Cannibal Red

Tiffany’s list was very long.
I really regretted lying to Tiffany about Tyler, because if it hadn’t have been for my stupid mouth he’d probably be here with me going through this horrific list. Plus I kind of missed him.

I was starting to talk to myself; my mother thought it was because of the copious amounts of beetroot she’d fried for dinner. But I knew it was because I was lonely. My mum liked to cook…badly. She also cooked really strange stuff, like bean cakes and carrot ice cream. For dinner it was normally something really weird looking and I’d have to just buck the fuck up and eat, even if it was frozen whale blubber wrapped in celery.
Ew.

On Friday after school I was most definitely sick of Tyler avoiding my gaze at school, and so I decided to go to his house and damn it…beg for forgiveness.
We were in this together.

The only reason I knew he was at home was because I had practically stalked him all the way there, he knew I was doing it, because when I knocked on his door he opened it in a flash with a wary look on his face.

“What do you want?” He says; his voice croaky “I’m not in the mood for people like you.”
“Tyler…” I practically whisper “please let me explain.”

Tyler pulls a sarcastic smile “what? I already know you just couldn’t bring yourself to tell Tiffany that you were actually hanging out with me, or was that a lie too?”

I sigh and push him into the house.

“Don’t speak to me like I’m a total bitch! You know I’m not like that!”

“Don’t yell at me!”

Great, now we’re in a screaming match.

“Don’t give me looks as if I’m going to hurt you!”

“You’re such a bitch!”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck YOU!”

I don’t reply, watching the almost defeated look on his face. Then the corners of his lips suddenly turn upwards, into a small smile.

“Yelling isn’t going to get us anywhere.” He says, turning around and grabbing a handful of his hair, smiling down at the ground.

“I know…” I mumble, averting my eyes elsewhere. Anywhere was better than his face.
After a few minutes of silence, Tyler speaks up, his voice soft and hurt. “You just don’t know what it’s like.”

I look up, his features were softened, his eyes watery, and he looked at me as if he was a small boy whose kitten had run away. My stomach did a huge flip.

“Tyler I’m really sorry…”

“I don’t think you are.” He says, looking away from my face “You’ve never been looked at like you’re a filthy piece of shit, you’ve never been called names so much that you’ve gotten used to them, and almost accept them like your real name, you’ve never had to come home and try to explain to your mother how you got a black mark in the shape of a hockey stick on your face when you don’t even like sports, Lee, you’ve been accepted all your life.”

I open my mouth to speak, to apologize, to get him to see that I’m sorry, but no words come out, when he notices I can’t say anything, he speaks again.

“I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me, because you have no idea what it’s like in hell.”

Tyler’s words burnt, they burnt like someone was forcing you to stand right inside the flames of a fire and let you die.
I felt like he’d never let me in again, the way he looked at me though, that was what had hurt the most. He looked at me as if he was the one sorry for me.
I couldn’t go home; I thought as I walked along the streets away from Tyler’s house, mum would badger me with questions until I practically vomited the words out.
So I took the bend down to a street lined with quant little shops and walked in through the small glass doors to Verat Music.

Adrienne was sitting on her couch flipping through paperwork when I stormed up the stairs and into her upstairs apartment.
She raises her eyebrows when I flop down on the carpeted floor, chucking my bag somewhere behind me.

“Hello to you too.” She says, her bug eyes following me as I shuffle around angrily below her. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but why have you suddenly stormed into my apartment looking like you’re about to hit someone?”

I look up at her; she was smirking behind her paperwork.

“Why?” I breathe, trying to calm myself down. “Your brother that’s why!”

Calming down lasted for like, two seconds.
Adrienne puts the paperwork down on her lap once more and stares confusedly at me.

“Huh?”

“Your brother thinks that I don’t understand him.”

Adrienne giggles and picks up her pen again, looking down at the paperwork. “Nobody understands Tyler; it’s a fact that we all have to live with.”

I roll my eyes at her incompetence. “Adie.”

Her eyes slowly travel from her paperwork, back up to my tired face. “You like him.”

The tightness in my stomach from fighting with Tyler had just suddenly grown even tighter. Busted.

“What? No!”

Adrienne giggles again, swinging her legs from the couch to the floor and leaning over to look closely at me. “Oh yes you do, your blushing.”

I touch my cheek, realizing how hot they were. “Really?”

“No.”

“Adie!”

“What?!” She says, putting her head in her hand and grinning mischievously at me. “You so like Tyler.”

“I do not!”

“Then why are you getting so flustered?”

I stare up at her, choosing not to say anything.
“Oh come on Lee, it’s not like I’m interested in your love life…that much.”

I raise an eyebrow at her. “If you weren’t interested in my love life you wouldn’t have that stupid grin on your face.”

Adie rolls her eyes and takes the paperwork off her lap and places it on the coffee table, patting the space on the couch next to her and shuffling over. “Spill.”

And to think I used to think of Adie as a total guy turned girl.

After telling Adie about Tyler from when we were at Tiffany’s house, to him making me feel horribly guilty, which made her pouty for some reason, she ruffles her hair and then stares at me.
“I’ll talk to my idiot brother.”

“You’ll what?”

She rolls her eyes, biting her lip. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow; tell him how much an asshole he’s being.”

I lean my head against the head of the couch and sigh. “You really think that’ll work?”

“It’ll work.”

It wasn’t the words she chose that made me a little frightened, but the way she said it, as if she had set some strict rules for Tyler to follow and he wasn’t obeying them.

“You’re not going to get him in trouble are you?”

Adrienne looks up at me from out her sort of trance like state and smiles. “Trouble? No, where’d you get that from dude?”

Somehow I felt like she was lying to me.