Chapter 4
Darren POV
In the era of picture phones, money, and waiters who could be easily bribed, pictures of the date had spread by the next morning. Now while there was no legitimate proof that anything worth mentioning had actually happened, the evidence that was there was incriminating enough. In one picture (though it was fuzzy), Trystan looked like he was leaning across some kind of table to kiss Aerona, and in another he was dragging her into an alley of some kind…
What really annoyed me was that the only reason people cared was that they were popular, and Aerona at least, was only popular because of me. Trystan had his own reasons.
Not like I cared or anything.
I just hated Trystan. He was a despicable excuse for a human being, as I knew all too well for having to interact with him throughout my childhood due to family connections. It was like he was scared of getting close to people, so instead of acting normal and mature and trying to work through it, he would break the girl’s heart. Made me sick.
But it was Aerona’s business whom she dated.
I slammed my locker, ending up trapping one of my fingers. Yelling out a stream of profanity, I managed to slip it out. A bunch of freshmen girls started giggling, and I scowled. Seemed the world wanted to make a joke of me today. I glared icily at them until they stopped their insipid noises of amusement, and headed to Chemistry.
I was late, of course. I still had the looming issue of how to break it off with the ever clingy Gwen, and decided to spend my class time concentrating on this. I didn’t sense her having any real affection for me, so that wasn’t a motive for her, or would cause a problem when I broke it off. My normal tactics seemed to fail with her, annoying. Finding out her objective seemed imperative to move forward….
My inner monologue was broken by a sharp heel piecing my toe. “WHAT THE HELL?” I yelled, as the foot began throbbing in tempo with my hand. I looked up to see the culprit, and ran into hazel eyes so scary I somehow felt lucky that it had only been the heel thing. It was that one girl who had always sat behind me drawing during class but I had never really bothered to ask her name….and she always wore boots, not heels, so she had worn these specifically to attack me? All these thoughts ran through my head quickly as she raised an eyebrow, seeming to challenge me. I chose to turn around, but not without muttering “Freak.”
She was probably an Aerona supporter. This made me start to worry if I was going to have the whole female student body against me after getting rid of Gwen, she may have been hated by loads but she also had a following of underclassman that hadn’t been exposed to her ignorance of people’s feelings. And I couldn’t take more incidents like this. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a paint bomb or something in my locker (I’m not paranoid, it’s happened to other people).
The pulsating from my finger and toe was getting worse, almost unavoidable. Was my toe bleeding…? Either way I figured it was probably time to hand it over to a professional, such as the school nurse. The chemistry teacher, a bumbling moron, was still trying to find the lesson plans, and didn’t even notice me stand and slip up (I didn’t really feel like revealing to the whole class how drawing girl had gotten the better of me).
So I walked, favoring my right foot as much as possible while still moving quickly, towards the nurse. I was passing the famous make-out spot…It was just called the “Room”, as naming it would have been too dangerous. Basically it was a closet with an abnormally small door that was locked. The combination was kept by every Upper and passed onto the news ones, although many other people figured it out. The rumor was a rich alumni who had started the room had bribed the principal to leave the spot alone.
“You know you want to…”
Ew. How disturbing. Couldn’t whoever it was be quieter? I walked faster.
“Come on…”
Wait was that Gwen??
I spun back around and dialed in the combination.
Yep it was her alright, full-on making out with a very guilty-looking Trystan.
Now seeing your current girlfriend (who you despise) making out with your ex-girlfriend’s potential boyfriend (who you also despise) is an experience that is hard to describe unless you are really there. I coughed. When Trystan saw me, his face went white and he pushed Gwen away. “Darren there’s an explanation, I swear.”
I struggled to hold in a smile, he sounded like the chagrined girlfriend.
“You’re the wrong person to be saying that,” I responded, trying to play the part of the scorned lover as best as possible, while hiding my inner glee. I had an easy out! I had an easy out! “Gwen…”
“You can’t break up with me,” she said simply. There was an absence of any form of guilt in her voice.
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you really in position to say such a thing?”
Gwen smirked in a way that looked…evil. She came up to me, looked me straight in the eye, and dropped her voice to an eerie whisper. “Oh Darren, but I am….because I know.”
I blinked. “Know what?”
No one spoke for a moment, and then it dawned on me. I spun on Trystan. “Did you TELL her?”
He scowled. “Of course not!” Unfortunately, he wasn’t lying. I was just dying for an excuse to punch someone, and he was always a perfect candidate…but not today.
Gwen, giggling in an evil tone that had resembled her whisper, shook her head. “Oh no no, I didn’t need to be told, I already knew. I’m one of you. I can do the same things you can. Not the exact same of course, but similar.”
My first thought was “I’m one of you” was about the worst, most clichéd line from any fantasy film ever, but this was quickly replaced by panic. “Wait, do you mean...that would…I…”
“What can you do?” Trystan asked her, his ability to speak still seeming to be intact.
“Like I would tell you,” she countered back quickly.
I started pacing. “Wait, I’m still hung up on the small little point that if you can do what we can, doesn’t that mean you’re RELATED to us?”
When she smiled, I seriously considered puking on my already bleeding toe. “Oh Darren,” she said again, “You’re very naïve to think your family did not branch out. I’m not direct cousins like you and Trystan are or anything, but I am related. Second cousins.”
