that hits him dead in the stomach, and he doubles over despite the hands holding him down. He lets out a wounded sound as he does so, and it’s then that Pete turns to me.
“Well, you’ve been awfully helpful,” he says, grinning. I smile weakly, can’t think of anything to respond with. “Come on,” Pete says, yanking me forward so I’m face-to-face with Brendon, can feel the body heat radiating from him. “Ryan’s turn now.”
“I’m. No, I,” I stutter. I never stutter, what the hell is that. “You got this.”
“Just do it, man,” Gabe cuts in, his fingers and nails digging in even more to Brendon’s shoulder as the kid finally straightens up, still holding his stomach, hands cradling protectively. His face is pale white and pasty, but still he presses his lips together, says nothing, does nothing.
“Ryan,” Pete says sharply after I still haven’t made a move. “I’m being serious.” Looking into his eyes, the dark, dark glint there gripping me and swaying me, is how I know I don’t have a choice here. I change his eyes for Brendon’s in my field of vision, and. Brendon’s eyes are nothing like that. They’re soft and open, and so wide it’s hard to tell whether he’s scared or silently pleading, or both. Neither, maybe, who knows.
He looks innocent, is the only way I can describe it.
Innocent.
But I remind myself, under the hard gazes of both Pete and Gabe, I remind myself, I don’t have a choice here. As the last walls of resistance crack and crumble to the ground and I fix my expression as stony and business-like as I possibly can, I repeat it like a mantra, over and over until it’s not so much a reminder as something to be convinced of.
There’s no time to question whether it’s convinced me or not. I look him dead in the eye and pull my arm back, letting it go like it’s on a spring, automatic and concentrated, and it happens so fast I’m not even sure I’ve done it. I hear a pained grunt from Brendon. I’ve hit him square in the jaw with a sickening crunch, knocking his head backwards against the store with the pure force of it, and his hands fly up to curl around his face where there’s already a sickly bruise forming.
They don’t stay there long, though, and I’m fully taken off guard as he wrestles out of their grip and throws himself at me, fists flying in retaliation, a sudden fury overtaking his former calm; I take hurried steps back, out of his reach, arms raised in shocked defence. Pete and Gabe haul him back, slam him against the wall again, and when I look at him he’s seething.
Gabe’s muttering something menacing at him and twisting his arm behind his back, now, and I’ve seen enough, done enough. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I turn and make myself scarce, half-jogging in the fading light. Fleeing the scene. My blood has been simmering since we first laid eyes on him and now it’s boiling, bubbling over. When I chance a look back, Gabe has both his arms locked behind him while Pete delivers blows to his ribs, his stomach, but Brendon - his eyes are filled with rage-soft fire and they’re fixed on me.
* * *
There’s no sense of place, here, no indication of time or space, just this. Hands everywhere, exposed skin, lips on mine, and they’re-not Jac’s lips, no lip gloss and no slick smoothness but rougher, more domineering; manly. I’m sighing against his lips, can hear him moaning husky nothings as he tugs and pulls on my hair restlessly, sinking down into my lap, onto me. My head is spinning and whirling and there’s so much colour that it’s hard to stay still, so I don’t, just focus on the movements of his body, no name, just ‘his,’ and I can’t control what my mouth is saying, God, yeah, it’s been too long. Far too fucking long, and I buck up to meet him as his hips drop and engulf me in sparking flashes of heat, every time.
His rhythm’s fucking perfect, he’s fucking perfect, but I can’t see his face, can’t make it out, like it’s pixelated out or someone’s taken a half-hearted eraser to it. His body’s in full view though, lean and skinny with an undertone of muscle, pale skin shining. My eyes are fluttering shut anyway as I hurtle towards the finish, and it’s all nerve endings screaming and nails digging in and teeth on lips and sweat rolling and gasp-moan-breathe.
