Queen of the Clueless #2 of 3 (COMPLETE)

Chapter 18

I thought I recognized that shadow.

Maybe I was just seeing things, but the lamp posts and the additional lights from the TV shoot were throwing strange patterns all the way up to the roof, where Quin and I usually hung out. There was a curvy shadow on the floor just then, and I wasn't sure where it was coming from. It looked like an intricately-drawn rose, if it were stretched lengthwise and laid on the floor. A note Quin wrote to himself that he forgot to hide? Or maybe I was seeing things?

I wasn't supposed to be up at the roof of the North building alone. No one was allowed to be there, not even during the daytime, but the rules didn't apply to Quin of course. It felt like the only place where I could be alone though, and not be caught crying by a camera crew or the bonfire-happy seniors.

Truth was, I came up to the roof more often than Quin knew. I went up without him, usually when I was feeling like crap about him. Now I was there, reflecting on this whole new bucket of feelings I fell into.

A shadow formed beside the rose pattern on the ground. Human form, strangely shaped head.

"Shit," I said as I jumped, discovering Neil Prado beside me.

"Why are you all alone here?" he asked, and yet he didn't sound sympathetic.

I had no tissues or handkerchief. I had to use my arm instead, to get the tears. "You shouldn't be here, Neil."

"I just need to tell you something."

Why did he seem so tall? And, unfriendly? He wasn't a stranger, this guy. I talked to him a few times. I rode in his car once. He was nothing but polite and pleasant, if a little uninterested in being super chummy with me. That wasn't a bad thing.

"Hannah."

"What?"

Before I realized it, his hands had gripped my arms. Not painfully, but firmly.

My breath stopped. And then, the oddest thing.

I was about to say that I blacked out, but it wasn't that. Everything went white. The roof, the night sky around me, the campus, the hills in the distance, all as if they had been painted crudely with a thick brush. Only Neil remained as real as a person should be.

"I want to talk to you. I feel like I can. Sol trusts you, and everyone else seems to." His voice was gentle, surprisingly unthreatening. Soothing almost.

I wanted to nod, but I couldn't move.

Looking straight at me, his grip loosened, letting go a finger at a time. There was a rhythm to it, almost graceful, and heavy, like he had been stuck to me with glue. When he stepped back, surveying his handiwork, I thought that I started to see why Sol found him attractive. There was a determined air about him I couldn't help but admire.

Except he was kind of holding me hostage right then. It wasn't that I couldn't speak—I just didn't want to.

Neil started to circle me, moving slowly against the backdrop of crude white.

"You don't really know me, Hannah." The voice was nice to hear, friendlier than he'd ever been. "But the past few years have sucked for me. Sol is the only good thing I've got right now."

That's not my problem. But I didn't want to say it.

"So if she says anything to you about me, all you'll say is that you trust me, and that all I want is for her to be happy with me."

I still wasn't breathing.

"Because taking things from people who won't care, that's not wrong. They wouldn't hand things over too easily if they really needed it, right?"