Muted

Chapter 3

The next few days I spent wide awake, fear eating away at me. I was exhausted. Needless to say, despite my life being saved, I could not get a wink of sleep. Paranoia kept etching itself into the back head, making it hard for me to even attempt to close my eyes. I kept fearing those men would find me—or even worse—they already have.

It didn't help when Monday rolled around. Sleep did not come the night I needed it to the most, and here I was, struggling to keep my eyes open in the most boring class with the biggest wise ass of a teacher.

Mr. Callaghan was making it near to impossible to keep my eyes open. Lucky enough though, I was his favorite student whether he'd admit or not, so he kept his mocking jokes directed at me. Most of them being about how I'm very evidently tired.

I was so excited when we were released from class, it gave me the perfect opportunity to try and wake myself up by continuously moving around. But I must've looked like I did a line of cocaine to everyone around me because some people recorded the weird movements I was doing and Rebel just laughed and said nothing. What a great friend.

I kept slapping myself, doing some weird humming—which according to Rebel, "sounds like gurgling, but without any liquid"—I even slammed into the lockers a few times. It may have looked weird, but in my defense I need to stay awake. Plus it could also be seen as me tormenting myself for the day so my lovely bully—Tommy—didn't have to.

Rebel and I rounded the corner as I carried on with my weird shenanigans we bumped into his siblings and Emily. Sam and Aiden watched me in amusement and Emily bewildered, "What are you doing?"

At Emily's question, Rebel burst into laughter, "She didn't sleep. She told me Mr. Callahan's weekend homework kept her up all weekend."

Okay... so I may or may not have told Rebel the whole story, I just stretched the truth a bit. I mean it's not a full lie, it took me until Sunday to actually finish the I was struggling to finish. I knew it would be the most believable thing consider Rebel knows how hard math is to me.

Plus, I'm very well aware of how much the Anderson brothers hate Dillon. I didn't want them to go hunt the poor kid down because I knew if I dropped his name, they wouldn't even dare let me finish the story. I didn't want them to hurt him for saving my life... but now that I think about it, I didn't want him to hurt them by defending himself.

I saw what he did to those two men twice his size, I didn't want to find out what he could do to my friends whom were his size.

"Aww, poor little baby is tired," Aiden mocked with a flirtatious smirk. I wouldn't assume he was flirting if I didn't know by the way. He made it way too obvious and his sister told me he liked me... that and my mother had a distaste for him out of all my friends because of his flirty ways.

He had no concept boundaries when it came to flirting with me, even in front of my mom.

I looked at Emily who looked visibly upset before shuttering at his weird attempt of flirting then continued to slap myself awake. I knew Emily liked him, she wouldn't admit it. She knew of my personal feelings towards Aiden, none of which were romantic. When she found out about my feelings, she accidentally slipped up then pretended she never said anything since then.

In fact, sometimes I royally hated Aiden as much as my mother did because of his continuous flirting. He also knew I had no feelings towards him because I told him when he attempted to ask me out, but continued flirting with me anyway. I guess he secretly hoped I would change my mind, but deep down I knew he was aware that I had not.