Nathan turned off the engine as he pulled into the schools parking lot.
Silence. He didn't say a word as he watched several cars follow him in and find their own spots while he appeared to gnaw on the knuckle of his thumb. About a half hour earlier, Nathan took me to my house so I could change my clothes. I snuck in through my window and changed into whatever I found before I grabbed a few things and went back out to his truck undetected.
"How long are you going to stay with me?" Nathan finally looked my way. "I can't hide you from my family forever."
Two days had passed since that day with Courtney, and I only went home to get clothes. The two nights following that day were spent with Nathan, in his room and in his bed. I never really thought I would've ever shared a bed with anyone other than Grace, but it happened, and I would've been lying if I said I hadn't welcomed it. He was another source of life, a person to hold onto in her absence. He was what kept me from feeling alone, he was what helped me drive away the darkness that came at night.
I would later come to learn that he meant so much more than just that. He was what kept me alive when the darkness finally got its way. He was who held me when the nightmares came crawling back. His ears were what heard my feelings, my demons, and every last word that left my mouth. He was what I leaned on when I felt dizzy. He was what I used to dry my eyes when I inevitably came back crying. He was my lighthouse when I was lost.
"Girlfriend?" I shrugged my shoulders as my chin buried itself into my palm. "Everyone thinks I'm dick-hopping my way around the football team anyways."
Nathan lifted a roach from his ashtray and brought it to his mouth, frowning ever so slightly. "That'll work. I'll just make up the rest as I go. And what about your parents?"
"What parents? My dad hates his dyke of a daughter and avoids me at all costs, and my mom's been buried in work. . ." I watched Nathan light the roach as the bitter words rolled off my tongue. "I walked into my house half-dead that night, and all she said was 'hey'. I mean, I didn't even want her to know, but I kind expected her to know that something was wrong, at the very least."
He exhaled the smoke of the roach and passed it over to me. As I brought it to my lips, I was hit with the smell of hairspray and some kind of fruity soap. I'd smoked a few times before this, both with him and Grace, who wanted to try it. So, we ended up traveling to this exact high school and finding the skateboarders which sort of naturally led us to a dealer. We went to a park and smoked for the first time. While it was weird at first, calmness smoothly took over my brain and everything became slightly different, from the way things appeared to the intensity of the music she had on.
Nathan himself didn't actually do or smoke anything other than weed, and even then, it seemed to be rare. His health was a thought in everything he did, whether it was eating dinner or sitting around and watching something, and that was only from being around him a couple days. It was always hard for me to remember that Nathan was a football player, for whatever reason. It was like he was too sensitive to play such a rough sport - or maybe too nice was a better fit?
"Do you think she would care if you told her what actually happened?"
"Probably?"
She probably would have, or at least I wanted to pretend that she would. As I had told him, I didn't want her to know at all, but maybe there was a small of part of me that did want her to know - a part of me that was too scared to tell her. Maybe there was a small part of me that expected her to know that something was wrong, that something was off. I, myself, had been under the assumption that a mother would see that in their own child. But I guess I was wrong. Maybe crying had become so commonplace for me that she just brushed it off as another episode about Grace.
I knew my mom loved me, and had shown it more since that day in the hospital. I knew if I told her, she would have done something about it. She would have hugged me and told me that it wasn't my fault, she would have called the police and hunted him down, and she would've been there for me, but that was exactly what I hadn't wanted. Everything would have changed. They both would have seen me differently, and not in the way I saw myself.
In those screams on that night existed disgust and betrayal, the complete shame and worthlessness. They wouldn't have understood what it felt like to lie there and do nothing, to just let it happen without being able to fight back. They wouldn't have known what it was like to feel that I could have avoided all of it, that I could have made different choices. They wouldn't have known what it felt like to have have your body not listen to you, to stop working when you needed it to listen the most.
They would've said that nothing changed, that everything was okay. They would've tried their hardest to give me a false sense of comfort, something to blind me from the truth and the pain that awaited me.
Opening the door to his truck, I jumped out and circled around, leaning against another sedan as I waited for him to follow. Smirking, I watch him put out the roach and spray something on himself before he popped the door open. Nathan's feet hit the ground with quiet slaps that were soon followed with the thunderous thudding of his shutting door. His eyes met the shirt I was wearing as I walked him towards the school.
"So, are you going to give that back or were you planning on keeping it?" Nathan pointed at the shirt I was wearing, still carrying that slight smirk.
Looking down, I was somewhat surprised to see that I was still wearing the red flannel he had put over me by the pool, slightly wrinkled and way too big. My fingers took hold of one of the buttons as I looked back up. "Can I?"
