I am officially exhausted....I also apologize for this being late, I came on last night but forgot to post.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
I woke up to the sound of screaming in the hallway. I kept my eyes closed and groaned as I tried to curl up further. Parker hitched beneath me. That’s right, I had fallen asleep on top of him. I smiled to myself and pulled my knees all of the way up to my chest, so I was completely on top of his. He hitched again and I was forced to open my eyes. I looked up to him. He was still sleeping angelically. His head was tilted to the side and the small amount of sunlight that streamed through his blinds was dancing across his face.
I laid back down on his chest. At that moment his breathing slowed down even more than it already was. I was barley moving. I hitched again with his chest. What the heck? His breathing was still shallow, and it was growing less and less by the second. He hitched again and sat up quickly, gasping for air. I slid off of him and ended up sitting in his lap as he continued to gasp for air. His eyes were huge with fear.
“Parker?” I croaked. He shoved his hand into his pocket, still gasping like a fish out of water. “Parker?” I was getting scared now as his face started to turn red. He found what he wanted in his pocket and brought it to his mouth. It was an inhaler. He pressed down the button on the top and inhaled deeply, his eyes closed all the while.
I slipped off of his waist and kneeled before him. He was still breathing heavily as he set his inhaler down next to him. After a moment of silence he opened his eyes and realized that I was there.
“Charlene, I-I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“I-I-I couldn’t breathe. You were on my chest, I-I,” he was stuttering and he was still shaking. His skin was paler than normal too.
“What time is it?” I asked, trying to divert his attention to something else. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Shit.”
“Is it that bad?”
“We missed first block.” I shot to my feet. What? It had been no later than five when I had fallen asleep, how had my body allowed me to sleep that long, I didn’t think I was that tired. “We can still make it to second if we leave now. We have ten minutes.” I nodded. Now I just had to go and get my stuff and get to class. It could be worse.
“I should be going then.” I said, my voice was still a little rough. I went over to the table and put my wig back on. I left without a word.
I arrived at my calc class faster than I thought possible. I took my seat next to Luke.
“You look horrible.” He vocalized. I buried my head as my cheeks started to heat with a blush. It was really that bad? He smiled. “Where were you anyways?”
“I fell asleep at Payne’s. We were playing Call of Duty all night.” Nice lie Charlene.
“Oh, uh, okay.”
“Class, if you could pull out your books and your homework that I had assigned you last weekend. I never gathered it.” I went down to grab my book and froze. What, where was it? A thought occurred to me. We hadn’t used them at all this week so far, maybe, just maybe…
“Luke.”
“What?”
“You didn’t call Vanessa did you?” He froze.
“I am so sorry Charles, I totally blanked.” Great, my book and homework was still at that beach place, which Luke wasn’t allowed to go to anymore. I was so dead. Our teacher started to go around and gather our homework and I didn’t have any. I bit my lip, would she believe me if I told her that it was in the cities? Hopefully.
“Here,” Luke slid me his homework.
“I-I can’t take this!” I slid it back to him.
“Yes you can, it is my fault that you don’t have it today.”
“Yes, but it is just as much mine!” I threw it back at him.
“Take it,” he said through gritted teeth.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.
“Yes.” He threw it at me and Ms. Beffert took it from me. She took one look at it and handed it back to me.
“Name.”
“Uh, Charles, Charles Hatsfend.” She raised an eyebrow.
“I meant on your paper.”
“Oh,” I grabbed it and quickly scribbled down my name, wait, I had an idea. I erased it and put down Luke Young. She looked at me skeptically before taking it. She walked past Luke. I saw him out of the corner of my eyes and noticed that he was shooting me daggers. I didn’t look at him for the rest of the lesson, even though I didn’t have a book to follow along in.
Ms. Beffert assigned us a book assignment. A girl next to me offered me her book and we slid our desks together as we started to work. I still wasn’t going to look at Luke, it was obvious that he was still mad at my decision.
“Charles,” Ms. Beffert came up to my desk. “Do you have a book?”
“No,” I sighed. I should stop sighing or I am really going to lose my soul. Can’t lose what you don’t have. Ha…bad joke.
“I am going to need to speak with you after class.” I nodded and she left. After the bell rang I ran up to her desk so I wouldn’t have to cross paths with Luke.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, I realize that you haven’t turned in your assignment, and today you are out a book.”
“I can explain that.”
“Then do explain.”
“See, I went to Vanessa’s party last weekend, and I brought my calculus stuff to work on it. I got thrown into the indoor lake thing and then Luke got in a fight with Darren.”
