River Dance ✓

seven | his voice

seven | his voice

          School had started back up, and then passed right before Carla's eyes as she spent her days ripping up and folding notebook paper, lopsided hearts bent in the creases of each fold and lick of the paper as she then stuffed it into his locker.

          It was her last day of being a junior and she wasn't sure she'd finish in time, but she didn't think about it, wrist aching as she scribbled endlessly, the last of notes left in her heart. Blue paint of an unknown locker dug into her back as she leant up against it, knees drawn to her chest, notebook in lap as some sort of writing press as she wrote slowly, as to make sure she crossed her T's and dotted her I's that she seemed to forget when writing in her sloppy cursive drawl, on a loose sheet, colored red. It had taken a lot of bribing from the art teacher who absolutely detested her to cough up the colorful paper, but mostly a lot of listening as the old art teacher scowled at her, talking about how dark and subjective her art had been the whole year compared to the assignments given. Blackened hearts in naked bodies on the deck of a ship in the middle of a red ocean. Carla politely rolled her eyes behind her back.

          She finished the note/ letter with a final period, sighing in relief just as the bell signaling the end of lunch rang. She had to make it to her next class, the teacher that taught it fickle about tardiness. She jumped up from her spot on the floor, shoved the note in the locker of the one above the one she had been leaning on and then dashed to her class, tiptoeing around the people that shuffled by like their life wasn't coming to an end. But then again it was basically Summer, so maybe for them it was just beginning.

          After a lecture of staying quiet during the movie being played seeing as they wouldn't be doing work on the last day of school, Carla debated whether or not to walk past his locker just one more time before some kid the next year took it over, claiming what didn't belong to him. She stiffened her backside and made the journey across the school to the seven hundred building where it was located, but when she got there it turned to jelly by the sight before her.

          Some kid, who had no right mind you, was spinning the lock on his locker, reading what seemed to be the combination code for it on a slip of paper, the school secretary right behind him, and before she could wish that the locker appeared empty, a stream of white paper littered from the locker, spilling out on the floor before the boy's feet.

          "Don't," she croaked, her voice as light as air as the boy bent to pick up the one piece of paper that stood out from the rest. The red one she spent a whole hour slaving over though it still didn't seem like enough time. He looked at her, the only person left in the hallway besides the school administrator along with himself, eyes glazed over in tears, book bag falling from her shoulder.

          "What is it all?" he dared to ask, knees still bent halfway in reaching to pick up the paper and "don't."

          "My heart," she breathed, and because the boy didn't know what else to do he picked up the red piece of paper, the thickness of it pinched between his thumb and forefinger, unsure whether to read it despite how much it would seem to crush the strange girl, or give it back to her. But neither seemed right.

          "I guess it's not yours anymore if it's locked up in my locker," he pointed out.

          "Not your locker," she bit out, voice wavering, nerves tingling.

          "But it is now. I have my papers and everything stating so. I'll be coming here next year," he kind of turned to her.

          "But it's his for right now. This is his locker for one more day. Just because he wasn't able to attend this year doesn't mean he doesn't have the right to it. It's his locker," she seethed.

          "And his heart I'm guessing?" which didn't help her calm down any, the boy not knowing the depths of which he spoke his words.

          "For one more day at least," her hands shook, eyes flickering between the red paper and the boy holding it.

          And as he asked why just one more day she could imagine that it was his voice, and not the strangers who it belonged to, asking her the very same question after her spill in the river.

          She had promised to look after his mother, not to give him her heart though that's exactly what she had done. She loved a boy who she didn't date, who wasn't expected to save her, but who was sick. And she realized that what she had told him all those days ago had been wrong. And she realized that he already knew that. Sick people didn't deserve love. They deserved another chance because love couldn't save them. She had told him as much, that she couldn't save him, but had she been so foolish to believe?

          "You don't want to know why," she breathed against the words, so familiar in her mouth, bittersweet. "You're not asking for my excuse. You're asking for when, where and how," she recited.

          The boy stared at her for a second, then turned to the school administrator who was looking at all the paper on the floor.

          "We'll clean this up," the boy told her, meaning Carla and himself. "And I'm pretty sure she wouldn't mind giving me the rest of that tour you were telling me about," he jerked his finger at Carla who nodded in agreement. The school secretary stared at the paper for a minute more, than nodded her head at the two kids and with that, turned in her heels and walked back in the direction they had come from. The office. The boy turned away from the retreating secretary, tipping his head at Carla, and then bending over to pick up the broken pieces of her heart.

| THE END