Unexpected • Erick Brian Colón

Chapter 17

Claire's POV

Erick stands in the opening. He takes a few large strides to meet me.

"Erick, no." I turn to face the waterfall.

"Claire, hear me out. It wasn't-" he begins.

"I don't give a single shit about what you have to say. You're feeding me lies." I spit back, tears threatening to spill again.

"You don't understand. Why won't you let me talk?" His pleading eyes are glossy.

"Just stop. I need to be alone, respect that." I say, my voice monotonous.

He doesn't move, I don't either. But now is not the time to be stubborn, I don't need to be alone as much as I need to be away from him, so I just walk out, avoiding looking at him entirely.

I begin walking, gradually faster, then faster until I'm jogging, then sprinting.

I glance behind me, to see if Erick is following. To my surprise, he isn't. Part of me was wishing he'd run after me, fight more for me, but the bigger part of me knows it's better this way.

Who knew he'd get over this so quickly..

My feet shuffle as quickly as they can on the pavement, bringing me closer to school. My tears dry with the wind but new ones quickly replace them.

I finally arrive and rush to my math class. I don't want to get a late pass so I just sneak into class while stealing a glance at the clock to see how much I've missed. 23 minutes.

I sniff and wipe my eyes gently, while sinking into my seat. Everyone is listening attentively to Miss Turner as she goes on with the lesson. I feel numerous pairs of eyes burn through the layers of protection I've put on to shield myself from this cruel world.

My eyes feel puffy, and dry despite the amount of water that has come out. I look and feel like a mess.

Miss Turner stops briefly as she catches a glimpse of my tear stained face and quickly asks the students to try the problem on their own.

My head on my desk, I hear the click of her heels grow louder as she comes closer to me.

"Don't worry about the tardy pass, just take it easy and review the notes, okay?" she whispers so that only I can hear, her voice displaying concern.

"Thank you." I manage to mumble out two words, and that's it.

I pull out my notes, try to catch up to the rest of my class, trying out the problems up on the board.

My hair cascades over my face, blocking me from everything and everyone and I breath in deeply a few times to remind myself I will be fine.

I pick up my pencil and begin writing down numbers in equations.

Then I feel a pair of eyes on me. I don't want to turn to my left to look at the face so I try to keep my attention on the paper. The eyes don't leave and I feel my skin heat up and an uneasy feeling comes over me, one too many times today.

I finally cave and try to subtly scope out the not so familiar, worried brown gaze glued to me.

Our eyes lock briefly and he quickly breaks he contact, eyes scanning his scribbled piece of paper.

The bell rings and this time I wait until everyone else is out of the way before I try to get through the large mass of people in the halls.

I search for Zabdiel because I just want to go home. I need to let him know at least so I can walk, if he can't drive me. My eyes dart through the crowd, I try to spot my brother and I realize it's useless.

I cuss to myself as I shove myself to my locker. My head begins to pound and everyone around me is yelling. Locker doors slamming and books being dropped. People gossiping and loud sighs. I'm becoming more and more conscious of the noises surrounding me and my head pounds louder, as if to compete with the other growing sounds.

I feel my head getting lighter and the memories of today flood back into my brain.

I fall into an involuntary sleep, my mind tangled.

And now all I see is black.

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A/n ELLO LOVES

Guess who's back, back again😎

I've been kinda lazy and busy lately, with midterms, the student council elections are soon too and my big volleyball tournament is in just a little over a week:')

But here's a little update, sorry if it sucked. I wrote like 3 different versions and I'm not gonna lie I disliked all of them but I didn't want to wait longer to update:c