Life of a Mental (No longer writing)

Chapter Sixteen

“Riley, just walk away.” I pushed my hands against Riley’s chest, preventing him from charging Owen. I couldn’t deny Owen’s claim; I was ashamed of it but it was the truth.

The painful truth.

As usual, Nelly was sitting outside gazing up at the clouds with a dream-like expression on her pasty face. One may think that for how long she spends outside, she would have more colour in her cheeks.  Her mouth, which was painting a deep purple, moved, making undetectable words. I looked at her, trying to make the words out but all I got was “They’re wrong....wrong...right.” It was like she was speaking in tongues or whatever came to her mind.

 

 Softly, I sat down beside her. She jumped at my presence. “Oh, hello Olivia,” she says lightly.

 

“Hi Nelly,” I mutter back.

 

Without another word, Nelly reaches over to my bandages and holds my wrists in her hands. For the first time since I arrived, she smiled directly at me. “Stop it, you’re too precious to dig into yourself like that.”

 

“What were you saying?” I ask, tearing my wrists away from her and ignoring her words and asking my own question.

 

“Mummy was right to banish me; I’m mental!” She smiles brightly before pressing her hands to the ground to support her weight as she tilted her head to the clouds.

 

Once again, Owen was right. God damn it, why does he always have to be right?

Riley threw his hands in the air and took a step away fro me. “I’m good, I’m good,” he said nonchalantly, shaking the anger off his mind. The torch burning in his eyes cooled away.  He ran a hand through his dark hair and sighed.

The look on Cale’s face, that appeared as soon as he saw Riley’s defeat, irked me in an abstract way. It seemed that he had planned this...no, no, I’m not going to read into this any more; it was what it was and had ended.

I shot Cale a narrow-eyed glare.  “Let’s go.” Grabbing by the buttons in his shirt, I dragged him off in a puff of irritation.

Once we were far enough away for the dramatic impact to have been made, I stopped walking. I didn’t know where I was going; I just had the need to get away from Cale. For fuck’s sake, after our conversation this morning, I really thought he was trying to be a nice person; maybe I’m just too stupid around him.

While I stood in the middle of college green like an idiot, Riley sat down on a bench on the other side of college green. I followed and sat down so close to him that our arms brushed against each other.  We sat in silence, neither knowing what to make of the situation. Every time Riley ran into the people I recently called ‘friends’, something bad happened. “Sorry,” I muttered softly, starting at my brown, beat-up boots.

Riley laughed. “For what?” His tone was so cheerful that it seemed a cross thought had never entered his mind.