Once Gone

3. Palm Springs

                Punishing myself was unavoidable. I was ashamed of opening up to almost a complete stranger. What frightened me was that I'd made myself vulnerable to him, and I knew he'd take advantage of that. I wanted to believe that his hatred towards me was only a hallucination, but I couldn't escape his eyes in my reoccurring nightmares.

                 There were two other factors that bothered me when I wasn't beating myself up mentally over the incident.

                 For a reason I didn't know, he took a sudden interest in me. I was certain it was out of curiosity, possibly to be close to you friends, but closer to your enemies. There was a small part of me that wondered though why he followed me outside. I didn't notice him in the small clearing, but I also didn't hear the door.

              There was another unexplainable factor that haunted me.

              When I was in my attempt to escape, he grabbed my arm. He let me go instantly when I gasped, and hurried off inside, leaving me frozen on the sidewalk. His hand was blazing, as if he'd stuck it in the fire. Even through my thin jacket, I felt it. I tried to sort through my mind how that was possible, only to push it aside, convincing myself I really was going crazy. He'd probably caught a fever, which explained why he wasn't at work earlier today.

             I couldn't help the disappointment I felt when Bernie told me he called in sick. The entire night before I tossed and turned, the theories forming together to answer the unexplained questions I had for him. I was grateful when Ashley picked me up from work—shopping would keep me distracted—and provided most of the conversation during the hour drive to Palm Springs with Hannah and Brittany also there. I was hoping to get more homework done, but I needed the human interaction.

             She parked in a hurry at a strip mall with her pop music blaring—it was hurting my ears—and was out of the car before I got my seat belt undone.

            The city was dry, tumble weeds traveling with the wind. It looked like a beach—without the water. The mountains we'd traveled down from though were beautiful, off in the distance.

            I didn't recognize many of the stores. When I lived in Chicago, it was normally too crowded for me. Instead, I turned to online shopping to get the essentials.

           "What do you think," Ashley asked for the sixth time as she tried on different cocktail dresses.

            I smiled and tried to sound convincing, "It looks good on you."

           "Aren't you going to going to buy a dress for the party?"

          I frowned. Right, the party.

         "I'll just wear something I already have."

         She made a disgusted face, but quickly smiled to disguise it.

          I watched as she twirled in the body length mirror in a royal blue dress, giggling with the other two girls.

         Adam often brought up the event at lunch, and I picked up on Ashley's crush on him. I started paying attention to how she reacted around him, rather than listen to what they were talking about. Occasionally they would ask me questions, where I would blush and nod, hoping that would answer the question correctly. I was starting to get a hang on high school.

         Okay, maybe that's a far stretch, but I was surviving it instead of slowly cremating myself in the social world. Not that I'd minded it before, but since reading reminded me of him, I was trying to keep my mind preoccupied in other ways that prevented that.