Chapters On A Page

My dress had been puddled on the floor of my bedroom for four days, the purple and the red and the gold panels of the skirt all showing and the lace sleeves I'd sewn to the bodice tangled together from my struggle to get it off. I had been staring at it for the better part of those four days. I somehow continued to end up on the floor, sitting against the bed, and absentmindedly tapping my fingers against my lips while my eyes refused to move from the costume a few feet in front of me. For some reason, I couldn't get my mind to stray from the memory of how Dominic had been so eager to get it off me. It bothered me more than I could say, and I could still find no reason for this. He was my boyfriend and he loved me. He was supposed to want to sleep with me. Maybe I was still troubled over the fact that he had determined that he loved me after only a month together. Then here I was still, still questioning if my feelings were just as strong. There was also the problem nagging at me that Alex had been the one to find us. I had already pushed Dominic away, but I still felt that I could have handled it better if anyone else besides Alex had walked in on us.

Hours passed and I found that the night had turned into morning. The late hour was quiet and I almost hated to ruin it with the sound of the shower. But the hot water helped clear my mind, to forget about everything but my original quandary. Wrapped in a towel with another hiding my wet hair, I just wound up on the floor again. The dress still hadn't moved as I knew it wouldn't because it couldn't. I had still hoped. I was shivering as I sat there, my bare skin still damp from the shower and the air in the house chilly to me no matter the real temperature. But it wasn't the chills that had me scrambling to my feet to throw pajamas on.

I felt gross, like my skin was crawling each time my mind flashed back to lying on Alex's bed with Dominic's fingers in my hair and trying to undress me. I didn't want to say I was disgusted, but I was having a difficult time describing it in any other way. To think that he had wanted to have sex at that party, in that room, without any care about the consequences of getting caught made me feel used. I couldn't shake the feeling that he had wanted Alex to find us there, and maybe he would have been happier if things had gone further when that happened. It infuriated me to the point where I nearly disregarded sleep altogether to storm over to his house. I compromised with myself though by kicking the dress a few times until it was hidden in the dusty confines of the space beneath my desk, curses flying from my tongue like daggers. When I was satisfied and calmed down to some extent, I crawled between the cold sheets on the bed for a night of fitful sleep.

I was well aware in the morning that my emotions had been flaring in the night. Kicking my way out of covers and out of bed, I damned every aspect of being a girl. Stomping off to the bathroom to get ready for school didn't make me feel any better like it normally would have if I was in a simple bad mood. I just had to try to shake it off as I got dressed, knowing I didn't want to go to school with a terrible attitude and horrific cramps. The two really wouldn't mix well when I was going to be surrounded by people with the ability to irritate me on a daily basis. Clad in lazy attire consisting of sweatpants and my Towson hoodie that had gotten such a bad reaction before Homecoming, I shuffled to the kitchen. As soon as my mother joined me, I forgot all about the homemade cinnamon roll in front of me and began begging for a ride to school. Thankfully, with Lilah and I both in high school, I had back up, and we had Trix agreeing in no time.

I wasn't completely over all that had made me angry when I walked to my locker, but I was as complacent as I was going to get today. As I had anticipated, Dominic was already waiting for me. Leaning against the row of lockers, blocking at least two that people surely needed to get into, he looked as if he owned the place. His arms were crossed, making the slight muscles of his arms appear much more prominent peeking out of the sleeves of his navy blue t-shirt. His expression was an intimidating one, though he wasn't much to be fearful of in all honesty. I had to bite my tongue, almost hard enough to draw blood, to remind myself of this. I had to make sure there was a legitimate reason for me to be angry at him. Freezing him out when I only thought he had been trying to put us on display would end even worse.

He leaned down when I had reached him and, prepared to play along, I stood on my toes to accept his kiss. He had been his normal self since the Halloween party and that hadn't changed in the hours between now and yesterday afternoon. It was like he had never uttered words accusing me of not loving him, as if making me feel guilty would change my mind about sleeping with him. On his end, nothing was amiss between us, our relationship was the same as it had been since the start. Maybe it was blind naivety that had him unaffected by the silence I left us in the whole time I gathered my things before parting ways until lunch.

I spent most of the day dragging my feet, literally and metaphorically. I was relieved when I shuffled into astronomy, knowing the lights would get turned off and my seat could be pushed back. I could nap the whole class if I really felt like it, already trusting that I wouldn't get caught. Alex was already in the seat he always occupied and I went to take my seat next to him, sandwiching him between myself and Jack. As I got closer to him, I noticed he was wearing practically the same thing as me, looking as lazy as I felt.

"You must be on your period, too, Gaskarth," I stated jokingly as I fell into my usual seat. Automatically, I leaned it back, but angled my head to look at him instead of the domed ceiling.

