Starry Eyed

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

Dry oatmeal and gluggy, curdled milk served my breakfast, even though I was one of the earlier arrivals. The room was buzzing with that familiar chatter I knew so well, but I wandered deep into the maze of my thoughts and blocked it all out. I felt almost dizzy. With every breath, my lips echoed her name.

Thoughts swarmed madly around my brain, as if their invasion was a promise to drive me to insanity. I wanted to stop the car, I wanted to get off. But I couldn't.

My stomach was churning. My head was whirling. It was probably my fault, right? She just didn't like me like that. We hadn't even done anything. She'd fallen asleep, and woken up screaming. Somehow my fault. My fault. My fault.

And then arms, yanking me from my chair, splashing my glass of milk across my face. I sprayed munched-up oatmeal out, all over the table, whipping around to see my attacker. Finn. The rest of the room did an astonishingly good job ignoring the violent scene.

"What the hell?" I yelled, but one look at his face showed me he was not doing this for fun. Raw panic blazed in his bloodshot eyes, and his face was the same shade as Star's lipstick. I wanted to make a quip about how bad he smelt, but now was clearly not the time.

"Did you see it?"

"See what? What are you talking about?" I tried to wriggle out of his grip, but he was surprisingly strong. I opted to staring him down.

"Come with me," he demanded. The order was in no way the answer I'd been searching for. But inside, the wasps and bumblebees buzzing about Star had vanished. Now a new kind of fear bubbled beneath the surface. Finn did not speak to me without reason. And this would be an incredibly important reason.

I left my breakfast neglected on the table. The room was spinning, like a girl in a brand-new dress. Finn pulled me along as if he were the ship, and I the tugboat. Something jangled in his pocket, maybe the chain I was hooked upon.

The booming corridors opened out to the school office, the ceiling low and understated above our heads. The only person in the room was the secretary, who was humming away to somebody on the school phone- all too easy to avoid. I knew where we were going now.

I would have spoken up if I wasn't so curious. All along, I was so pathetic, such a pushover. Never had the courage to stand for myself. At this point I needed Star just to bother with being. She wasn't there. I chose to ignore myself.

The ceiling gave way, and we were staggering out into the carpark, crushed with cars and vans and assorted vehicles. Those jangling chains in Finn's pocket revealed themselves as car keys, and a question escaped my lips: "Why are we leaving?"

It seemed to flick back across his mind- I didn't know what had happened to set him off. With slitted eyes like a snake's, he spoke.

"You really are hopeless," he snapped. "Everyone's heard. One of the juniors came back last night and saw it. They're turning it into the gossip of the school. Because it's just gossip." Sarcasm oozed from every word; I winced at his snarling tone.

"What are you talking about?"

We stood alone in the middle of the carpark, lost amongst the sea of cars. He spun me around like a teacup on a themepark ride. Squinting, I made out the blurred picture.

Waves of blue and white, crowded around the concrete wall at the end of the basketball court. I could see the concrete from here. Police cars that had become so infatuated with our school had pulled up on the court. One was parked inside the goal circle, poised as if preparing to shoot. The hoop mocked all of the roaming officers, towering above as they made grave faces and studied the ground. But the police officers were not the important part.