#Chapter3
/"Maybe,/" I whispered, grimacing at the nausea that rode me like a mechanical bull, /"I shouldn't have drunk all that fizzy poppy./"
The extra helping of pizza certainly hadn't helped, either. It weighed heavily in my stomach, leaving behind a bloated ache that bubbled through me, and a sense of discomfort that made my movements seem sluggish.
The boy that blinked back at me from the reflective glass, brown-haired, bug-eyed, and described by Isaac as 'cute', didn't so much as answer as he did feel sorry for himself. Pale cheeks flushed from the amount of water I had splashed against them, and eyelashes still clinging to the rolling pellets, I disagreed with Isaac.
I didn't look cute. Six-year-olds with missing teeth and infectious laughter were cute.
I looked like I was caught in the awkward tween years, breaching into puberty, but not quite ready yet. Puppy fat still clung to my cheeks, and my eyes had a way of seeming way too big for my face. There was the baby softness to it, rounding it, but the tell-tale signs of the failed puberty job showed in the slight jut to my jaw and the way my cheekbones had almost decided that they wanted to be pretty and firm, before giving up on the idea and leaving me stranded between states.
I wasn't cute; I was awkward.
And stupid, too, if the sicky, icky feeling that plagued me was anything to base it off.
Splashing another handful of water against my face from the half-filled basin, grimacing as the icy chill sent a shiver tippy-tapping down the base of my spine, the plug was yanked and a deep gurgle erupted through the air as the suction hole greedily guzzled the clear liquid.
The only reason I had insisted on stuffing my face like a little piggy had been because it was an excuse not to talk to Blake. It was an excuse to not even look at him, focusing solely on my plate — because Isaac had lied and hadn't even considered turning the t.v off when it had gotten scary— Instead. It had worked. I had sensed his gaze, but other than his usual greeting of 'hey, Odd bod', the goofy nickname he had issued me years back, he hadn't pursued a conversation.
Which meant that even though I was suffering like the bad word for a girl doggy, I was still winning. Right?
W.R.O.N.G.
So freaking wrong!
It was late, just after eleven, and Isaac had fallen asleep halfway through the second movie — if it counted as a movie instead of just being classed as 'OZ Abuse'— and his soft snores had harmonized surprisingly well with the sound of incessant gunshots. Blake had been unmoving, too. His arm had hung limply from the chair and when I had finally been brave enough to check, his eyes had been closed.
I had taken that as a chance to flee.
With hindsight, the way I had trampled up the stairs like hell itself was on my tail, which was Isaac's fault for making me watch the robot monster-ness, it had certainly been loud enough to act as a rinse-and-shine device.
Either way, the very high pitched — but I'm sure very manly — scream that left my lips as I shoved open my bedroom door, only to find that it was no longer vacant, was one that would have woken the neighbours.
The relief that it wasn't Arnold Schwarzenegger sent back through time to kill me, or to tell me that some other scary silvery turning robot wanted to kill, was short-lived.
When I realized that it was Blake in my room, but more importantly, what lay on the bed behind where he stood, I think I would have preferred the T — 1000.
As tall as Isaac, who had, like the freaking giant that he was, had hit the six-foot-one mark, and perhaps a little bit slimmer, it was easy to see why all the girls had gone goo-goo eyed over him. He carried with him the mischievous glint of a troublemaker; his strong jawline offered a sturdiness that made him look older than he was, and his smile was like black velvet, promising all the sins of the world in a gift-wrapped box.
But he wasn't smiling.
I wasn't sure exactly what he was doing with his face, some weird, squinty-eyed thing, but it sure as sugar wasn't a smile.
It wasn't hard to see why. Behind him, my secret was once again displayed in front of him. No excuses could fix. No lie could avoid. I could tell by the way that the blue container, a smallish square that that had once had a lid before I had tried to use it as a Frisbee, had been emptied out that he had seen everything it had to offer.
And that should have made me mad, but the only emotion that dared to rise was embarrassment. Heat ate away at my cheeks, and I couldn't remember a time that I had wished that I had never been born to the extent that I now did.
Throat burning, I had no words.
Throat burning, my vision began to blur, and the dampness that reclaimed my lashes had nothing to do with the Splish-and-splash in the bathroom.
/"Come in./" It was only as he spoke that it dawned on me that I was lingering just outside the threshold, as though stepping through it would make it any more real than it already was. /"And shut the door./"
There was something in his tone, clear and dominating, nothing at all like the usual teasing tone he used around me, that had me stepping forward like a puppet abiding by his master's will. It had the door clicking behind me, trapping us within the plain blue walls.
And then silence came and didn't seem to want to leave without a fight. It descended in the air, hovering, filling the space between us until I could barely stand it.