Care For Me Not, I'll Hurt You Too Much

Your shirt sticks to your chest and your breathing is labored as your eyes shoot open. You can feel the tears streaming down your face and you look frantically around your room. The grey ceiling seems to move alternately farther and closer as you feel your body shake. You sit up in bed and look around.

You must have fallen asleep as you were now in bed again. You cradle your own head in your hands as the tears continue to roll down your cheeks and onto your lips. The tears mix with the sweat and leave a bitter-sweet taste on your tongue. You pull your legs up to your chest and wrap your arms around them protectively. It felt so real.

You allow yourself to rest your head on your knees and take deep breaths while trying to slow your rapidly beating heart down. You were sure the pain was real enough to feel believable. You could still feel the sting in your arms and face from where he was hitting you. The heat radiating off your skin from the rapid beating of your heart made the blood pulse through your sore muscles agonizingly. The feeling of falling felt too real. You knew exactly what a tumble down the staircase felt like though, and you hated the consequences.

You can feel the tears trickling down your cheeks as the sweat beads at the nape of your neck. The room is unbelievably stuffy because of your current situation. You don’t have a fan or air conditioning system, so the window was your only source of cooling. However the window has been closed for days, reiterating your previous fears of invasion. You didn’t want to open it and see him there. You couldn’t bare it.

You felt disgusting though. Your shirt was clinging to your arms and the heat that built up in your room felt suffocating. It was completely soaked and you feel as if it’s starting to crawl all over you with the many beads of sweat still rolling off your body. Your chest was tight and the pressure that you were putting on it with your knees didn’t help at all.

The muscles in your lower back were being strained sitting like this, so you stretched out your legs on your bed and leaned your body against the adjacent wall. Sniffling, you wipe the tears away from your cheeks. You can feel the tightness in your cheeks and the millions of pinpricks crawling up and down your skin and around your eyes like spiders just from the tears. You delicately touch your eyes. The swelling in your left eye had gone down considerably, but there were still small blotches of purple lining it, and anything touching it stung.

You hated looking in the mirror, now. There were so many things wrong with you that you could barely stand to see your own hands. There were so many bruises, and the number of cuts along your body only increased with the night’s events. The horrid contrast between your skin and the sores was sickening, so you avoided looking at yourself altogether.

You sigh and bang the side of your head against the wall next to you, in the process pushing your sore shoulder further into the wall. You cringe. Your right arm had been injured badly with everything that had happened to you, but the numbness had gone away with the first night and now left only a dull sting in its place. The heat wasn’t helping either. The warmth of your shirt was too much for you to bear at the moment. You peeled it off, using mainly your left hand and arm. You were expecting a rush of cool air to come once you peeled off the damp material, but there was nothing.

This reminded you about your window. You turned around, having had your back facing it while leaning against the wall. It was still closed and trapped all the hot air in, and the sweet, cold air out. Your body was begging with you to open it, and the humidity in your room was nearly crushing your lungs, but the image of Gerard’s face on the other side of the window was holding you back still. It was haunting you, like a dead spirit. Except this wasn’t a spirit, it was just your imagination working against you in the most horrible way. You decide to contemplate this a little further and get up feebly out of bed to shower for school. You knew it was Monday, even though you had no idea what time it was. You usually got up and ready for school way too early anyway.

As you opened the door to your bedroom, the memories of your dream came rushing back to you, making you stop in your tracks. You listen for several seconds and hear nothing. Even that isn’t enough to reassure you as you stand completely still and hear nothing but the sound of your heart attempting to beat its way out of your chest. Don’t be stupid. It was just a dream.

This reasoning allows you to keep walking into the bathroom, but quickly as if someone was following you still. Run rabbit, run.

In the back of your mind, you counter your reason by thinking That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t happen anyway.

Coming back into your room after a fresh shower, you realize that leaving the door open didn’t do anything to help the heat. You glance at the clock. 4:34 am You decide to simply give in and open your damn window. He wouldn’t be up this early anyway, and you were pretty sure that the window across from yours belonged to his little brother…at least you hoped it did.