It’s over before I know it, I’m babbling some nonsensical string of words and curses and the guy leans down, down, down, almost in slow-motion, until his face comes into focus absurdly close, smiling wildly with glimmering eyes darker than the very dead of night, and I wake up drenched in a cold sweat.
“Jesus,” I breathe out shakily. The word is croaked, hoarse. “I don’t. Uh.” I’m not talking to anyone, of course I’m not, but I have to do something to make sure this is reality, now. To make sure I’m not crazy. Although, that might be a lost cause, considering. “Oh God,” I dead-pan, stunned. “Oh, Christ.” I just. Can’t.
There’s an increasingly uncomfortable stickiness in certain vital areas, and I reluctantly peek under the covers, rolling my eyes in disdain for myself. A fucking wet dream, like I’m some kid who can’t control his urges. Jesus.
That’s not even the problem, though. A little bit of a blow to my own pride, yeah, but the cracks in that can be botched with masking tape and ignored, no big deal. I’m under eighteen, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s still kind of justifiable. Kind of. I let my head flop back down onto my pillow, bringing my hands up and burying my face in them. The fingertips press hard against my forehead involuntarily, like they’re trying to force out the images I’ve just seen and lived through, but there’s not much use.
I just had a wet dream about Brendon, and it’s too late now. I’m still a little light-headed, coloured lights remain dancing in my peripheral, and I don’t think that picture’s going to be leaving any time soon.
Yeah, I really, really need to get laid.
When I swing my legs out of the bed, plant them on the floor and stand up, my knees shake, like jelly. I have to flail out an arm and grab onto something, a bookshelf, while I regain my balance and compose myself again. Fuck, that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean shit, and I imagine with a heavy drive that my limbs and my bones are made of pure, reinforced steel, and nothing can shake that, much less some stupid Mormon kid with stupid floppy hair. Eventually I’m confident enough that I can move on my own, my body thankfully returning to normal, but everything’s still not right. It’s all wrong, and I can’t persuade myself to get my head around it.
It’s too early to get up for school, I suddenly realise as I catch sight of the time on the digital display of my alarm clock, 4:49AM, but there’s no way I can just slip back into sleep after that. My way of dealing with things often means distancing myself from them, and there’s no reason why this shouldn’t be the same. So I don’t go back to sleep, I don’t try, simply steal quietly out of my bedroom and head for a long, long shower. The steam and the pounding water pressure might clear my head. No, not might, it will.
I hope it will.
To sort out some of the confusion, I idly make a mental list as I get undressed in the bathroom, tiles cold under my feet.
I just had: a sex dream.
A sex dream about: someone who looked an awful lot like Brendon.
Brendon is: a kid I helped beat up not even four days ago.
And it was: probably the best dream I’ve had in years.
Yeah, it’s not helping that much.
Instead of the relief or the straightening out of the jumbled thoughts rattling around inside, I’m feeling a growing pool of dark, low things, located in my chest; waves of self-loathing crashing and ebbing spontaneously, so that one moment I could be completely content and unthinking about whatever went on in my subconscious last night and the next it will consume me, the thought of what I thought, the way I’m going against everything I’ve had planned out so neatly.
Brendon is, above all else, someone from school. That’s not what I do, and yet I seem dead-set on proving myself wrong. Sometimes I feel like I am not one person, but two. Hell, maybe more, who knows? Not me. All I can figure out at the minute is that, while I may not like Brendon all that much (read: despise his entire being and everything he stands for), I can’t deny that I’m wrapping myself inexplicably around his little finger, invisible to him and, often, to me.
* * *
Once I get to school, after leaving on time but arriving late due to running into the fat guy and his cute little dog en route through the park again and giving her a thorough scratch behind the ears, I’ve managed to fairly calm my overworking mind. All the thoughts labelled ‘Brendon’ have been filed into one massive, confused box; padlocked, chained and bolted.
Pete’s loitering by the main entrance doors along with all the others, Gabe, William, Spence and Jon, and I can see they’re all gathered close around him, listening to him make expressive hand gestures and wave his arms about as he tells them a story. I could probably guess which one.
