Chapter Six.
Sometimes you have to endure a great darkness to be able to appreciate the light.
And in this case, I've never felt more gratitude to my darkness than right now.
Last night after Blaze found me in the graveyard, I kind of blacked out, and I figure that she took me to –
Wait, where am I?
I find myself lying on an old, squidgy sofa, a thick blanket wrapped around me and my head propped up by a soft pillow.
The room I'm in has a dark blue wallpaper, pealing at the edges and the room is bare apart from the sofa I'm on and a wooden cabinet in the corner. The door is closed.
Am I in Blaze's house?
I leap up from the warmth of the couch and spring to the floor, forgetting about my many bruises and injuries for a second. I yelp in pain and double over, holding my stomach.
I look around and shuffle over awkwardly to the window on the front wall, peering behind the blinds. Outside I see a vaguely familiar street and the sun is just coming up over the horizon.
I can't have been asleep for long then.
Suddenly I hear the sound of a key turning in a door and a door knob rattling around, and I jump in panic, backing away from the door until I'm pressed up in the far corner.
I hear someone coming into the apartment, the sound of the front door closing, then – the deep sigh of a male voice.
"HEY RAVEN! YOU HERE?"
Oh my god. Who the hell is Raven? Where is Blaze? Who is that?
I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to-
The door across the room swings open and-
It's a boy.
A boy, probably a couple of years older than me, around 6 feet tall, with murky blonde hair, and I can just see the muscles underneath his t-shirt, stands in the doorway. His piercing, bright blue eyes are glaring right at me.
I gulp, looking around for a place to hide, somewhere to escape but...
Oh god I'm going to die.
He steps forward, arms crossed across his chest and looks me up and down with a guarded expression.
He wears worn, frayed jeans, and look unkempt just like Blaze's jeans. I wonder if he has a leather jacket too.
"Who the fuck are you?" he says, in a deep voice.
I wring my fingers together and plaster myself to the wall, tucking a stray piece of hair behind my ear. "I-I... I'm no one. No one at all,"
His eyebrows knit together and I notice a piercing on his right brow. I gulp again.
"Okay... No one... What the hell are you doing in my house?" he says sternly.
I open my mouth to answer, (probably with some more useless babbling) when I hear the sound of someone stomping down the stairs in a hurry and then Blaze appears in the room, wearing dark grey sweatpants and a long sleeved black t-shirt, which clings to her curves. Her long, usually unruly hair is tied in a bun at the top of her head. She stands in front of the boy, who's now facing her.
"Flynn!" she exclaims, "Don't be so mean," she reaches forward and uncrosses his arms, and immediately the boy named Flynn drops his angry expression and a small smile appears on his face.
"Rave-" he starts, then halts, panicked, turning to look at me quickly. "Rave! Yes rave! I went to a rave last night, that's why I'm so... angsty..." he trails off, looking at the floor in shame.
Blaze rolls her eyes and smirks in amusement. "Avery, you div, this is Angelo Greene, he goes to my school," she says, gesturing to me. "Angel, this is Flynn Avery, my idiotic best friend,"
I smile a little, while Flynn chuckles, nudging Blaze affectionately in the ribs. "Aw, thanks little peach, I'm glad you feel that way. The feeling's mutual," he smirks.
Blaze grins, and punches Flynn's upper arm, before turning my way, sending me a half-hearted smile.
"You okay? Sorry I didn't wake you up earlier, but I wasn't planning on going to school today, due to lack of sleep..." she trails off, turning to look at Flynn. He looks down sheepishly.
"I'm sorry!" he exclaims, and leans up against the wall, in a posture that reminds me a lot of Blaze's. "Technically, I did come home before the sun completely rose. How did you get in anyway? What happened after you called me last night?" he asks.
Blaze looks towards me, as if she's asking for permission to tell him. I nod stiffly and shove my hands into my pockets.
She opens her mouth, about to begin the (very embarrassing) story of how she found me crying my eyes out in a graveyard in the middle of the night, (I still don't know how I got here) when a sharp ringing sound pierces the quiet and I jump up, suddenly on guard.
It's just Flynn's phone, but it sounds just like my father's ringtone. I take a deep breath, trying to calm my violent pulse before someone notices. Flynn takes his mobile out of his back pocket, and stares at the screen for one...two...three full seconds...
Blaze looks at him questioningly.
He looks up, and gives her a quick nod, as if to confirm her suspicions. What the hell is going on?
Finally, after a long period of silence where the pair share many strange facial expressions as if they have a telekinesis bond, Flynn speaks, and they both turn to me.
"Um, sorry, I've gotta take this. Tell me about what happened later, B. See you later, Greene," he says the final part to me. I nod in response, before he turns and leaves the room, and I hear the creak on the stairs as he ascends.
Blaze sighs, and sits down dejectedly on the sofa. I almost walk over to sit next to her because there's so much I want to ask her, so many questions I have, but I decide to keep my mouth shut.
So much to say, and such little confidence to say it with.
She turns and gives me a small smile. "Well I can at least tell you what happened," she says, lifting a hand to run through her hair but frowning when she can't, as if she's forgotten it was tied up.
I nod half-heartedly. "I-I don't remember much from last night," I small voice managed to speak out from under all the anxiety.
"Well, I'm not surprised," Blaze forces a smirk. I would have believed it, the way she pushed up the side of her mouth and showed a demeanour that should have proven she doesn't care. The whole situation would have screamed, 'I don't give a fuck', if it weren't for her eyes.
Those, large, emerald orbs of hers flitted around the room, as if trying to find something, anything to focus her attention on other than me.
"Okay," I say nervously, "what happened then?"