Appearing baffled for a second, Alex turned to me with eyebrows knit together. He took a moment to look me over and make the connection, chuckling loudly when he did. "Yeah, it's turning me into a complete bitch today," he replied sarcastically, his lips pulling into a smirk. "Funny how our cycles have matched up like this, eh? Maybe we should stop hanging out so much," he suggested, all jests as he scooted down in his chair to lean it back as I had done with my own.

I laughed at him, shaking my head lightly, surely messily tousling my hair as it slid against the cheap, worn cushioning on the chair. Our teacher walked to the front of the room a moment later, calling attention to himself to get the day's lecture started. The bright fluorescent lights were replaced quickly by the simulated night sky overhead. "I'm going to go to sleep," I whispered, moving so my lips were close to Alex's ear. "Cover me?" I asked innocently. His response was a small snort and a nod. Grinning, I settled back in my original position, my eyes already closed. I was asleep before I even heard what the constellation was that we were supposed to be learning about, and didn't wake again until I was being shaken gently.

I squinted, blocking out as much of the harsh artificial lighting as possible, and found Alex's dark brown eyes looking into my own -mostly- green ones. "Time for lunch," he informed me, an amused grin on his face.

Reflexively, I ran the back of my hand across my mouth, thinking he looked so pleased because I had drooled as I slept. That apparently wasn't the reason, but he chortled all the same. I wasn't in any kind of mood to question any further. "Thanks," I said as we stood, making our way out of the room long after everyone else. "Any important info I need to know?" I wondered, leading the way to the cafeteria.

He shook his head, hands stuffed in the pockets of his zip-up hoodie. "Nah. Except he went over everything we'll need for the midterm," he claimed with a shrug, trying to conceal a mischievous grin.

I shoved him lightly. "The midterm won't even be until January. There's no way he randomly decided today was the perfect day to give us everything we needed to know for a test that's two and a half months away," I argued, not wanting to believe him yet somehow falling for it. "Let me see your notes," I demanded, reaching for the notebook secured between two textbooks he had tucked under his arm.

Laughing, he pulled away. "Nope, I'm not the one that decided to nap. For once," he reminded accusingly but still with another snicker. With that, he hurried off halfway down the hall, turning back momentarily only to wave at me.

I glared at him, but he had already faced forward again and was on his way to lunch. I sighed but continued on as well, meeting Dominic at the doors as always and kissing him. When we sat down though, I couldn't stop thinking about the possibility of Alex being truthful. I knew he wasn't, but I was still believing the trick. I dug through my purse briefly, coming up with my phone. After flipping it open, my fingers instantly began typing out a text to Alex, once again asking if he was serious and to prove it if he said yes. All I got back was a couple of sarcastic remarks and mocking words of how I was going to fail the whole class all because I had switched roles with him today, which made me giggle to myself.

My soft laughs must have been loud enough to get Dominic's attention though, which I hadn't had since before he had gotten in line. I couldn't say I was complaining. "Who are you talking to?" he questioned curiously, resting his chin on my shoulder so he could glance down at my phone hidden on my lap. When I answered him, he muttered a passive aggressive "Oh…" He immediately lifted his head then and turned back to everyone else. I didn't even notice.

As I walked alone to anthropology, I was mostly thinking about how the day was almost over and I couldn't help but to rejoice in my head. I didn't even care that I didn't particularly want to attend this class or even that I had work this afternoon. I was being optimistic for maybe the first time all day, and I didn't want to corrupt that state of mind so soon with what were essentially such insignificant things. I sat down in the back of the classroom, preferring it to any other spot for this class. I had liked the subject at the beginning of the year but Mr. Hargrave, a bitter, balding, middle-aged man, taught the class and he had the habit of making sure we all knew his opinion on everything under the sun, most often letting it affect his teaching. Normally, I wouldn't have cared, but I had taken this class on a whim and I had honestly been hoping to learn something. But now I favored being obscured in a seat he could rarely see, reading a book I kept hidden behind the back of the person in front of me or talking to Alex on days he decided not to skip the class entirely. Thankfully, today was one of the days he was going to sit through it with me.

Because of the way the room was set up, there was enough room in an alcove of sorts in the very back for two desks to fit. It was the perfect place to get away with not listening and doing pretty much whatever you wanted. Because I had really begun to slack off during my senior year, these seats were coveted by both Alex and I. Most days, we sat silently next to each other, maybe passing notes back and forth when we knew talking wouldn't go unnoticed. Today I sat with my feet up on the basket beneath the chair in front of me, a book holding my attention while Mr. Hargrave rambled on about something that was once again off topic. Every once in a while, my mind would wonder from the text and his words would break into my conscious mind again, so I at least knew his theme of the day was grief. This was a discussion I certainly didn't want to participate in, and tried to focus again on the dull, faded gray words.