“Seriously, Jon, dude, you should’a seen it,” he’s saying, his back facing me. “The guy just stood there and took it, he didn’t fight back once.” Jon replies with a simple eyebrow raise and Pete grins, absorbed in his own voice. “It was kind of boring, actually. Like a punch bag, you know? It’s just not the same.”
“He didn’t do anything at all?” William asks, eyebrows dipped in the middle.
“Nah,” Pete says, scoffs, then repeats, “just took it.”
“Well,” Gabe chimes in, a soft, thin smile growing, “apart from when Ross took a li’l pop at him. That livened him up a bit.”
“Hey, hey, speak of the devil!” That’s Pete, and it’s directed at me now, spotted as I trudge over to join them.
“Talking about me?” I clarify with a wry smile.
Pete replies, “Yeah, just telling the guys about how you totally pulled a reaction from the Mormon kid. Dude, when you punched him, and then-it was awesome.”
Without any sort of preamble or warning, Gabe launches into an impression of Brendon’s retaliation, complete with wind-milling arms and stupidly exaggerated sound effects, and they all crack up, doubling over laughing, even Spencer, though it seems a little forced. I join in, “Yeah, it was pretty pathetic,” uneasy laughs choking me until I’m not sure what’s supposed to be funny anymore.
A thankful interruption appears in the form of Jac, clearly skipping homeroom as well, as she bounces around the corner and catches sight of me, letting out a squeal. The guys snicker as she runs at me, throwing her arms around me like she has a habit of doing most times she sees me. It used to be flattering and welcome, but now I’m getting tired of always having to keep my balance. “Hey!” she greets me, pressing a feather-light kiss to my neck, and I shiver at the ghost of a touch, memories of whom I’m unsure.
“Hey there,” I reply, kissing her nose.
She keeps her arms around me, still pressed up close and tight and she leans in towards my ear. I can smell her perfume, it’s stifling, too much. “Wanna do something tonight, baby?” she asks, her voice low and husky, suggestive on all levels, and I swallow. Usually, usually I’d say yes, because what she really means is ‘come over and have a lot of sex’ and that’s what you do with girlfriends, but something feels off.
“Uh,” I say, gently prising her off of me, thinking hard and fast. “Sorry, I can’t, I... I’m going to Jon’s to work on our music assignment, right, Jon?” Jon looks over, eyes wide and uncomprehending, and I keep talking before he has a chance to say anything. “Yeah, it’s really important, I can’t really not do it, so. Sorry, Jac, baby, I’ll make it up to you.”
I angle in to kiss the pout away, but she just scowls, moves back out of my reach so I’m left hanging there. “Fine,” she snaps, unusually tetchy, and then she’s turning away and flouncing off, too-short school skirt swishing in time with the angry sway of her walk.
Gabe, appearing next to me and watching her retreat, lets out a low whistle, his eyebrows raised. Someone clears his throat, and when I turn to look, Jon says slowly, “I didn’t know you were coming to mine, but... Okay?”
“No, I.” My face feels hot, like I’m under a spotlight. “I just needed an excuse, sorry, man. I don’t know, she doesn’t know the meaning of ‘alone time,’ you know?” Spencer’s cool, calculating blue eyes are fixed on me, and I deliberately don’t look at him.
As Jon nods sympathetically, Gabe throws out, “I know the true meaning of ‘alone time,’” and makes the classic universal sign for jacking off. The group erupt with laughter again, William slapping Gabe on the back, and I smile softly and try to feel normal.
* * *
It’s later in the day, the transition between lesson one and two, and somewhere along the line, after a lot of obsessing over not thinking about the dream I had, I decided to think about it. Now, I’ve come to the conclusion that it means nothing (although I knew that before); put simply, it’s been a while, and Brendon was the last person I saw, touched, held eye contact with, so it makes sense. Kind of. The fact that he has nice eyes has nothing to do with it.
