Frigid Flora

seventeen - familiar face

I knew what I should have been feeling. Confusion, panic, sadness.

Instead I felt empty.

To this day, I still felt empty when thinking about him but I reckoned that feeling empty was better than feeling pain. My mother still felt a lot of that.

The memory felt like both years and minutes ago. I could relive it as though it had happened during the morning, or I could actually think back, recalling just how long ago it actually was since the last time I'd seen my father's face in person. I didn't know where time had gone, but it had taken him with it.

Saying that the surprise of my father's sudden disappearance was tame in comparison to the surprise I was currently going through now perhaps wasn't worded correctly, but it was certainly on the same level of astonished fear.

The surprise was spotted strolling around the side of the school building as I parked my car in the lot. I hadn't hitched a ride with Parker due to my morning therapist appointment but I suddenly wished that he was there. I longed for the feel of his hand in mine, his hold on me that would keep me relatively sane and grounded. The shock seized my insides, forcing my stomach to lurch painfully as I watched the school uniform clad figure disappear around the corner.

My subconscious kept yelling things at me. It can't be him, he's gone or it definitely wasn't him played like a broken record in my head to try and set my mind at ease, however, having noticed the boy first-hand, I knew that no amount of comforting words could change my mind on the matter or erase the fact that I'd noticed the familiar face.

Olive skin and inky hair - it was unmistakably Jason Ashford.

It took a good ten minutes to force myself into the school building after that, and upon my entering was immediately met with a dishevelled looking Skylar.

"Shouldn't you be in class by n-"

She was careful to snag my sleeve rather than my arm, dragging me into the door of the girls' bathroom. "Bad news. We have bad news."

I already knew what- or rather who - she was speaking of by her obvious concern. It didn't matter if we were going through a rough patch in our friendship right now, she was still there for me as I was for her. We'd get through whatever this arguing was, I realised, because she was just as worried now as she would have been if we were still completely fine with one another.

"Jason Ashford is back," She continued. "And he's not changed a bit since he was chucked out for supposed drug dealing or whatever the rumours were. Acting like he owns the place, thinks he's the bees knees, and he's with-" She cut herself off but I feared I already knew what she'd been about to spill.

"He's hanging out with Parker and the others again, isn't he?"

She nodded, expression grim.

I slouched against the bathroom wall, chewing the inside of my cheek nervously as I surveyed the pale pink bathroom full of empty stalls as though it'd give forth an answer to all of my problems. It didn't.

"How problematic." I finally mused.

It was only fitting, really, that as soon as I'd managed to take a small step forward with my fear of touching, the very boy who'd named me Frigid Flora in the first place had made an appearance. The boy who'd been the first in school to realise my nonsensical phobia when he'd pinned me against the lockers in some kind of attempt to forcefully make-out with me after a blunt rejection. Then he proceeded to publically humiliate me about my freak out, spreading rumours for the gossiping student body to soak up like sponges.