Hazel wished people would stop trying to save her.
It would be easier just to let her die one of these times.
She fingered get necklace the cold chain wrapped around her neck. How could she have just left that guy out there? She couldn't think straight. She couldn't focus. He stood up for her. Even no one else would and no one else cared.
Was he okay? Did he get hurt?
Was he even alive?
"Miss. Levesque!"
Hazel shot to attention dropping her necklace against her chest with a thud and scattering her papers across her desk accidentally.
The kids around her snickered. The teacher, an old lady who thought leather jackets were in style, silenced them with a glare.
"Thank you for joining us, Hazel." She said with a biting tone, "Now what's the answer to question 28?"
Hazel looked down, at her lap.
The kids snickered again. The whispers started. They always did. The foul words that tugged and picked at her like a sharp wind that never. Went. AWAY.
The teacher sighed and looked away, picking some other kid to torment. The girls behind her whispered and laughed quietly. Hazel's fingers curled together in her lap. She stared straight.
Don't think about it.
"Psst!"
Don't look at them. Don't listen...Don't....
"Pssst, Hazel!"
Don't look. Hazel come on, Don't do it...
"Hazel."
"What." Hazel glanced at the girl finally. She had red hair, and a sky look in her grey eyes. Her complexion was a made up facade of make up, trying to cover up a nasty snarl.
Nancy Bobfit grinned, though there was nothing pleasant about her in general, "I always heard the accident left you brain damaged. Now I know it's true."
The bell rang through the school, covering the laughter in a coating of escape from Mathematic Hell.
Pain almost immediately speared through her chest. Her breath hitched not noticeable unless you were listening for it. Hazel stared at the nothingness ahead of her.
"But, Nancy," another girl shouted, "It wasn't in her head! The bullet went through her heart, remember?!"
"Doesn't matter." Nancy laughed maliciously, "She's still a waste of air."
Hazel swallowed hard. Pain pricked behind her eyes. The anger that bubbled in her swelled until she thought she might burst.
Her book slammed to the ground. The noise echoed like a gunshot. So much like a gunshot.
Hazel! Duck!
It was just one night! How was I suppose to know?!
No! Don't leave Me!
Hazel!
Hazel swallowed, choking on her own spit. She took slow deep breathes, her entire body shaking. She knelt on the ground picking up her books, her papers were scattered and she folded them, crumpled them, and shove them into her bag.
The halls were filled with people talking, but all she heard was Nancy Bobfit's laughter. She felt sick. She felt alone. And cold.
She wished she take back that day. She could change his mind, a different place, any place. Tell her mom she was sorry. It was crazy. She was going crazy.
Hell, she already was crazy.
And everyone else knew it too.
"Hi."
Hazel looked around, and almost jumped scared out of her mind.
He was there. That guy. He was alive and okay. He had buzz cut hair, and Chinese features, with a cute babyish frame. Hazel felt her heart flutter. His cheeks her red, almost blushing, but she knew that wasn't possible. She was the crazy, friendless, stupid girl. Boys don't blush around insane people.
"You-you're you!" She blurted.
The guy smiled a little. "Yeah." He walked awkwardly beside her.
"I'm sorry." Hazel spouted. "You- are you okay?" She looked him over. He didn't appear badly hurt, his chin was bruised and Hazel thought his nose looked crooked, broken maybe.
He looked surprised, "Yeah fine. Actually. You?"
Hazel swallowed, and nodded. "Yes." She stopped next to her next class. She took a deep breath. "I-I-"
He stopped with her. "Oh-I-uh..."
Hazel noticed people stopping to look at them. Her insides felt like a milkshake, blended, and twisted. One girl, a popular in heels and a crop top, with choppy hair and exotic features looked over and stopped her conversation.
"I'm Frank, I guess." He said, he held out his hand for her to shake.
She stared at it like it was a foreign object.
"Hazel." She whispered. "And I-I- thanks." He raised an eyebrow when she wouldn't meet his eyes. "Thanks for saving me."
He was about to responded, when it happened. It was a laugh. One that swept through the corridors contagiously. Ugly and cruel.