It’s not a surprise when I see him, being herded along with the strong, bustling current of kids down the hallway. I’m used to seeing him everywhere. He’s on the other side to me, heading in the direction I’ve just come from, and I avert my eyes so I’m not staring at him if he notices me.
I can’t help but move them back, though, because his face. There’s a small cut over his left eyebrow, but it’s his jaw, the place where I hit him, that commands my attention. Purple bleeds out into yellow at the edges, this huge bruise scarring his near-flawless skin, and I feel a little sick. Because I did that, I marked someone in that way, God, I feel sick.
His eyes are trained on the floor, looking dejected to the idle eye but also... coy, almost, and I can’t explain why, but it feels like I’m one of few people who could tell that. My breath catches as he looks up, fear written clearly in his eyes when he sees me but the fire’s still there, like he wants to challenge me, doesn’t want to let something stupid like fear show through, but it does.
He won’t stop holding my gaze, won’t fucking let go, and I can feel the colour rising high in my cheekbones. I fumble, suddenly unsteady, and I drop the neat stack of binders and books that I was carrying in my hands, sending them cascading to the floor, loose sheets escaping under the quick flow of feet, and I curse under my breath. I want to die.
I lower my eyes and crouch down to gather everything up, creating a build up of people behind me, a passing jock snorting and calling out in a half-joke, “Nice going, Ross.” My fingers are shaking as I reach out for stray papers and a textbook that’s slid halfway to Narnia because I can feel it, feel everyone staring at me. I’ve wanted to fit in, yeah, but never to be the centre of anyone’s attention. My throat feels tight, panicky, I keep dropping things again.
Once everything’s seemingly in order, I straighten up, only to have a page of a book report shoved under my nose. I follow the arm that’s attached to the hand holding it, all the way to the face, and my jaw would have hit the floor if I didn’t have some sense of self-respect. Brendon’s wearing a slight smirk, one that says he’s probably deduced that he was the reason for that, and his expression is otherwise carefully blank. He offers the sheet out to me. I take it wordlessly, stunned.
I hit him, I gave him that massive fucking bruise and half a swollen lip, and now he’s here paying me back by helping me? Fuck, I’m confused. “You’re welcome,” he says in answer to my silence, and his eyes flicker between me and the floor as he leaves without another word.
Okay then.
* * *
The day doesn’t get any shorter, if anything some fucker keeps adding on hours where they shouldn’t be, and things keep piling up, and I feel overwhelmed. That’s why I’m glad, thankful, even, when I get to ‘Music’ on my tattered timetable.
All six of us have Music together, and as each one of us arrives, the mood gets lighter and lighter. Spencer’s the last to come in, sits himself down next to me. “You okay?” he asks, out of the blue and quiet enough so that it’s just for me to hear.
I look at him curiously. “Yeah, yeah, totally - why?”
“Nothing,” he says, “you seem distracted, that’s all.”
“Well, I’m not.” The sentence ends up harsher than I mean it to be, and he flinches. I lean closer, nudge his shoulder with mine. I mumble truthfully, “Thanks, though,” and he smiles tightly, shrugs it off, but bumps my shoulder back.
When the teacher, Ms. Ferris, comes in, I put on my politest voice and ask if I could go to one of the practice rooms, “There’s something I want to work on.” Once she’s agreed, I slip out of the room with a quick smile to Spence, who knows not to follow.
I choose the smallest practice room, a boxy, cramped space with just enough room to squeeze a small piano in the corner and a rack of guitars. It’s the same corridor I found Brendon hanging around in when I warned him off, and I open the door quicker than necessary to steal inside. I’m still wound-up, of course I am, but as soon as I’m inside some of the tension trickles away.
