My Life as a Teenage Rebel

Chapter 53: The O'Conner Effect

Probably the most random side-photo I've put up in the history of ever...

If you find one that is even 1% less random, I will love you forever.

Meanwhile...

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Evan Touber

CHAPTER 53 The O’Conner Effect

I eavesdropped on the twins again.

I hadn’t done it in a while, and I didn’t do it on purpose. Then again, I never do it on purpose, do I?

I was walking back to class after Ky and Evilyn had their little spat. What else was there to do but go back to class? I didn’t have a slip to give to the teacher, but I figured I could tell him that it was a bathroom emergency. Something like that, anyway.

I heard the twins talking from around a corner, and I stopped. I couldn’t exactly pass them without them noticing me, and how was I supposed to react when they did notice me? So I just stayed there for a second, just around the corner.

“…I just made everything worse.” Ky said, concluding telling her brother whatever it is she was saying before I came along. “Why would I do that?”

“Don’t you see, Ky?” Kyle asked, and both Ky and me needed him to explain to us whatever it was he saw that we didn’t. So he did, “The last time someone we loved got hurt, we decided that no one we loved was ever going to get hurt again, and no one we loved did, because there was no one that we loved. We made sure not to care about anybody by pushing everybody away.”

“So?” Ky sounded stressed.

“So, now that you think that Evilyn is going to get hurt, your first instinct is to push her away. You’re distancing yourself from her emotionally by trying to get her to hate you…so that if she does get hurt, it won’t kill you so much to see her in pain.”

“That’s sick, Kyle.” Ky whispered.

“I know, Ky, but it’s how our subconscious minds are conditioned.”

“Then how come you aren’t trying to push her away?”

“I don’t see the danger that you do in this situation. I don’t know what’s going on.” Kyle told her. Yeah, well, most of the rest of us didn’t know what was going on either. We still don’t.

“I guess you’d appreciate it if I didn’t tell you, then.” Ky said. Kyle didn’t respond. “In that case, will you do me a favor?” Ky asked. “If you have to choose between me and Evilyn, even if it’s for the smallest thing, choose Evilyn. She needs you on her side more than I do, right now.”

There was a moment of hesitation from Kyle, and then: “Okay.”

And that was what I heard when I accidentally eavesdropped on the twins.

I sit on Ky’s bed, straight across from her, considering the cards in my hand. Andrew stares at me patiently as he rolls back and forth across Ky’s floor with a wheelie chair. Ky has her elbow propped up on her knee; her chin resting on the edge of her palm. And you’ll never guess who’s sitting in the other chair.

“It’s been two minutes already, baby, it’s time to choose.” Ky says. My face flushes, and I glare up at her from behind my cards. I’ve told her already, I don’t care who we have to play “couple” in front of, it’s embarrassing to hear her call me “baby.”

“Good God, it’s just Go Fish, man. Just pick a bloody number.” says the one with an English accent.

Yes. That’s right. An English accent. Oh, I’m sorry, let me rephrase that.