I Am Invincible

After the first action-filled day at school (Ivory and Silver’s sister Ebony nearly broke my neck when Ivory told her during recess that I had my tongue pierced. She threw her arms around me and her shoulder snapped into my jaw and jolted my head back. It kind of hurt but I wasn’t in agony or anything, but regardless, Ebony spent the rest of the day apologising to me whenever she saw me), the next few months seemed pretty mundane in comparison.

Recess and lunch breaks were the highlights of each school day. I made friends in most of my classes, but I spent most of my time hanging out with Ivory, Silver, Ebony, Jake, Jackson, Mark, Rhys and Tiarna, a girl that is like head-over-heels in love with Jackson but he’s clueless. She’s dropped so many hints it’s not even funny anymore but Jackson still doesn’t get it. I even told him (with Tiarna’s permission) straight out that she liked him, but he just looked at me like I was insane. It might’ve been because I was frustrated and waving my arms about trying to make him understand, but I’ll never know. Anyway, it always amuses Jake and me when we watch Tiarna try so hard to make Jackson notice her.

I’ve been to quite a few parties since I’ve been attending school in Australia too. People would just randomly throw parties for the sake of it and anyone could turn up; invited or not. It was great. I even threw my own in the apartment Zach and I were renting. It was a farewell party for Zach; he was leaving to go to college back in America just three days after. Obviously because apartments are usually much smaller than houses, and this one was no exception, we couldn’t have a huge amount of people attend the farewell get-together.

Even so, at least thirty people were crammed into the small space, dancing to the thumping music and just having a good time. I had convinced Zach to buy us some alcohol (since, in Australia, the legal drinking age is 18 not 21) as well, so some people were pretty smashed. Including me, I’m ashamed to say. Apparently I’m a flirty drunk, which obviously isn’t a good thing when you have a boyfriend, so Zach made sure I didn’t get too far away from him. He told me that if he ‘let me off my leash’ too much I’d be breaking too many hearts with my actions. So seeing as I wasn’t allowed too far away from Zach, I spent most of the night dancing with him. I didn’t remember much about that night, but holy shit, I am going to kill whoever took the video of me doing less than civil things to Zach on the dance floor. I found the video on my camera which was on my bedside table the next morning when I woke up in bed, sans clothing and sans boyfriend. I was about to delete it when a naked Zach appeared suddenly next to me and grabbed the camera off me.
“Don’t you dare delete that. I need something to keep me going when I get back to America and have to live all by myself again.”

I giggled, “But Zacky, you have Ryan to live with, so you won’t be all alone.”
Zach threw me a look that said, ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it’ and I grinned and grabbed his wrists, pulling him onto the bed. His lips attached to my neck immediately in that spot that makes me go insane every time and I threw my head back moaning loudly before realising that there were people still in the apartment and I clapped a hand over my mouth. Zach pulled away from my neck and looked at me with a confused expression.

“There are still people over!” I whispered.
“So? You’ll just have to be quiet for once, won’t you?” he whispered back.
I frowned and my bottom lip jutted out. “You’re so mean to me. I have no idea why I put up with you.”
“Beeeee-cause you love me,” Zach sang, and attached himself to my neck again, just as Jake walked into the room, turned around after seeing us and walked back out again, pulling the door closed. Through it, he yelled, “God damnit! I always walk in at the wrong time. Can you two put some clothes on and show me where your bin is. Your house is a mess and yeah, if I know you, you’re probably going to make me help you clean up and I have work in an hour, so yeah. Bin?”

“I’ll go,” I sighed, pushing Zach’s chest lightly so that he moved and grabbed a random pair of pants that were sitting on the floor near the bed. They were much too big to be mine, but it didn’t matter. I found a belt in one of the drawers and pulled it through the loops and did it up as tight as it would go and shuffled to the door. Zach was looking at me in amusement. Obviously watching me try to walk in a pair of pants that go way past my feet is funny. I stuck my tongue out at him as I got to the door, before pulling it open and tripping through the doorway. Jake was sitting in the middle of the couch with a sleeping Mark on one side and barely-awake-and-definitely-hung-over Silver on the other.

“Okay, I’ll show you now,” I said to Jake. Silver groaned and mumbled something about keeping my voice down and I turned to him, “Painkillers are in the top cupboard above the fridge, Silver.” He nodded and slipped off the couch onto the floor, I think in an attempt to get up. I walked over to the fridge and stood on my tip-toes to get the painkillers out. I chucked them at Silver before motioning to Jake to follow me. He picked up a plastic bag filled with who knows what and followed me out the front door around to the side of the building where the garbage bins were. Jake dumped the bag in the bin before turning to me.

“Why aren’t you hung-over?” he asked, “You were so drunk last night.”
“Good genes? I don’t know. I guess I’m lucky; I got my mom’s tolerance to alcohol. She never gets hangovers, but dad is a nightmare after he’s been drinking.”
Jake laughed, “Fair enough.”
I nodded and jumped a bit when I felt a pair of arms wrap around my bare stomach, but it turned out to be Zach and I relaxed. He nuzzled his face into my neck, causing me to giggle. Jake shook his head.

“You two are ridiculous. Can’t you keep your hands off each other for five minutes?”
“Shut up! Zach is leaving in like three days, and I won’t get to see him for ages. So, in answer to your question; no, I can’t keep my hands off him for five minutes,” I said huffily.
“Okay, okay!” Jake said, raising his hands in defence before turning and walking back into the apartment.
“You’re such a bitch,” Zach said, turning me around so that I was facing his chest and he kissed me lightly on the lips, “I love it.”

~~~

Three days of spending pretty much every waking hour alone with Zach was not enough to keep the cravings away after he left to go back to America. I missed him as soon as he left my arms to get on the plane, even though he came running back at least three times to kiss me goodbye “one last time”.

I had sat silently in the back of Jackson’s car on the way home. I think Jackson and Jake (who came with me to see Zach off) knew better than to try and talk to me when I was like that. I was pretty quiet the next few days after that, only really perking up when Zach rang or we talked online. I’m just glad that I live in the 21st Century and not any earlier because it would’ve been agony waiting for letters to get halfway around the world as the only means of communication. I think I’d probably go insane if I didn’t have the internet or my phone.

I was just thinking about this when I absentmindedly picked up my phone off my bed. As if on command, it rang; a picture of Zach and I coming up as the caller I.D and I Caught Fire, by The Used played loudly through the speaker. I immediately pressed the green phone button and put the device up to my ear.

“Hey!”
“Hi baby. How are you?”
“Much better now that I’m talking to you,” I said, perching myself on the edge of my bed.
“How do you sound so perky this early in the morning, it’s like 6 o’clock or something there, right? I thought I might’ve woken you up.”
“Yeah… I’ve been waking up really early lately; it’s really annoying, actually. Anyway, why did you feel the need to wake me up?” I said, teasingly.
“Oh, I was just letting you know that Ryan’s invited me to this party at one of his friends’ houses, so I won’t be able to talk to you later,” he told me.
“A party?”
“Yeah. Just a random house party, one of Ryan’s friends is hosting it…” he trailed off and I heard Ryan shout something to Zach in the background, to which Zach replied “Just telling Cam. I’m ready, I’ve just been waiting for you.”
“Do you need to go?” I asked.
“Yeah, Ryan’s nagging. Sorry, baby. Hey I’ll call you tomorrow morning okay, your time? I love you,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh, “I love you too. Have fun.”
“Yep, bye,” he said, hanging up immediately after.

“Bye,” I whispered to the dial tone. I had a bad feeling about this party.