Crossing the small room, I pick up a guitar - it’s not mine, all of mine are either at home or smashed up by someone who isn’t me, but I figure it doesn’t matter. It’s a sturdy thing, acoustic; light-coloured polished wood and fine, well-tuned strings. There are sleeker ones here, better ones, but I keep this one, sit down on the stool with one leg shorter than the others and arrange it across my lap, letting my fingers dance over the neck, skip over the frets.
When I start to play, I can feel it, the way the worry seeps out of me, the instrument draining the bad and nursing the good. My eyes close, peaceful. A simple tune emerges, nothing I’ve played before and probably nothing I’ll play again, but the notes flow and blossom under my fingers, taking me back to less problematic times of innocence and carefree smiles. There aren’t any words to accompany because I’m keeping them all in my head, I’m not singing, not this time, but I’m humming under my breath as I play the hour away, lost in the music.
It’s proven to work - music, that is. In my case, anyway, it’s never failed to make me happier or calm me, and usually I stay that way. It takes a lot to dislodge the feeling it sets flowing in my veins, takes a lot to bring me down after that. Today, however, is the anomaly, the odd result. Because it does work, and I keep an effortlessly relaxed smile on my face since the minute I leave the practice room, but all it takes is one thing to throw me.
Later, see, I’m faced with a little bit of a problem. I’m battling my way through everyone, trying to get to Mr. Philips’s office for another ‘little talk,’ and, coincidentally, it’s at the end of one of the busiest hallways.
Brendon materialises in front of me, attempting to go the opposite way to me, which is fine, that’s fine, go right on ahead, but he’s right in front of me and neither of us can move at all, sandwiched on both sides. I feel mortified, because he’s right there with only inches of clear air separating us, inches that are gradually shrinking smaller and smaller. Someone barges him forwards, and he stumbles into me, the multitude of bodies around us the only thing stopping him from falling.
He actually braces himself on my chest for the tiniest second before whipping his hands back, leaving cool, memory imprints on my shirt, invisible handprints outlined with sparks.
The bruise is still there, despite how much time I might have spent speculating over the tiny hope that it may have disappeared magically by the end of today. It makes his face look lopsided, asymmetry clouding his usual matched-up features, but it compliments somehow, makes him look rougher, older. I gulp, feeling suddenly like everything apart from this tiny, tiny space we are both enclosed in is moving too slowly; they’re wading through treacle while we’re in the fast track.
Pressing my lips together to avoid saying something stupid - saying anything - I feel his arm brush against mine, electricity jumping from body to body, and he looks unaffected, clearly not noticing anything; not that there’s anything to notice.
That little hint of contact makes me close my eyes, just to get through, to breathe, but what pushes me is when he manoeuvres himself to try to get past me, and his leg presses into mine. God, I can feel his body heat through the layers of clothes, the warmth of the skin of his arm and his leg and him and it’s enough to topple me unwillingly into a great big pool of memories from the night before. Skin on skin, his mouth, his tongue. His body and mine and the way they looked and felt so fucking good together, sinfully right, and fuck, fuck, I’m completely lost.
When I snap out of it, dutifully closing my mouth from its half-parted, creepy-ass state, I blink my eyes into focus to see him squeezing past me, that one long moment over now. He’s smirking, though, right at me, and it’s like... well, he can’t know, but he knows, you know?
God, I don’t even know.
One thing’s for certain, though, he’s got that cocky edge back, the one that Pete and Gabe (and me, a little) knocked out of him for a little while there. There’s still a bit of a wary look in his eyes, one that says if I raised my hand to him he probably wouldn’t assume I was going to wave hello, but he’s defiant now and oh so fucking confident. Like usual, then.
I can never quite comprehend him; it’s not like he’s got much to be confident or arrogant about, really, and he knows that himself yet he still acts like it, goes around like he’s better than everyone, puts himself on his own little pedestal. It gets me mad to think about, though I’m not sure why. Everything’s more complicated when he’s involved, things happen to get stirred up and galvanised when he’s nearby, and I get the feeling he likes it better that way. I’m not sure if I do.
