not okay {ziam}

twelve

{twelve}

not her

-

hey mandy, it's liam. just wondering how you are?

i send it, after spending far too many hours tossing around in my bed on a mundane saturday night. overcome with uncontrollable urges of wanting and desperately needing to know where she is. wondering if i could just bite my cheek and succumb to my habitual behavior, which is to hunt for her. discover her hanging around town like a pretty little phantom, as if i had been set back in time, never once recovering that salvable part of myself to stop my compulsivity. the itch to have her in my grasp and in my control — i would always have that loud, twisted voice in the back of my mind.

would she be shopping with all of her friends, all of them inevitably curling over with laughter at my pathetic text-message? or had she made up with patrick by rooting each other to death for all of their lost time? or maybe she's partying her brains out and just having so much fun, fed by nothing but hedonism and her irresistible youth. but somehow i know, horribly deep down, that none of that is true. sure, in the time i had spent stalking her every move, i thought i had her figured out as some shallow blonde with an absorbed self interest.

but, almost unnervingly, i've learned that she is everything and more. she's a kind, gentle, compassionate human being that i only have the luxury of knowing — and i'm basically the human equivalent of dog shit.

she never replies and i spend the hours i should be sleeping fretting over what i must've done wrong. if i had come on too strong, too late, too quick. if the gashes and bruises littered across my face scared her off. if she figured out what i am. if i ruined it. yet, as i gape through my window at the incoming dawn of a new sunday, i feel the tuffs of hair at the nape of neck raise with unease.

at an unearthly hour where the light outside is merely a dull grey, the headlights of a vehicle flash a blinding glare through the crooks of my room and my instinct is to hide my paralyzed body under the blankets. there's an explosive slam of a car door which only causes me to suddenly twitch awake with my eyes the size of saucers. i had felt as though i had experienced a night terror in my sleep, the scent of my strong premonition crushing my lungs in a monstrous grasp. only having a sliver of remembrance of the terrible dream, as every beating second that pounds through me, the memory of it slips past my fingers.

but unmistakably, something had felt profoundly wrong.

-

i wondered if i was still panicking in my unconsciousness when i entered the classroom to find fellow faces white with fear. inaudible voices murmuring softly in connate panic, scattered eyes flickering across the room in search for something unidentified. in the back of my english class, i observe my peers hanging on the edge of their seat and gaping at the door for the teacher to finally arrive. idiotically, i had considered if everyone had forgotten to do their homework and that's what caused such a disturbance.

however, i knew that i had only been kidding myself when miss peters entered her unusually quiet classroom ten minutes late.

her head is cast down and her hands are fidgeting across her skirt, shoulders arched over with distress. i chew on my finger nail as i witness my typically joyful teacher wipe down the whiteboard, her hands trembling with her distracted movement. as if she is begging for the will power to greet us for the day planned. as the whispers build in unsteady rhythms, eventually she leans across the front of her desk and gapes at us with her lips parted speechlessly. her eyes are undoubtedly wet with tears, fluttering across the wrinkles surrounding her friendly features. my heart sinks at the sight, feeling my body flinch with every pin drop and purse of her mouth around futile words.