Implode [edited version]

o2 implosion

[ o2 implosion ]

She could feel him staring.

She had trudged into the final class of the day with a mixture of relief and loathing, knowing that she’d have to repeat the cycle of torture for the rest of the year. A first day was always the foreshadowing of a year, in her opinion. Over the course of the day, she’d been confronted by the same faces of contempt she’d seen the previous year, with little change in the outcome. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail, mostly to cover up the portion of locks that had been snipped sometime before lunch. She’d changed shirts twice, having collided “accidentally” with a colorful fruit drink and a tie-dyed paint brush. It was suffice to say that she assumed most of them had been planned from the moment the schedules had been handed out.

Upon entrance into the room, she was knocked from her reverie by the clearing of a throat. Her gaze shifted slowly over to the source of the sound and her lips pursed when their eyes met. The oculars staring back at her were a molten gold, like the ones she’d seen at lunch. She let her eyes drop after a moment, just barely missing the smirk plastered on the faded pink of his lips. She jerked her attention away, catching the knowing within the expression, cheeks warming up.

A shudder rippled through her as she attempted a glance back at the male boring holes into her back. His hood was drawn up far enough to cast darkness over a majority of his face, but she could still see those eyes. They burned like torches, bright and inviting, but she could just see the hints of something, something she wasn’t sure of.

She averted her gaze in time for the bell to ring, and she was again filled with a sense of relief.  The last bell meant sports and clubs for everyone, aside from her. She’d made the wondrous decision to opt out of interscholastic activities in favor of art. It seemed that the hobby was good for something, though she doubted she’d make it a long term option for herself. Gathering her things, and her shaken psyche, she proceeded to get up to leave.

A hand shoved her back down roughly, shocking her once again.

She turned her visage skyward for a moment, before letting her vision slide over to the being holding her down. The boy stood over her, a mass of intimidation and something familiar. He smelled of burning things, she noted, and fought to keep from crinkling her nose up in mild disgust and annoyance. Jaw clenched, she dropped her attention to the floor, as if something there was more interesting. There was tense moment of silence, the air building with a mixture of fear and nauseating menace.

“Exodus, right,” the boy began, “Could we talk?”

She nodded quickly in response, before realizing she’d managed to possibly start the course of a horrendous interaction.

“Could we — could we, maybe, walk and talk? I need to get to my locker,” she stated, gaze still trained on the ground.

There was a grunt of a response, and she felt the hand leave her shoulder. It took her a moment to realize that he was still waiting for her to move. She continued to hold back the shiver that had threatened to course through her at the sound of his voice. There was an air to his entirety that made her feel both distressed and at ease. The comfort and tantalizing discomfort made her antsy, something that she’d thought that she’d gotten over.

She glanced back as she stood, noticing for the first time that he didn’t have anything with him. No wonder he was able to just get up and leave. Swallowing back a remark on the matter, she led the way out with her male companion trailing behind her. It was slightly unnerving, to have the golden torches of his gaze trained on her in such a manner that felt like holes boring into her skin.

This only made the surprise of them staring intently at her from a different angle all the more surprising, she soon supposed. She found herself surrounded by two muscular arms, the toned manner of the limbs just at the sides of her head.