* * *
It stays the same, really, this continuous, awkward dance between us both, shame-flushed cheeks on my part whenever I clock the slow-changing bruise marking his jaw line, avoiding eyes and knowing smiles on Brendon’s whenever he sees me catch sight of him. Despite trying to ignore everything and to remain calm, I find myself increasingly wired up, mad at the fact that I’m basically eating out of the palm of that fucking kid’s hand every single time I slip up and he knows it’s because of him.
I can feel the control fading, slipping through my fingers like sand at the beach, grain by tiny grain, and I’m gripped with a grim determination to right that.
So, yeah, it stays the same, until two days later in Gym. Gym is a lesson I’ve always detested, dreaded seeing on my timetable; a pointless waste of energy with too many embarrassing possibilities to even begin to consider enjoying it. Getting changed with everyone else, breathing in the odour of that one person in the class who just will not buy some deodorant, humiliating exercises designed to separate the weak from the strong and the athletic from the useless; all of it, I hate it all.
I have Gym with Pete, so normally, it’s bearable. We laugh together, take the piss out of the coach and the girls who try to run effectively while still looking serene and poised, and generally kick back and relax. He’s actually pretty good at this, the sports shirt, but he doesn’t give a fuck about Gym so he tones it down, chills with me.
Today, though, there’s a new coach. Our usual one, Coach Chappell - or Molly, as she allows students to call her - is off doing her coach thing elsewhere for the week, some fancy hockey tournament, and so a replacement’s been brought in. The guy must be about as tall as the school and just as wide in lean, solid muscle, it’s straining through his shirt. He is, quite literally, terrifying.
“Listen up,” he barks at the already-silent class. Like hell we’d try and cross him anyway, Jesus, he looks like he could eat me for breakfast and still have room for seconds. “My name is Coach Fuller, but you call me Colonel. I did some unthinkable things for that title, and I expect to be known by it. We clear?”
Everyone nods. Some of the girls are looking up at him almost in awe, shining eyes wide with obvious admiration. I think he’s a meathead asshole, but hey, each to their own.
“Alright. For today you’re gonna be doing some circuit training, in pairs.” I look to Pete, a glance for confirmation, and he grants me a quick grin. It’s nice, the feeling that someone will willingly take you as a partner in something. “Don’t say a word!” Meathead bellows, making me jump. “I’m gonna split you into pairs myself. You and you,” he says, pointing at two random girls, “over there, you’ll start with the jump ropes. You and you...” he goes on, and my stomach sinks.
Great. Time for a lesson of awkwardness with someone I probably never talk to. As I’m contemplating exactly how ridiculous it would be to run away from school forever just to escape embarrassment, I’m met with a large finger right in my face.
“You,” Colonel Meathead says to me, “you’re with him. You start off at the shuttle-run station, got it?”
Pete tosses me a sympathetic look and a what-can-you-do shrug. “Whatever,” I mutter, to which the guy growls something in response that I don’t really listen to, and I lazily look around to see who he was pointing at. My heart stops. Fucking fantastic.
“Um, so I guess we’re...” Brendon mumbles as he comes over, running his hand through his hair and stopping at the back of his neck, where he scratches uncomfortably.
“Yeah,” I reply, at a loss for anything else. I hadn’t even fully realised that he was in my class for Gym; always with Pete, so it didn’t really matter.
The universe keeps pushing us together, and it’s getting on my fucking nerves.
I hate the fucking universe.
The circuit he’s set up for us takes up the entire gym, with all sorts of separate stations sporting gruelling activities that I really have no interest in, and as we walk over to the shuttle-run station I’m careful to leave a big space between where I’m walking and where Brendon is. No accidental contact here, no flashbacks of fake memories. Brendon’s biting his lip, teasing at it nervously, and I don’t think he realises he’s doing it. He looks up and I look away, clear my throat but don’t say anything.
A part of me wants to ask him how his face is, how he’s doing, does it hurt, did I hurt him - but I quickly shut it out. I’m good at that.