I found this proved to be a difficult task about halfway through the class, when my back was sore and I was fidgeting to find a more comfortable position on the hard plastic seat. I couldn't force my eyes or my thoughts to pin down one thing to keep me occupied, even though it hadn't been so hard only a few moments ago. Words kept slipping through, my ears full of a subject I didn't want to hear anything about because it brought up too many memories of my sister. I had barely gotten over the last nightmare I had had that she'd been in. I still wanted to break down when it came back to me, and I still wanted to be with her more than I wanted to stay here even if someone actually did happen to need me. It was so tough not to let sorrow sweep over me the longer I couldn't get my brain off that topic and back to the book I had been buried in for a week.

"There are four steps to the grieving process," Mr. Hargrave announced loudly, or what sounded loud to me. It could have just been because my attention was, once more, brought to him. "But that probably means nothing to any of you. I'm sure none of you have had to comprehensively grieve over something. Not enough to know what those four steps are, at least, or to care. So I'll go over them. First-" he began, all ready to give us a lesson on this topic. On something that wasn't even a part of this class.

But I cut him off. It was louder than the mumble under my breath that I had intended to use, but I tried to play it off like I meant to do it, trying to sound confident. "Yeah, because we're all so young and have never been able to grieve a loss. How naive we all must be to this confounded process," I sneered, emulating the way he always talked when he was teaching. It required a lot of puffing out of my lips and lifting of my shoulders and scrunching of my forehead, as well as making my voice comically deeper. As if from very far away, I could hear people giggling over my imitation.

I had no problem hearing Mr. Hargrave though. He still looked smug while he sat on the corner of his desk, one foot up on the desk in front of him like the kid sitting there actually wanted it there. He folded his arms over his raised knee and leaned forward to point his narrowed eyes at me. "And what, young Ms. Rutherford, do you know about grief? Has a pet of yours died in the past? Oh, how terrible that must have been," he alleged jeeringly, more condescending than I felt he had a right to be. His emphasis on "young" also didn't slip passed my attention and only succeeded in enraging me.

"Actually," I started, springing to my feet so that I was in full view of everyone that normally couldn't see me, "I probably know more about it than you do even though I'm only seventeen. And I really would rather talk about anthropology, as we're supposed to be, than relive those four painful and arduous steps. But I don't think that I'm going to get that today. So, excuse me," I vented, both annoyed and distressed as I slipped between two desks so I wouldn't have to go anywhere near him to leave the classroom. I threw the door open so it hit the wall outside, but I was unfortunately not rewarded with one of the glass panels shattering. I had planned on storming off, running to hide in the library or maybe just going outside to calm down in the cold air until sixth period began. But I didn't make it very far at all. Before I could collapse in the middle of the hallway, I stumbled over to the wall only a mere five feet from the door and I pressed my back to it to slide down to the cold tile.

"She lost her sister two years ago, asshole," I heard a voice divulge from inside the room, the tone hard and implicating. "Just because we're students and you're a sorry excuse for a teacher that has probably not been shown any form of love in thirty years, doesn't mean you need to think we're so ignorant." A moment after the complaint was given, Alex exited the room, closing the door behind him, not nearly as hard as I had opened it. As he paced the few steps toward me, I noticed that he had my books stacked on top of his underneath his arm and my purse clutched in his other hand. He slid down next to me on my left, setting our books down on his other side. "Are you okay?" he asked softly, tilting his head forward in an attempt to see my face.

I shook my head but looked up at him with a meek smile on my lips. "I don't want to go back in there, Alex. Seriously, how can he think that we're such foolish little kids? Does he really think you have to be of a certain age to know what it's like to live through the death of someone you love?" These were questions Alex couldn't answer, I knew. But I wouldn't enter that class again to ask the person that needed to be questioned. "I saw my sister lying dead in the middle of a living room where we had been dancing together only a few hours before. I'm pretty sure I know how it goes," I affirmed, holding my hands up in unnecessary defense.

Alex nodded, already knowing what I had lived through. He put his arm around my shoulders then, pulling me close to him to comfort me. I didn't hesitate to let my head fall to his shoulder as I stared wide-eyed at the dingy red lockers across from us. "I say that you should take the rest of the day off. Call it a mental health day and get it the fuck over with. What do you say?" he proposed, squeezing my shoulder for encouragement. "I'm done with classes after this period anyway thanks to co-op. I can take you anywhere you want to go before I have to be at Rian's," he promised with a smile.

I heaved a sigh, but it wasn't a painstaking one. "Do you have a key to Rian's?" I asked, glancing up at him.

"I know where the spare key is hidden," he answered.

"Can we please just go get some coffee then? And then go to Ri's so I can watch you guys practice?" I begged, to which he nodded fervently.