Grey Testament ✓

Thirty-One | Buisness Deal

SOTC: everything I wanted by Billie Ellish

I knew my words will tumble.

As Ms. Zigenhorn's whale lecture rung in my ears, I knew as soon as I opened my mouth my meticulously crafted speech that etched itself into my skull after a sleepless, torturous weekend would crumble. Just like cake pops to be dipped. Except the smashed cake hardened in my lumping esophagus, my rag-twisting chest, and clenched lungs as I avoided eye-to-eye with the cause.

Literally.

As soon as I sat in my first period History class in my assigned seat across from him, I counted down the seconds until the bell rang. Now it was ten seconds.

Ten, nine, eight.

My hand shook just above a handwritten paper saying, Meet me on the roof with bazillions of erase marks covering up forty versions of the sentence.

Seven, six, five.

I tried to ignore Cody's burning gaze at my skull radiating chemicals as woeful as the smallest puppy and as harrowing as Medusa. Ever since I sputtered out an excuse me and ran out of the restaurant after he confessed what threw me into this ring.

Four, three, two.

"Des-pa-cito!" Ms. Zigenhorn ended with a clap.

One.

Ring!

As everyone packed up around me, I finally looked up as Kolzyn Bishop did, too. Then I smacked the paper onto his desk, hastily grabbed my stuff, and booked it.

I joined the masses of passers in Ivy High with terrifying palpitations beating in my eardrums. I'm about to have a heart attack and I'm about to do this.

I'm about to do this now.

With every passing step across the hallways, then every passing step upon swinging the door to a janitor-closet looking space open, and each one to climb the latter to the school roof sent my anxiety with the airplanes in the sky.

Speaking of that, I saw none. Dark clouds, thick ones, covered the upper portion of the globe above me with a color professing a sure fire sign it was going to rain.

I heard a noise of a boot scraping the concrete. Kolzyn had walked over to me, leaving a considerable gap between us now.

This is happening.

"Hi," I blurted.

"Hello there," he said. Kolzyn's face was in its ordinary state when I saw him before I took off, but it had a serenity to it as soon as he locked eyes with me.

The look nearly knocked the wind out of my chest. It was an unexplainable combination with the flavors of friendly and calming that made one warm. Like I was seeing a fragment of him if we met in a lighter circumstance in another universe right now, one maybe if he and I met when we were six years old.

Suddenly it felt as if all nerve snapped in my body. I felt as if I never even prepared for what I was about to say for three straight days obsessively. But I was not the girl who had a crush on her childhood best friend now because I didn't have nine years to fantasize about it.

I couldn't stand nine minutes.

"Kolzyn, there's something you should know," I blurted out.

He didn't skip a beat. "What do you mean I'm adopted?"

I truly wanted to laugh, but my amusement was trapped in the cell of what I needed to get out. Right on this school roof we danced on less than a week ago.

"No, Kolzyn. What I'm about to say is serious." My breath took in air without an exhale like a stab before I steadied my tone again to say, "And I'm going to say it straight. Not with the ease of conversation or through subtle hints I'd pray you'd get every night. I'm just going to admit it so I can ask you the question."

I watched Kolzyn's calm look warped itself into a serious one before my very eyes.

That's when I began.

"I never intended on getting to know you. You were evil and I was good, we made a deal only because our paths crossed, and that was that. I wanted our connection to be however superficial it could become so we could leave and pretend I was still the Elite girl and you were the Anarch punching bag of the school, only I just knew what you hid.

"And that's when I learned Kolzyn Bishop was nineteen. His favorite color was orange for sunsets. How he's as funny as he's abrupt, and he showed me his fascination with clouds by cheering me up with them. I learned his beautifully unique name was after a father's devotion, and he walks through the Pandemonium of the darkest day of his life when he closes his eyes. That he screams in death's face repeatedly so no one endures what he did at nine years old, and he will cease at nothing to change his life around. But he hasn't only taught me about his life, but life itself. He taught me to be grateful for my family, my house, the food on my table, and being able to make jokes about celebrities and the annoying deans at Ivy as I along with others party every Friday.

"What took me too long to realize? That he can become as powerful as King Henry, stronger than life, and end as many as the blackest shades of grey he wants, but when he takes his last breath, he will be the deadliest to my heart."

I almost didn't feel my mouth move when I concluded:

"Kolzyn Bishop, I'm in love with you."

Suddenly, I was free. My soul gasped so chokingly it made me glow in my vision. Everything freed myself from my body as every chain from past, present, and future exploded into gold above me, rich of such ethereal relief I couldn't explain it. It was as unbelievable as Ariel crashing out of the waves of the Mariana Trench. But it was real. I had finally gotten it out in the open.

Then I saw him.

Kolzyn was frozen, lips fidgeting against each other. Pastel eyes resembling a doe about to be struck by a vehicle. That's when he said it so clearly:

"You thought this was more than a business deal?"

It took me a second to register his words. "W-What?"

"Holy shit, Daphne," Kolzyn said in a breath, shaking his head. "You thought this whole thing wasn't purely business?" His gravely voice didn't sound like him.

I was gasping. He was making no sense. "But- But Kolzyn, what you've done for me. You've helped me, you've taken the time to talk to me. We danced on this roof— you asked me to, remember?"

"And you give white-collar bosses cookies for a promotion."

"I-I called you in the hospital and you came for me," I continued. No way this was happening. There was a sleep paralysis demon that chose a new victim.

"I don't like being attacked by women."

My lips quivered. "You shared your story with me," I trembled, barely audible.

"So do Anarch whores."

I shook my head violently, trying to make it stop.

"Because in the end after that quick paid fuck, they never cross paths for the rest of their miserable lives. It'll be just like you and I when I leave Ivy, dump the Barons, and leave this nerve-killing neighborhood for an Elite one where no one knows me for my charade. After our quick exchange you asked for, we will never see each other again."

My throat couldn't produce a sound.

"Daphne Versailles, I never wanted you in my life," he finished. Like he blew out smoke.

Thunder against the sky above me pierced my ears. Kolzyn looked up then pastel eyes met a large brick on the side of me.

"Head inside soon," he said in a whisper.

Then he walked back to the hole in the ground. His body disappeared slowly as it went down the latter until he disappeared.

Not a second after, it came. Rain hailed on Tuscan City in knife-sharp pellets with deafening roars, and white streaks of light slashed into the sky sculpted in cracks.

And I fell to my knees and screamed.