F.A.I.T.H.

MOVIE >scene99> - A Dorm. A Delinquent. A Girl.

"Your shirt became see-through." Jessie said, glancing around nervously, worried that someone else had noticed.

Rihanna turned around, her heart picking up in a chest-tightening pace. He cares.

"Wh-what?" She felt her throat swell up. He's talking to me. He's finally talking to me.

He pushed his body closer to Rihanna's, his eyes jumping all over the place with worry of others having seen her tattoos.

"I'll get the towels. Keep your back turned like this." He said as he slowly went around her towards the ladder.

Charles reached them at that moment. His eyes threw daggers at Jessie. He looked back at Rihanna and with so much venom in his voice, he asked, "He even knows about your tats?" His tone was crisp with anger as he leaned his head in and whispered. "Are you telling me he saw you bare?"

To make it less obvious to the others, he rounded his arms around her and hugged her to his body, behind him, Rihanna's eyes were drawn up to Lexis, who had paused in place, staring intently as the whole scene took place before his eyes.

Charles grabbed her chin and twisted it back enough so that she could see him. With their lips nearly touching, he quietly threatened. "Unless you want me to choke him, start climbing out now. I'll take care of the rest."

Charles was eyeing Jessie as he walked over to the towels and grabbed one. Despising the idea of him being her 'hero', he wanted her out of his damn sight as soon as Charles could make it possible.

Rihanna, feeling beyond aggravated as the situation began to slowly sink into her more logical state, pushed him away from her. "Leave me and him alone Charles."

Jessie came back with the towels, however, Lexis met him halfway. Eyeing Jessie's drenched shorts and shirt, he calmly asked, "What did you do that for?"

The nervousness in Jessie's eyes was clearly visible, which made Lexis even more suspicious. He took a few steps closer to Jessie, intimidating him. "Is there something that I don't know?"

Jessie, finally finding an excuse, ruffled his wet hair and chuckled. Nonchalantly, he threw the towels in his hand near the ladder where Rihanna was. "Of course not. Rihanna gets a severe stomach ache from sudden contact with cold water. That's why."

Lexis stared at Jessie for a long moment. Rihanna stared at Lexis' hands as they curled into fists. "You..." He took two steps towards Jessie, making them that much closer now. He stared into Jessie's eyes, and Jessie became very vulnerable under his hard gaze. "Just lied to me for the first time Jessie."

....Because of her?! Nothing was more confusing to Lexis.

Charles quickly made his way around Rihanna and climbed out of the pool. He grabbed one of the towels and wrapped it around her back while she slowly made her way out of the water, hoping she could make it up the ladder and away from there before Lexis was done with his little chat with Jessie.

She paused mid-step as Lexis suddenly turned his attention to her. He made his way to the edge of the pool. Before she had the chance to climb all the way up, he was able to get ahold of her by the front of her shirt and pull her until his face was an inch from hers. "Why did they just do that?" He asked, oddly calm.

The new type of hate that she suddenly felt for him made its way into her expression. She stared back into his eyes, the silence in between them speaking volumes.

With it, her thigh was beginning to make her sick in the stomach with pain. She was putting pressure on it that she could do without right now, but in order to stay on the ladder, she had to deal with it feeling like it was ripping apart.

Its going to leave an ugly bruise. He's not going to like it.

"Lexis, just leave her alone. She didn't do anything to you." Jessie argued.

He's defending me.

"Shut up." Lexis answered him while still looking inside her eyes. He again asked. "Why?"

She kept quiet, not a word was going to leave her lips.

"I'll make you suffer long term pain, so emotionally slow and deep that you'll regret ever making me question my view on others."

She was hiding something. They're all hiding something. I need it. I need to crack her reality open. To see the unknown.

So quietly that even Jessie couldn't hear, she said. "Pain is interpersonal. Whatever you project is what you feel." A grunt of agony left her lips. "To me, this is pain right now."

His lazy smile was making its way through. "This is nothing."

"How could you treat girls like this? I've never seen anything more disrespectful."

"Lexis, this isn't right. You aren't like this." Jessie insisted.

It was so hard to feel the full effect of pain and hate when Jessie cared for her like this. All she could think was Jessie, he's speaking to me, around me, caring for me again. He was going to be my friend again. I'm going to see him more often now.

"Tell me."

"Let her go." Charles demanded.

"Make me." Lexis dared, staring at Rihanna as she tried to blink the water out of her eyes, and catch her breath that was filled with pain.

"I," she hissed. "hate you."

That was the last time she saw his face above water.

Her shoes slid from the slippery wet metal of the ladder, having it sense her body not able to hold it up any longer from the pain.

While she came crashing down into the pool, Lexis came down with her, and as they drowned together, he didn't let go of her shirt that he endlessly held on to. And then...

As his body sunk under into the deeper side of the pool, his eyes stared at her with sudden confusion.

Rihanna sunk down as well, watching Lexis watch her. Watch his eyes close, then open again. Watch him as he suddenly realized something.

Or remembered something.

Then his eyes opened wide, with more shock than she'd ever seen him in.

Feeling overly uncomfortably, she turned around–giving him her back, and began swimming upwards, wanting to get away from him. Little did she know what a huge mistake she did just then.

He caught her by the waist, and as she glanced down, she saw him studying her bare back. Bubbles jumped out of her mouth as she let out a short breath of fear. He looked up at her, his eyes unreadable, dark, yet at the same time, with more questions than he ever had for her.

He looked back down at the tattoos, and lifted her shirt higher, like Charles once did...

Revealing it all.

She kicked herself out of his hold and began to swim upwards as fast as she could. Everything in her body was firing, assuring her that the worst, the very worst, was yet to come. And that by itself terrified her from exiting the water, as much as it relieved her from the monster below.

What...did he remember...?