However, all the fears and worries build up inside you again as your fingers slide over the lock. You actually pause for several minutes before you slide open the window, allowing the hazy blue to flood into your room, announcing the morning. You cherish the cool breeze that now creeps its way into your room. You breathe in the fresh air and that allowed you to clear your head.

The house next door is dark, quiet, and seemingly empty. But you knew that there were people inside. You knew that he was inside, probably sleeping. None of the lights are on yet, and the small beams of light coming up over the horizon give everything a certain glow that someone only sees in the early morning. The house looks pale, and you remember briefly a time when your cousin’s window would be open, even at this time, and even in the winter. It was open for you. So if you needed her, then you would just have to call and there she would be, waiting at her window for you. You missed her so much, just looking at that house, and knowing that it’s not her that’s living there anymore. You wipe a stray tear off your cheek and close down your emotions for now.

You sigh. Time to get ready for school.

-
The entire way there, you worry. What was going to happen when you saw Gerard again? What is he going to do? What areyougoing to do? You had no answers for any of these questions as you sat on your usual swing before class started. And you had no answers for this as you sat at your usual seat in the back of the art room at the all-too-familiar graffiti covered table. All you had, was your anxiety.

More and more kids began to file in and, thankfully, none of them were him. None of them claimed the only other seat ever occupied at your table. You sat there waiting, preparing for what ever was going to happen when he finally walked through that door. As you sat, you finally reached a conclusion as to what you were going to do. It was simple, yet you were hoping that it would work.

Your arm was still covered in bruises and it hurt to move it, but you were thankful that the swelling in your eye was gone, so that no one (Michaels) would notice anything were wrong if you pretended to be alright. Funny, you never had to pretend before. No one noticed and no one cared if you came to school with a cast or a limp even. Everyone either dismissed the issue, or never cared to notice you at all. You were content being invisible. Now you had to pretend to not be bothered or hurt by whatever happened. It was all because of him.

And you hoped that he would actually start to leave you alone now. You were planning on ignoring him completely. It was simple, but you just hoped it worked and he got the message. Silence would be your ally, like it had been all those times before. This might make it clear to him that he should leave you alone and go talk to some normal people for a change.

The bell rang so you pull out your notebook for the lunch menu, just like any other day. You pass the sketch you did previous of his eye again. You forgot that it was there, and resisted the urge to simply rip it out and burn it right in class. You studied it a little further and chuckled to yourself inwardly. It doesn’t look as good as it did after he touched it up. You caught yourself almost smiling, but instead scowled at the paper and turned the page fiercely, already drawing another box for today’s menu.

You really had no idea at all why he stayed home those days, but why are you asking yourself this and wondering that? He doesn’t matter to you.

He still wasn’t here. Hmm, maybe he won’t come in today at all. You think, hoping that he decided to stay home once again. The principal begins the droning of the pledge of allegiance with a tone that would put a hyperactive cat to sleep.

“Welcome back Mr. Way. I won’t mark you tardy, just take a seat.” You hear Michaels say cheerfully. Shit.

You wait, gripping your pencil to prevent the noticeable shake of your hands. Will he sit by you after that? You never thought of that before, but don’t dare look up. Reminding yourself that you were pretending that he wasn’t there, you keep your head down and bite the inside of your lip.

The lunch menu is announced through the intercom and you copy it down as the seat next to yours is pulled out. You ignore it. It isn’t there.

You continue writing, forcing yourself to act as normal as possible. You attempt to pass off the lip biting as concentration, but the realization of how close he chose to sit today makes it difficult. The chair was still a foot or so away, but that was closer than anyone had come in a long time, making you even more nervous but you brush it away from you. You banish all the other thoughts and go on temporary auto-pilot to try and make your task easier. For once, you don’t worry about all the kids that might be staring in your direction, and concentrate solely on ignoring Gerard Way.