Look at Me

Paige stared blindly at her hands as her mind twisted itself into knots.
Shit… She couldn’t think of even one really good excuse. She couldn’t even think of one really bad one. Lying was sooo not her strong point. Three weeks from then she have the, Oh…that’s what I should have said… moment. But knowing that didn’t exactly help. She didn’t need an excuse three weeks later! She needed one right then.
Closing her eyes and taking a shallow breath Paige chose her only other option. If she couldn’t lie and she couldn’t tell the truth then she would just have to try to say nothing at all.
“Terry,” she started slowly, “I’m so sorry, but I can’t REALLY tell you want happened. I’m not sure I even know exactly. It was like… It was like waking up. Stuff got really confusing and made so much sense all at once and…I want to just tell you everything so badly right now, but… But I just can’t.”
That all poured out of her like word vomit. She probably would have kept going but the heavy atmosphere that had suddenly developed kept her quiet.
Terry blinked rapidly as she stared straight ahead. “Because of him,” she said in a clipped voice and it wasn’t a question. It was just her stating something they both knew was true.
“It’s not what you think,” Paige said almost pleadingly. She could almost feel the disapproval radiating off of her friend. She knew Terry was jumping to any number of wild conclusions. She probably decided by then that Hayden was a drugggie strung out on Meth or Crack or whatever and he was going to steal Paige and sell her as a sex slave in Singapore. (No that was not overestimating how crazy her friend got when she was worried) Terry was fiercely loyal and it was going to be pretty much impossible for her to understand.
But Paige just couldn’t give away what Hayden had spent so long hiding. Even though she knew Terry would never breathe a word, it just wasn’t her secret to tell. If Hayden said it was okay that was different, but until then she would have to let Terry’s imagination run riot.
Seeing the way her friend’s eyes tightened in anger Paige willed the car to go faster. If she could just get to school and see Hayden. If she could just speak to him maybe then she could explain…

***

Why did you come back?
Hayden asked himself that as he climbed into his half-open window and he only had one answer.
How could I not.
How could he have just gone to school that day like any other day? How could he not know what had happened the night before? How could he not know what he’d become?
When he landed on his bed, Hayden sat there for half a second and then made himself cross the room and open the door.
Silence. Complete and inescapable silence. Nothing more nothing less. What had he expected? Walls drenched in blood? Boy parts littering the floor? There was no sign, in the hallway at least, that any violence had been committed. Hayden felt almost like it was too quiet, too calm. Everything seemed eerily like the way it was supposed to be. Following some inner need to do so, Hayden walked to the bathroom and opened the door On the floor lay his mother, proving that absolutely NOTHING was the way it was supposed to be.