Its A Deal!

Sympathy for the Devil

Chris

Being skinned alive, being chopped to million pieces when you can still feel it, being conscious but not being able to feel anything, suffocating in a confined place and not being able to do anything about it.......

Mondays to me, bought more pain than all of this, and as if this wasn't bad enough, golden boy was to come home tonight.

Oh you dont know golden boy?
Golden boy or as my dad puts it, the star child of the family, is non other than my step brother.
He's Haley's son, the woman my dad married two years ago after seeing her for a year before that.

Dont get me wrong, Haley is an amazing and sweet woman and she's been more of a mom to me than my real one. But her son.....
I really cannot stand him. No, he hasn't ever done anything to me to get this kind of hatred, if anything he's infuriatingly nice, which just makes me hate him more.

I guess its not really his fault that I lost my dad too when he came along.

“Christian? Are you listening to me?”
I look up from my cereal bowl to face my dad.

He is in his mid forties with short black hair and cold grey eyes.(Thank god I got my mom's).
His face had this stern kind of look on it because of his square jaws that complimented his wrinkled forehead.
The only time I ever saw those cold eyes unfreeze and look even a little warm was when golden boy was here.

I felt a pang somewhere in my chest at this thought, but I ignored it.

“Sorry, what?” I asked, as I studied the ever disappointed look I was now used to on his face.

“ I asked weather you rechecked your brother's admission and collected his schedule from the admin office yet?”

“ I'm not his freaking servent” I say barely above a whisper.

“ What did you say?” My dad asks raising an eyebrow, as if daring me to repeat. I would, but I just dont have the energy for this right now.I need to get to class, or at least away from here.

I sigh. “ Yea, his admission is done, but he is gonna have to go collect his schedule on his own”
I get up and grab my bag, leaving the untouched bowl of cereal, right where I had found it.

“ I'm gonna go, I have a class to get to” I say rushing out the door.

“ Wait” he says just as I'm about to leave,and I feel a little flicker of hope in my chest, of course he wouldn't let me leave without having something first, he doesn't let anyone do that.

“ Yea?” I say turning around to face him.

“ Don't forget to talk to your coach about your brother wanting to join the football team, after all he is gonna be the reason for all their victory's from here on” With that he goes back to reading the paper he had his nose burried in since morning.

The flicker of hope in my chest?
It died a horrible and final death.

                     *************
Summer

“ And so she kept fighting with herself, she struggled each day, battaling herself, battaling her contradictory thoughts, battaling her inner demons, it wasn't easy, but no one said it would be.And aren't the right things, always the hardest to do? So what if it almost destroyed everything she ever believed in, so what if it destroyed the most important things in her life, so what if it destroyed her relations,choices faith.... So what if it almost destroyed her?”

The claps and cheers were what brought me to the present as I stood in front of the class.

“ Wow, that was amazing Ms.Evans, I'm really impressed.”Mr.Ezra said patting me on the back.

I gave him a small smile before heading back to my seat.

I dont know when exactly I had stop talking about the character I was assigned and started talking from the heart instead. But apparently it worked so no one was complaining.

Eversince Noah's call, which I had immediately cut, all I could think of was why he was so desperate to talk to me? Why suddenly now? Why after two whole years?
What could he possibly want to say?
Because he wont stop calling and leaving messages, that I delete without hearing.

I mean I want to know why he is suddenly so eager to talk and what it is that he wants to talk so badly about, but I also feel so much pain, hatred, confusion and whole lot of other feelings that only make me want to keep cutting the calls and deleting the messages.

Its like my curiosity is on one side battling with my other feelings as opponents.

I put my head in my hands trying to block Mr.Ezra voice out, trying to block the noise of pencils scribbling against fresh notebook pages out, trying to block the constant clicking of a pen some annoying kid wouldn't stop making...just trying to block everyone and everything out.

And for once, it was that easy.
“But it isn't usually” a voice at the back of my mind says. I try shutting it out, but to no avail.

“Why do you think that is?” It continues.

I press the heals of my palms to the back of my closed eyes “ Shut up..shut up.....shut up ” I keep repeating softly.

...and that's when it hits me.

Of course, I'm usually not able to block out everything because one annoying voice keeps pulling me back and keeping my mind planted firmly in the present.

One voice that belongs to Christian Mckibben.

I look to my side, expecting to see an empty seat, but instead I see the most weird thing ever.

Christian Mckibben looks.....since I have no way else to put this... miserable.

I mean the (no matter how many times I deny it) hot, popular, famous, witty, jerkface football player actually looked...like I felt......

MISERABLE!

No wonder I didn't feel his presence at all.

I don't really know what it could possibly be, that put him in such a state..or why.

But knowing about how much it sucks to feel what, by the look of his face I could tell, he and I both were feeling, I felt something I never thought I could for Chris......sympathy.

Maybe its because of this new found emotion I feel for him or maybe its just because I think this might just help us both, either way I don't think twice before I lean towards Chris's seat to my side when Mr.Ezra's wasn't paying attention and softly whisper in his ear, startling him from my sudden proximity.

“Wanna get out of here and away from all the bullshit?”

I don't know why I said those words exactly, I guess it was so he could understand.... that I understand.

Chris looks at me for a second, confusion written all over his tired yet good looking face before some emotion I can't name replaces the confusion in his eyes and he speaks.

“ I thought you'd never ask”.