Unravelling. Elizabeth Norris

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СКАЧАТЬ alt="Image" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_8d2c8d6a-a79b-5dd9-a8be-c9d616f08598.jpg"/> follow my messed-up schedule for the rest of the day, and each class I walk into, the teacher just looks at my name and gives me a sad look of apology. They let me sit in the back of the room and don’t even give me the books. It’s painful that they know I don’t belong in their classes, yet here I am.

      The inefficiency makes me want to throw up.

      And for all Nick’s flirting this morning, and all those sweet thoughts that turned me into a melty pile of mush, turns out he’s still a douche bag. Sure, I told him to go to lunch without me, but he said he wouldn’t.

      sry babe get u off tmrw

      Based on that grammatical monstrosity of a text, I know he’s already off campus with Kevin, headed to Bread Bites, so I wander into the quad for lunch.

      I’m walking toward the grassy area in front of the L building when some girl lets out one of those bloodcurdling screams— the scary-movie kind. My body tenses, and I swear I can see headlights in front of me, and I have this crazy desire to throw my hand up and cover my face.

      But as I whirl toward the sound, the girl—Roxy Indigo, who I only know because she got a 6 percent in our ceramics class freshman year—has dissolved into hysterical laughter, while she tries, halfheartedly, to pull her denim skirt—currently bunched up around her waist, revealing a black thong—back down over her hips. After homecoming last year, word around campus was she got so drunk at the after-party that she passed out and peed herself in the back of her date’s SUV.

      Which reminds me that I don’t have any friends here, because I’ve never really wanted any.

      Except . . .

      Ben Michaels is staring at me. Lounging in the shade of the theater overhang with a couple of his stoner buddies, he’s only a few feet from Roxy, and once she gets her skirt readjusted, she’s headed back over there.

      He doesn’t turn his head to look at her, even though it’s obvious she’s talking to him. He just watches me. And normally, this is the point where I’d roll my eyes at the creeptasticness of it all. I mean, hello, stalker much? But he’s not leering at me. And the look on his face isn’t this possessive, he-wants-to-devour-me kind of look. It’s different. Almost as if he’s daring me to go over there.

      So I do. And as I walk toward him, I stare right back at him, letting every ounce of frustration—at my schedule, at this day, at this life I managed to create for myself—swell in my chest. Tension curls itself through my muscles, ready to unleash in his direction if he isn’t straight with me.

      Only then I’m standing in front of him, and I realize I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m going to say.

      It isn’t that easy to walk up to a guy in front of his friends and say, I’m pretty sure I died the other day and you brought me back to life. What do you have to say about that?

      Instead I look at Ben and say, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

      He shrugs.

      Fabulous. “Like, somewhere else?”

      Someone snickers, and I glance to the right where Reid Suitor is sitting with four other guys whose names I don’t know. Reid and another guy are—no lie—chewing on pieces of grass.

      “You lost, baby? Or are you looking to rebel against Daddy?”

      “Wow, that’s original. What eighties movie did you steal that line from?” I say, turning left to the speaker. Elijah Palma. Great. This is already going worse than I had expected. Maybe I should just tell myself Alex was right—near-death experience triggered the firing of random nerve endings in my brain, and I imagined those visions. Maybe it was a sign there really is a hell and I’m going to end up there.

      Elijah shrugs. His washed-out blue eyes are so bloodshot, he looks half-dead. “Hey, I’m willing to take one for the team.”

      Someone punches Elijah in the shoulder and says, “Knock it off, asshole.” I know without looking that it’s Ben. His voice is already familiar to me, even though I’ve barely heard him say two words.

      “Take one for the team?” I know I shouldn’t be egging him on, but I can’t help it. I still haven’t figured out what the hell I’m going to say to Ben, so I might as well burn my frustration by picking a fight with his friend. “What team are you even on, anyway?”

      And no, I have no idea how to properly trade witty insults. But no one notices, because I’ve just implied Elijah’s gay, and it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t particularly clever.

      “I don’t screw uptight virgins,” he sneers, and my face floods with heat.

      Reid laughs, apparently in agreement.

      I want to say something back, but my voice is frozen. Elijah, Reid, Roxy, Ben—they’re gone, no longer in front of me. Instead I’m fifteen again, waking up at 2:13 a.m. after I just lost my best friend, in a car parked outside Chad Brandel’s house with my jeans undone and my underwear ripped.

      Doubled over in hysterics, Roxy leans into Elijah, and he wraps an arm around her. They’re perfect for each other.

      “I said shut the fuck up, dude.” Again, it’s Ben.

      But Elijah keeps going. “You think you’re the first prude to get in some kind of accident and realize you’re wasting your life away? You can’t just come over here for a pity fuck and an adrenaline rush. You—”

      A fist crashes into his cheekbone, and the force rocks him backward, knocking Roxy to the side. A couple other guys laugh.

      And then Ben is standing in front of me, holding on to his hand and rubbing his knuckles. He jerks his head toward the L building, and we both start walking that way.

      It hasn’t escaped my notice that he stuck up for me. That he just punched one of his friends—a kid notorious for getting suspended at least once every few months for kicking the shit out of someone—because I’d been insulted.

      The notion is a little barbaric, but I’m too flattered to care.

      Ben opens the door to the first classroom and holds it for me. The lights are on, and about ten kids are eating at a table in the far corner of the room, but I don’t see the teacher. There’s only a note on her whiteboard that reads Do NOT leave a mess in the microwave. Please ☺.

      “Hey, Ben,” one of the girls at the back table says. “Everything okay?” Only, as she stands up, I realize she isn’t a student at all. Miss Poblete is five foot nothing and probably in her late twenties, but she could easily pass for a student.

      Ben nods. “Yeah, we just needed a quiet place to go over a few things.” As Ben lowers himself into a sitting position on one of the tables, I wonder why he seems so comfortable here.

      Poblete smiles at me and sits back down.

      “Book club,” Ben says.

      “What?”

      He nods toward Poblete and the others. “She has book club meetings every Monday. If we’re quiet, they won’t listen.”

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