Love Lies A' Bleeding

Chapter 12: Bad. Worse. Worst.

“The one with my hair all over the place? Yeah, I know. That’s Photoshopped. Actually, now I remember I still don’t have the names of those from the graphics team. I’m really curious how they can do that. Make my hair look bad, I mean.” I was really talking fast that I wasn’t sure if Noah had understood a word I said.

Noah stared at me in confusion. Then, he said, “You and Henry.” He said it with the same tone he was saying my name.

But now it weren’t just the hairs at the back of my neck, but also the hairs on my arms, that stood. My heart was banging loudly in my chest. Not just with Noah’s proximity and the way I could almost taste his breath, but because of what I knew was about to happen. I was silently praying to God he wouldn’t notice any of my discomfort.

“You’re nervous,” he said.

But he did.

“I—I—‘m not.” If he had any doubts that I was nervous, now he heard me speak, he must be absolutely sure that I really was. Nervous, I mean.

His eyes bore into me. Then, he sighed. “Let’s just talk about this later after school.”

Then, poof! He was gone. Not the way ghosts vanished and appeared. But without warning the warmth that was emanating from him quickly disappeared, replaced by a chill that I didn’t know where could possibly came from. My back was against the wall of the gym, near the comfort rooms. The gym was indoors. And there was no way the reason was the AC because I was so sure the chill was coming within me.

I devastatingly watched his back as he walked away from me. I couldn’t blame him though. To learn that your uncle and your would-be-girlfriend had a past relationship was too much to handle, even for a guy like him who seemed to have everything.

Third, some students I knew, who were unluckily labeled outcasts—whose label was nothing compared to the stuffs they were going through or the stuffs they chose to go through—went to me at lunchtime to ask if what the paper said was true. At first I couldn’t understand what they were all saying because if it was about my hair all over my face, again, it was quite old news.

I didn’t know. I wasn’t good at discerning clues or seeing signs. I wasn’t born with a detective instinct, period. Mang Ben gave me another egg sandwich for lunch. For crying out loud, I wanted chicken, not egg. Was that so hard to understand? Mang Ben wasn’t deaf, right? Luna East wouldn’t hire deaf cafeteria staffs. No way. I just knew they wouldn’t.

And only when they showed me the loose leaf with my past relationship with Henry written in blank ink did I fully understand. Guess Trisha Mendoza had somehow jinxed her articles to particularly land on my lap the exact moment I was picking on my sandwich. Talk about right timing.

When I said I should have seen it coming, I really should have. But, again, I ignored the sign. So sue me now. Really. So there, I sat contemplating what they were saying while picking on my sandwich.

Fourth, Martin Santiago thought we were friends already because I blacked out at the back of his Camaro. He was confidently asking me how I was, and if not for Molly who was staring at me, I wouldn’t have answered at all.

And fifth, Chelsea Shaia was never anything more than the most stupid person I’ve ever met in my life. She kept denying even though the more she denied the more she was making me believe it really was her who had been the reason for my breakup with Henry. I couldn’t tell how much this annoyed me more than anything else that was troubling me.

Dismissal quickly arrived. I had been wishing to have more time with myself, but it didn’t work that way. Not that anything really worked for me. So far my life had been nothing but grueling to the point of unmistakable familiarity. I was getting used to it, I guess.