Approaching the tinted glass doors of the school, I came to realize something about that shirt, and Nathan himself. The warmth Nathan provided wasn't entirely physical. The warmth of his chest and the warmth of his shirt, they had become my security blanket. They both told and gave me the things I needed when I needed them most. Even if I was using and abusing them, they were both things that I still held dearly.
Nathan pulled open the door, allowing me to make a backwards waltz through the doors and into the populated cafeteria. He took one last look at the shirt, and then glanced at me, right in the eyes. "I guess."
It was so small, but with everything that had happened, his shirt seemed like a massive gift at the time. The thing was old and huge on me, but there was so much meaning in and behind it. Even if I had been using it like some sort of jacket, it hadn't really come off of me at all, and I wasn't sure I wanted it to. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, I could feel the corners of my mouth slightly rise. His shirt, of all things, had made me feel a small something inside.
But even that small amount of happiness I felt inside was just as quickly taken away. Disappearing, vanishing like cigarette smoke to the sky.
As though a flash of light passed by, Nathan had gone from following me with a muted smirk to being on the floor and replaced by the one person I never wanted to see in front of me again. Devin pulled up Nathan from the floor and smashed him into the wall with a ferocity that likely would've scared a lot of grown men. Just like Courtney's face that morning, Devin's expression had been overtaken by an indiscriminate rage. There wasn't anything or anyone that was going to stop him.
"Did you do it?" Devin pulled him forward and rammed him back into the wall again. "I swear to fucking god, I'm going to murder you."
"Do what?" I saw a sharp, crooked grin creep across Nathan's face before he pushed Devin away. "I heard about what happened. I'm sorry, man. If their's anything I can do to help, then let me know. But you shou-"
Devin came flying back and punched Nathan in the face before he could even finish. It was like a flip had been switched on me as soon as I saw Nathan get hit. Even if I hadn't wanted to be around Devin, even if I hadn't wanted to see his ugly face, I bolted forward and pushed him away from Nathan. With all of the gall I could gather, I stood in front of Nathan - struggling for every breath as my heart felt like it was trying to break out of my chest.
He shot his eyes at Nathan. "Move."
Bringing my hand to my chest, the feeling of suffocation only continued to grow. I was struggling for every breath as my heartbeat grew in speed. Gasping, I glared at Devin as I desperately tried to hold myself together in one piece. "Fuck off, Devin. He didn't do anything."
He glared back at me, sharing my own narrowed eyes as a wave of dizziness almost toppled me. But before I could even question what was going on with myself, I was abruptly, yet somehow softly brushed out of the way as Nathan came flying past me and aiming a fist back at Devin. Colliding, his fist met Devin's eye and sent him to the ground, where Nathan pounced. He swung and swung, and seemed to connected on more than a few.
Just as he seemed like he was going to get the best of Devin, he was thrown off and sent sliding as Devin stood, waiting for him to get back up. Bloody, Devin and Nathan launched at each other and exploded like a boxing match as they threw errant, heavy fists at one another. Minutes seemed to pass as it turned into more of a bloodbath by the second, and neither was willing to throw the towel.
Finally, a pair of teachers had broken through the crowd and hesitantly pulled them apart. Breathless, dripping with both sweat and blood, they had lost any will to fight free from the teachers. They only glared, staring as though it were going to turn into some kind of mental war. While the tension seemed to slowly lift, my own dizziness had come on stronger and my legs had grown weaker as my back hit the wall.
Closing my eyes, the best I could manage to do was fall against the wall as my breathing still continued to play an unwanted game of hide and seek. I had no clue what was wrong with me, but it obvious enough that it wasn't normal. That much was obvious. I was sitting there, sweating like a pig as my hands shook. I was sitting there, feeling my heart try to punch through my chest repetitively as I struggled for every last breath that tried enter my lungs. It felt like I was slowly dying, like I was having some kind of prolonged heart attack.
"Lynn Owens, right?" I was snapped back to reality by a man's voice.
I opened my eyes and was met with one of the counselors, knelt over and looking at me with a questioning expression. Had he been questioning my condition or just my name? Sitting up slightly, the breathlessness had disappeared and the sweating had stopped. While the slight trembling and heartbeat remained, they weren't as harsh as before. Left with myself, I could only wonder how much time had passed and where Nathan had went. Had it been him distracting me that made them go away, or was it because they had to go away?
I nodded, wiping the sweat with my sleeve. "Yeah. Why?"
"Come to my office. We can talk more there."
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