Frank frowned and looked around like a little kid who was left out of an adult joke.
Hazel's face was as red as roses.
"You saved her?" Someone shouted, incredulously.
"He helped her? That little bitch?"
"Idiot!"
"She should be dead!"
Frank was completely confused. Hazel felt each insult like a punch to her gut. Her breathing got harder. The crowd thickened, the laughter filling up the school like a chant.
She couldn't stop it. She couldn't even try. The attacks were felt deep tearing apart her soul with each accusation.
They were right.
She should be dead.
She should be dead.
Not the woman who pushed her out of the way of the bullet.
She should be dead.
"Hazel." Frank seemed so far away. It was like she was dangling off the side of a chasm. An abyss that led to nowhere, and he was reaching towards her. So far away.
"Hazel!"
She sunk to the floor. Her bag falling off her shoulder like it weighed twenty tons instead of for pounds. They kept laughing. And joking, throwing insults.
Why? Why were they doing this to her?
What did she do to deserve this?
"Hazel! Oh my Gods! Someone get a teacher!"
No one listened to Frank. He was innocent. No one ran for a teacher. No one cared. No teacher barged out.
This was high school. But it could've been played as Tartatrus.
"Hazel, look at me!"
Frank was right next to her. He held her hand. It was warm. She didn't remember him picking up her hand.
"Breathe." Frank commanded. "Breathe."
The room felt like was spinning. No one seemed to give them a second thought. They didn't care. Someone knelt on her other side. Hazel didn't recognize her. She shouted something to the crowd. But the laughter was so loud she couldn't hear anything else.
Frank was looking at the girl dumbfounded. Hazel couldn't Think.
She pushed them both away. She shoved them away. Frank fell through the classroom doorway knocking over a desk on top of him. The blond haired girl landed in another guys arms, some one with bond hair and a scar down his face.
Hazel ran. She pushed people out of the way, and she didn't look back. She didn't want to look back. She'd have to see the Frank's face, his sad eyes, and she'd fall apart all over again.
She skidded around the corner her head pounded. Even though she was far away from the crowd, her classes, she could still hear the laughter.
Hazel swung down the schools back stairway, and she kept running through the halls. Eventually she might've heard the bells ring for class. But she found the door she was looking for. The janitors closet. It was unlocked, empty except for a couple old brooms, and rolls of paper towels. She crawled inside and cussed the door behind her. And reached behind the dusty brooms.
It was dark. Hazel found the latch without a problem. The tiled floor lifted up. Hazel could hear the yelling of someone nearby looking for her. Frank's voice. The guy she'd known for mere seconds.
The only one who seemed to care for her right now.
She slid underneath the tiles to the hidden room below. She replaced them overhead.
The room was cement, and metal, like a bomb shelter. It wasn't very big, it could probably fit seven people, if that.
Hazel found it by accident, when a girl named Drew shoved her into the janitors closet and locked the door with a combination lock from the gym locker rooms.
She was a freak.
They told she was.
Hazel huddled by herself, in the darkness. She didn't call out. She didn't ask for help. Her life was a battlefield. One side was her sanity, her heart, her soul, the other was her family and friends and classmates armed machine guns.
Tears slid down her face. They splattered on her clothes, they talked down her cheeks, and they hit the floor with a dull far away thud.
And Frank, it seemed, in this war, was just another casualty.
She should have stayed home that night.
She knew it.
She should've run when she had the chance.
She knew it.
She should've died.
And she knew that too.
But there was one thing no one knew about Hazel Levesque. One thing everyone gossiped about. One thing people kept bringing back, even though the mall incident happened over a year ago. One thing that tore at her every single second.
Hazel pulled back her sleeve to count the slash marks. The red, angry hashes in her skin. They went all the way up her arms on her thighs. None of them healed completely. She reopened them every single day. It's a wonder she hadn't already bled out.
Everyone kept making fun of her, but they didn't know that Hazel Levesque was already dead.
If they did, maybe someone would've shown up to her funeral.
~~~
I can play that game too jungle321jungle and Always_Love_Books_. You guys wanna blame me for hurting characters that I may or may not have done? Well here you go!
~Greenninjagal