“What is this, anyway?” Brendon asks, looking confused and gesturing vaguely to the station in front of us. I shrug helplessly, reach out and grab the sheet of paper that’s lying nearby.
“Says you have to run from the white cone to the black one, touch the floor, run back, touch it again, keep going... ‘S’pretty simple.”
He laughs, dark, like we’re discussing some sort of evil government conspiracy. “Nah, that’s just what they want you to think.”
I laugh without meaning to, merely astonished at the sight of him acting like a normal human being around me, and then zip my lips shut tight. The harsh noise of a whistle rings out, echoing around the gym, and everyone drags themselves into activity. The point is to spend a minute and a half on this station, then move onto the next and so on, but I can barely foresee myself completing twenty seconds of this.
I wonder if Brendon’s one of the ones that will actually try and do this properly, wonder whether I should put a little effort in, too, if that’s where the standard lies in this, but he seems content to blag it, jogging half-heartedly and not reaching anywhere near the ground when he bends down.
I’m keeping up with him fairly easily, and he mainly looks at the ground, small smiles occasionally playing on his lips, presumably at nothing.
“This is bullshit,” he huffs, slowing almost to a walk, and I match him.
“Got that right.”
“Dude, let’s just walk it. He’s not even looking.”
Casting my eyes around, I find the coach right on the other side of the gym, yelling at a pair of girls, one skinny and one overweight, to go faster. He seems pretty occupied. “Sure, okay.”
We settle into an idle stroll, keeping half an eye on the guy’s location. There’s silence, and yeah, it’s awkward. How could it not be, when I’ve messed up his face, when I keep bumping into him, when I drop my fucking stuff everywhere because of trying to figure him out, when I’ve dreamt about... yeah, that’s awkward. His hands are shoved in the pockets of his school-bought sweatpants, and he still won’t stop chewing on his lip.
“I didn’t realise you were in this class,” I blurt out, and immediately want to take it back because who even says that? I’m clueless.
He raises his head, his eyes crinkled, and he says, “I know you didn’t.”
I don’t know how to reply to that, so I don’t, just walk with him and try to look like we’re making an effort. I’m keeping my eyes trained on the coach from Hell, and all of a sudden he spins around, looks in our direction, and I catch Brendon’s elbow as I pick up the pace, breaking into a jog. Brendon bursts out laughing and follows suit, right until Colonel Meathead stops looking and we slow again, fighting to take breaths.
I’m laughing too, inescapable; his laugh is kind of contagious, it’s loud and sunny.
The same thing happens a few times at a few different stations, both of us running fast or lifting weights like our lives depend on it or whipping the jump ropes through the air when the guy’s looking, slacking off and doing not much of anything when he’s not. It’s companionable, in a way that it really shouldn’t be.
We’re not saying much, but what we do say is civil. I suppose that’s a good thing, if a little dull and slightly unfulfilling to me.
No, fuck that, it’s downright frustrating. Because I’ve had an aim, a determined goal to regain my control in this whole fucked-up situation; to finally stop feeling like Brendon has such a hold over me, and the plan to achieve that was, first, to distance myself. This, to me, doesn’t look much like distance.
Throughout the lesson I try and I try, give him blank, nonchalant answers that are deliberately hard to reply to, and make it clear that I’m only falling into step with him and matching his pace because it’s easier for the tasks at hand, not for any other reason. I don’t want awkwardness, either, because that still shows he’s got an upper hand, I’m going for a cool sense of detachment.
It’s not working, though, because when he smiles it’s damn hard not to smile back, and he keeps laughing at things that aren’t funny until he laughs at them - then they’re pretty hilarious, and this is all so irritating.
It’s the last station, now, entitled ‘press-ups’ on the helpful sheet of paper, and Brendon groans. “Man, I hate these.”
“Uh-huh,” I reply. So do I. I have the arm strength of a housefly.
