Tell Me What You Hate About Me

22: Weakest Link

"You haven't. If anything, I'm the one who screwed everything up." Jack crossed his arms. "He got sketched out because I left that awful Trailfest gig for you and the talisman, and until I lied and told him that we were dating, he didn't understand why anyone would do that."

He told me that he lied about that because he didn't think I would find out, but maybe that wasn't the full truth.

Jack lied to me? Is this what that felt like?

I prided myself on not being the crying type unless it was over something I really wanted, but something needled and stung my eyes.

Disgusting.

"Just tell him you're waiting for me to come around. Tell him I got flirty one time when I was drunk," I said. "I don't want anything to happen to the band because of me. I don't need any more reasons to feel like a complete failure."

As soon as the words left my mouth, my heart sank into my stomach. But what could Jack do about it besides say mood and move on?

"Lindsay," Jack said.

"It's a joke I have with Sierra. Relax. She kept saying that we can be failure buddies together." Before I could puke anything else out, I shut the door behind me. "If you'll excuse me, I have to go see Dr. Reed now."

"You're not a failure, and you're not fooling me. You can't give any excuse that I haven't heard before."

"Because you know all about people with rocks for hearts with that stupid geology major, right?" I said. "I have to go."

Although he didn't say anything else as I headed past Debbie and out the door, I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't let it go. How stupid was I? That was the exact satisfaction I couldn't give him.

It was the talisman again. I had built a friendship with Jack and an acquaintanceship with Sierra based on nothing but the good parts of the present, and that system did not need to change. But I couldn't help myself anymore. I kept the meeting at Dr. Reed's place instead of Trailfest as a secret for quite some time, but other than that, what did I have?

I had a manipulative little bitch of a bad luck charm. That was it.

I opened up the door to the anthropology building to find Dr. Reed. It wasn't like she could fix me, but didn't ever want to talk about secret feelings. She had plenty of her own.

I peeked into her office. Someone was already in there, but I didn't care.

"Where's the plant?" I said and pointed to where it used to be behind her desk.

Dominic turned around in his seat and stared at me without saying anything.

"Oh, it's you," I said.

Dominic's expression didn't change. Why did I expect it to?

"What are you doing here?" I asked. It was definitely implied in my original statement, but Dominic liked to fill in the blanks differently than I did, apparently. He seemed to think that I was the one who was overreacting about the whole first day of ASL thing.

"I heard a scream coming from in here," he said.

I turned to Dr. Reed. "What? What happened?"

"Oh, wouldn't you like to know? I don't know what kind of shit you were trying to pull with that talisman, but while I was entering grades online, I felt something wrap around my neck. I turned around, and one of the fronds on the plant had grown so long and somehow had a mind of its own. Don't know how I managed to piss a plant off that badly," she said.

"Why do you think I did it?" I asked. I did do it, of course, but it wasn't my fault. I was just trying to help the plant not die. It looked a little rough the last time I saw it.

"That generally doesn't happen in nature. That's why," Dr. Reed said like it was obvious.

It was a little obvious.

I turned back to Dominic. "But that doesn't explain why you were here in the first place. It's not like you have any classes in the anthropology building."

"I thought you were here," Dominic said.

Had the feeling ever been wrong before? I hesitated. Did I even want to know?

Definitely not, but with the discovery Sierra and I made the night before, I had to ask.

"Has that ever happened? I thought you were somehow connected to the talisman which gave away my location," I said.

He shrugged. "I have no idea what happened this time. It's never sent me to the wrong place before."

Why didn't that make me happy? It was possible that Sierra and I had dug up the cure to my situation with Dominic, and I couldn't even force a smile. That was all I was good for.

Was I really that upset about the whole failure thing? Was there something worth believing?

Dr. Reed cleared her throat. "Well, I'm going to make sure that damn plant didn't leave a mark. I'll be right back."

I could have told her that it did, but she picked up her thermos and headed to the bathroom.

As soon as she left, Dominic let out a chuckle. "She was so scared of that plant. It was kind of funny."

"All I was trying to do was make sure it didn die, but I can't even do that." I sighed. "I guess it got sick of her smoking up its breathing air."

"I can empathize with that," Dominic said. "Look, I never meant to tell you all of that shit that the other night, so I'd appreciate it if you just forgot it all."

"It's okay. You didn't hurt my feelings or anything," I said.

"I'm not concerned about that. It's just that now—" he paused for a moment— "now, you're going to think that I'm something I'm not."

"A jerk?"

"Weak, Lindsay."

I hesitated. "I don't think that. Trust me, I think you're a lot of things, but a little asthma and deafness isn't going to make me think you're weak."

I had plenty of other adjectives to describe him: stuck-up, mean, rude, and arrogant. But weak wasn't ever one that crossed my mind unless it was emotional. He was a little sensitive and couldn't take any sort of teasing that he loved to dish out, but that was different than what he had in mind, probably. After all, he was the one who held a grudge for one minor comment that I didn't even mean that much.

"I'm serious, though. Just forget it ever happened," Dominic said to pull me away from my thoughts.

That wasn't possible, of course, so what was the point in telling me anything at all? He told me what he hated about me, and I couldn't take it back now that I knew the whole story. He couldn't take back the call-out. It was up to me whether I wanted to do something with it or not.

"Dominic, you know that's not how this works," I said.

The bigger of a deal he made this, the less likely it was that I was going to try to be nicer to him.

Maybe the best course of action was to carry the possible tracker-blocker with me everywhere I went until I died.

I frowned.

The idea of it still didn't make me smile.

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Hello! Thank you so much for reading!

So for today's question, what kind of reality TV show would you be on?

I would be great at Big Brother, I think. I would suck at the competitions for sure, but my observation skills that I've developed for writing would definitely help me out there. I would either win or get voted off first for being too annoying. There's no in between.