I HAD KISSED MY COUSIN. I HAD KISSED MY COUSIN. The same, disgusting thought flashed through my mind about a hundred times….TRYSTAN HAD KISSED OUR COUSIN.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I said, momentarily distracted from the slowly rising bile in my system.
“I’m discovering this just now too, you know.”
“Like that’s an excuse!” The volume of my voice increased with every word.
“Please don’t tell Aerona.”
Of every reply I could have imagined from him (and trust me I could imagine many), that was the last one I would’ve expected. “What?”
“Just don’t tell her.”
“Since when you have you cared about your girls knowing you cheated on them?” It was an honest question.
He wouldn’t look at me as he answered. “Please, just don’t.”
“Oh, wait for it, next you’re going to tell me you actually CARE ABOUT HER,” I scoffed.
“And what if I do?”
Somehow, that comment really pissed me off. “Yeah right. You’ve been on one date, or whatever the hell it was you did last night.”
“But I saw her when she was with you. The way she looked at you, the way she spoke to you…You were an idiot to treat her the way you did.”
I looked to Gwen, but she seemed to be happy to stay in silence and enjoy the havoc she was causing. I took a deep breath.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I looked at the floor.
“Oh really?” His tone sounded condescending.
“Yes, really! She didn’t love me.”
“She said that?”
“No-“
“Oh, let me guess,” Trystan interrupted. “You’re little lying detector powers or your new ‘greatest fear sensing’ crap told you that.”
I hated that he was right. “Going to take a jab at my powers are you? Like yours are so great? Making boobs bigger? Oh and I suppose at your 17th you’ll be able to enlarge butts too.”
“At least my powers actually benefit someone; you only use yours for yourself!” he snapped.
“Not true, the government would find it very useful to be able to tell if people are lying!”
“Then why don’t you just go and call up the FBI then, I’m sure we’d all be happy to see you go!”
“Maybe I-“
Gwen started laughing, stopping my reply mid-sentence and reminding me of the bigger problem here.
“If you care about Aerona so much, why did you kiss Gwen?” I asked
“I think it might be her power. Distraction or something…”
Gwen rolled her eyes.
“Convenient excuse,” I shook my head. “You never change do you!”
“Well then why did YOU kiss her?”
I coughed. “Well I, uh…”
“ENOUGH!” Gwen said finally seeming annoyed. “Here’s the bottom line. I could easily expose both of you to the whole school, no problem. And I don’t think either of you want that.”
“Not particularly,” said Trystan in an annoyingly cheerful voice.
“So, Darren, you’re not breaking up with me.”
“And your proof?” I asked, grasping at straws.
She held up a phone. “I’ve been recording.”
I decided to ignore for the moment how much that really creeped me out. “Why do you want to be with me anyway?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Oh, I have my reasons, not important for you to know. If you hadn’t walked in on me kissing Trystan things would have been so much easier, but ah, you do what you can.” She smiled and I almost puked again. “So are we at an understanding?” She finished.
I nodded, and she left, strutting and holding up the phone as if an ever present remind.
“Please don’t tell her,” Trystan said again. “Please?” I didn’t answer, and eventually he left too.
As my mind began to process everything, I realized my toe was still bleeding, and the bell had just rang, so I had missed all of my chemistry class. Why hadn’t I just gotten a pass like a normal person?
I was almost to the nurse anyway, so I decided I could just go there, pretend to have tripped and just now gotten the strength to get up, which would explain why a five minute trek would’ve taken me 40 minutes. Of course to make this plausible I would have to make myself look much more hurt...maybe I could hit my leg on a chair? Or slam my head into a locker door?
As I got closer I saw Aerona by her locker (she had always hated having her locker by the nurses office), and opportunity seemed to hit me like lightning. I could tell her, right now. She would hate him; want nothing to do with him…
But then again, what did it matter? It was her business, her life she could throw away and waste…
“So you don’t actually LIKE him right?” The ever annoying Tegan was asking her, hovering in the way I imagine bees would to a hive. “I mean I know you originally SAID you didn’t, but then Beth sent out all those pictures from your date and I wasn’t sure…and…”
“And you believe EVERYTHING Beth says now?” Aerona said, sounding annoyed.
“So you don’t.”
“No Tegan, I declared my love for him and we’re getting married. It’s going to be a beach side wedding, want to come?” She rolled her eyes.
Tegan blinked, her mind seeming to take longer than the average person’s to understand the sarcasm. “So…you don’t.”
Aerona sighed, shut her locker, and walked away.
“Tegan,” I said, swooping in as soon as she left. She liked Trystan! I could sense it immediately, her worst fear at the moment was Aerona finding out….very interesting indeed, although not surprising. There didn’t seem to be a girl who wasn’t in love with him.
“D-D-darren!” She hiccupped and stuttered, as if even standing in my presence was some kind of crime.
“You care about Aerona right?”
“Of-ff course! Wait, this isn’t some jealous ex-boyfriend thing is it? Because if it is-“
“Just listen to me,” I said, struggling to not smack the girl. “There’s something I think you should know…”
For a moment I wondered if maybe I was making the wrong decision, but then it passed.
Life: 10/03/09 | Posted By: MerokoYui4 | 0 comments