There’s two floor mats laid out next to each other with no gap in between, and I unceremoniously shove them apart to make a big one before flopping down on my stomach. It doesn’t seem like much recovery time has passed at all before the whistle blows and the last exercise starts for everyone.
Resignedly, I plant my hands on the mat and stare at it, channelling all my frustrations into this in the hope that it might give me some kind of superhuman strength.
I push myself up, arms shaking at the elbows. When I try to lower myself back down I can feel the strain everywhere, and I collapse onto the mat before my chin gets anywhere close to the ground. It was worth a shot.
Brendon laughs, a friendly sound, and I look over to see him in his fucking element. Every time he goes down, his chin brushes the surface of the mat, and his arms are steady and solid like the rest of him, what the fuck. In fact, the muscles in his arms, although pea-sized and barely there, are standing out starkly as he pushes himself up and drops down and, huh. That’s new. He looks at me. “C’mon,” he says, voice a little strained, “’s’not that hard.”
“It is for me,” I insist, trying again and failing miserably.
“Look, hey,” he says, dropping down to his elbows and then moving a little closer, reaching his hand out to my back. “You need to keep a straight line, see?” he instructs like he knows everything, pressing down insistently on the small of my back, okay, why is he doing that, what.
“Right,” I breathe out, not concentrating on the warm feel of his palm through my t-shirt, not moving until he takes his hand away and carries on. After that, I blank him, fully weirded out. He says something; I grunt, nod, shake my head, do nothing. It’s easy. Easier.
At the end of the lesson, though, he passes by me on the way back to the guys’ locker room, catching up with me even after I’ve successfully evaded him. “Hey,” he says, and nothing else.
“What,” I reply, tired out, so weary it doesn’t even sound question-like.
There’s not many people around, most of them have gone on ahead whereas I’ve been dragging my feet, but he still shifts his eyes around, like someone would be listening. He moves closer, and I fight the urge to step back because that would mean he’s winning. A smirk appears, one that I’ve come to call classic, and yet it’s more tentative than usual. “Are we, like... friends, now?” he says, peering into my face, and I’m tempted to laugh.
I don’t, though, just let the outrage and the general confusion build up and wash over me until it surfaces and I answer him with exactly that, with a rough shove to his shoulder that sets him back a few steps. I answer him with a, “No,” as I stalk away and leave him standing there, and I mean it.
* * *
I don’t feel guilty about that.
I will not feel guilty about that. It’s just Brendon, God, he doesn’t matter, and I wish I could convince certain parts of me of that. Since it happened, since I left him to lick his wounds and obsess, there’s been a nagging feeling that I should have been more considerate, should have humoured him or at least worded something a little better. I mean, we-well, ‘bonded’ sounds stupid, but. I still think if I saw someone else do what I did, I’d think they were a dickhead. I don’t usually feel like this; I don’t usually feel much at all.
But I can’t brush it off, can’t deny that it’s sticking in my mind. The same day, when I come home and slam the door out of habit - to the tune of my mom’s usual protests - I feel restless and uneasy, like I’ve done something wrong, and maybe I have. I don’t know anymore, really. Mom asks me the average Mom questions, and I respond with automated, dejected answers, slouched in a chair in the kitchen. It’s only when she looks up from ironing and asks brightly, “So. Is everything okay with Jac, honey?” that I pay any attention.
I’m so distracted that I actually answer, “Who?” before realising and shaking my head at myself.
“Jac,” she repeats. “I haven’t seen much of her lately, is all.”
“It’s fine.”
“Well, you know she’s always welcome, sweetie, she’s a nice girl and-“
“Can’t you ever learn when it is or isn’t your fucking business, God!” I explode, a kind of frustration fuming suddenly, the kind I can’t explain, and I stand up sharply from the chair, budge past her and head up the stairs, heavy footsteps creaking.
By the time I’m in my room, I don’t even know why I shouted at her.
This is all Brendon’s fault.
* * *
Part Four