She clears her throat, and speaks. "Shortly after I saw you... you blacked out, and I wasn't really sure what to do. I mean I don't know where you live, obviously, so I just figured I would take you back to my place," she gestures the room, "because I wasn't just gonna leave you there. So I-" she stops herself and closes her eyes, frustrated for a second, as if she was debating something with herself.
I've always been observant. It's become a natural instinct for me. To check if the guy walking into the coffee shop has his hand in his pocket because he's trying to impress the waitress, or because he's holding a gun in his jacket. To make sure that the jock sitting in the back row of my chemistry class is just nervous for the upcoming exam, and that his eyes aren't bloodshot and his knee isn't bouncing up and down because he's under the influence and he may attack me at any moment.
To check that the beautiful girl who's being nice to me, showing me hospitality, and hasn't beaten me up (like school rumours suggest), isn't doing it for other reasons. That she isn't showing signs that she will throw me away when she's done.
I've been zoned out for a couple of minutes now, I realise, and Blaze is standing in front of me, touching my shoulder, asking if I'm okay, but my brain won't shut up. Now that I've started thinking about it, I can't stop.
What if she's using me for something? What if she's like Agatha Williamson in 7th grade? If she's gonna ask me for help with the big, upcoming art project, pretend to like me, and only when we get an A, she shoves me to the ground before you can say 'gullible me'.
My mind's whirring now.
Gullible me. That's the problem. Just like when dad came home one day, drunk off his arse, to find me cowering under the kitchen sink? Just like when he'd told me he was gonna change. That he'd had enough of punishing me. That it was time to make the best of what's left of our family.
He'd promised he was gonna change.
I went to bed that night, elated out of my mind, because I might finally have a bit of our old family back. Dad and I could lounge around the kitchen, reminiscing about old times, he could tell me about how he'd met mum, and we'd be okay. Fractured, broken, but maybe we could be fixed.
What a load of bullshit that was.
The next morning I awoke to the sound of someone pummelling into a wall, ripping the plaster off, and I could hear from two rooms away.
I got out of bed to check what was happening, only to receive a fierce punch to the gut, and thrown into the streets, with my father's words ringing in my ears.
"You gullible little boy,"
I never learn.
"Hey, ANGEL!" Blaze is standing right in front of me now, and I snap out of my trance, blinking at her, once, twice. "What happened just now? You started shivering..." a concerned look appears on her face.
It didn't look fake.
Nothing about Blaze looks fake. She looked as pure as one could be. Her fierce green eyes shine with light streaming in from the window; they were so green I can see my faint reflection in them. There's questioning in her eyes, curiosity.
"Angel," she says, shaking my shoulder. "Snap out of it, Angel,"
We're completely alone in this room. There's the old, ragged, torn-around-the-edges-sofa. There's the old photo cabinet in the corner.
There's her.
I didn't need to hear her story to know that she'd brought me home, given me her couch to sleep on for (most of) the night, and maybe she'd give me breakfast later. (I don't care what it is, to be honest. Just the thought of anything other than microwave meals makes my mouth water.)
But then there's me.
I'm not stupid. I know a beautiful girl isn't always beautiful on the inside too. Looking into her eyes, those deep, deep eyes that look like they've seen terrors I shouldn't have been able to dream of.
But I have. I've dreamt all the evil there is in the world. Maybe not in the way she has, but it all rolls into one. When I dream, I get scared of the non-scary stuff. You know, the aspects in horror movies you aren't supposed to be scared of.
Like when the girl goes out with her friends at midnight, you get scared when the creepy guy in the bar kidnaps the girl. You get scared when she can't wriggle out of the ropes around her arms in time. You get scared when the guy with the clown mask jumps out of the darkness.
You don't get scared when you worry about what her dad will say when they figure out she's out of bed after curfew.
You don't get scared when the girl dies at the end, and you worry about what her dad will do without her.
Who will buy the groceries for him? Who cleans up the mess in the kitchen after his friends come over? Who is there when he thinks about throwing mum's cookbook into the fire? Who will stop him from smashing up more family photos? Who will pay the bills?
Who will my dad from hurting himself if I'm gone?
"Angel!" she says loudly, a pained look spread across her features. "Stop thinking like that! Stop!"
I don't know who Blaze Montenegro is. I really don't.
I don't know anything about her. And she doesn't know anything about me.
Nothing good will come from this.
I won't be gullible.
After all, why would anyone want to be my friend anyway? It's much easier to just believe she's using me, because even if I knew who she was, I wouldn't stay. I'm sure of it.
After last night, I'm teetering on the edge of a cliff. On one side is sanity. The other is the opposite.
I have a feeling if I stuck around with Blaze, I would fall off the cliff. It would be a constant reminder that I didn't deserve anything like her. That everyday I'm with her, I'm lying. Lying, lying, deceitful boy.
But if I left her alone, I would stay grounded. Just like the rest of my life. I would stay with my father, going through the same cycle again and again, for the rest of my life.
But my father doesn't deserve to be left alone. It's my fault mum and Charlie are gone. I'm the only one he has left.
It's my fault he does what he does. I brought it upon myself.
I don't realise I'm crying until Blaze wipes her thumb under my eye.
"Who did this to you?" she whispers, and it looks like she might cry too. "Who broke you?"
More tears stream down my face. I want it. I want it so bad.
I want to get out of the life where I have to worry about my own flesh and blood killing me in my sleep. I want to escape. I want to leave.
I want to fall of the cliff into insanity.
I don't care anymore. I don't. I don't. I don't.
I want so badly, to just stop. It's selfish of me to want anything at all.
I want to close my eyes, and never open them again.
Maybe I'll do it tonight.
© 2015 Saving Angelo, (rebelsymphony). All rights reserved.