“Luke got in a fight with Darren?” She asked and I nodded.
“Anyways, they ended up getting kicked out and since Luke was my ride, he took me home. I didn’t realize that I hadn’t grabbed my stuff until today because we hadn’t used it.” She nodded.
“You do realize that these books cost over fifty dollars.” I nodded again. I didn’t have that kind of cash on me. “When grading today’s assignment, I also realized that you skipped first block.”
“I over slept. A friend and I were playing COD last night and we blanked. It won’t happen again.”
“I will have to take your word for that, but you will still have detention. Since it was first block with Mr. Kridd, I will have to send you there today from three to five. Be there.” I nodded and left. I didn’t want detention, especially with Mr. Kridd. After what happened to Parker’s mother I was thoroughly scared of him.
I went to lunch with the plan to avoid Luke still fresh in my mind. I found Scarlet and took the seat next to her. She blushed as I did so. She started to eat as Rose rolled her eyes and Lilly giggled. I started to look off into space as I often did so. I looked over to Luke’s table to see him and Darren still sitting on opposite sides. Luke caught me staring and sent me another hard look. I looked away. Vanessa was sitting at a table with a bunch of beautiful girls like herself, and everyone else was of little importance to me. I sighed yet again and looked over to where Parker was standing.
He was leaned up against the wall as always. I just realized that I had never seen him eat before, maybe that was why he was so lean, maybe he was anorexic.
“Scarlet.”
“Yup,” she sounded taken off guard.
“What do you think of Parker?”
“Who?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Payne, I meant Payne.”
“Scary.”
“No, as a person.”
“Scary,” she said again, but her eyes told otherwise.
“You sure?”
“Well, I guess he isn’t that bad. I mean, I had him as a lab partner once. I tried to talk and he kept his distance, he just enjoys being secluded.” No, he enjoys my company, he said so himself.
“Would you like him as a friend?”
“I don’t know.” She took another bite of food.
“How about more than a friend?”
“I don’t know.”
“What has gotten into you?” Rose asked. I shrugged.
“Maybe he has the hots for Payne.” Lilly giggled as she covered her mouth. Rose raised an eyebrow and Scarlet blushed a deep red.
“I do not, I’m a guy!”
“Just saying…” Rose mumbled. “Weren’t you two the ones who skipped class because you had been late due to ‘sleeping’.”
“Well, I wouldn’t consider it skipping. It was an accident.”
“Sure, and I bet sleeping was all you were doing.” Rose suggested.
“You know what? I shouldn’t have to put up with this.” I rose to leave and Scarlet grabbed my arm.
“Don’t leave, please,” she begged. Her large doe eyes seemed to get even bigger. She tugged on my arm lightly and I sat down. That girl’s eyes were too hard to say no to. She smiled when I plopped back down in my seat.
“You want my honest opinion?” She whispered in my ear. I nodded. Scarlet looked over and saw that Lilly and Rose were busy amusing themselves by poking each other with sporks. “He, he may not be that cute, like Luke,” she nodded towards him, “Sorry, he’s your roommate isn’t he?” I nodded, but blushed anyways. Who wouldn’t think Luke was adorable? “Anyways, I was trapped in a room with him last year. For the seven minutes in heaven meets spin the bottle…and…uh…he was a good kisser.” She turned a bright red. Her gaze faltered off of me and to Parker, then back. “We kind of had a thing after that, it was short and sweet. His name isn’t even Payne.”
“Really?” I tried to sound interested.
“It’s Parker.” I made my eyes grow comically.
“That’s so normal though!” I proclaimed.
“I know right?”
“What are we knowing?” Lilly asked when she raised her hand.
“Nothing, I got to go girls. I will see you,” I pointed to Scarlet and she blushed, “And you,” I pointed to Rose and she rolled her eyes. “Next block.”
I went over to Parker and smiled before opening the door and leaving. I caught him rolling his eyes. Boys.
“Charles!” I turned to see my caller. My hopes had been high, but when I saw Luke my shoulders slumped and my eyes drooped. He jogged up to me. “I called the place, and I talked to Ms. Beffert. She told me that you told her basically the same thing so she felt it was legit. Oh! And the guy at the place said that they can first rate ship it so it should be here by Wednesday.” My mouth fell open. He did all of that for me? “And don’t worry about the shipping cost, I covered it.”
“Wow,” I was speechless. Here I thought he was mad at me and he went ahead and did all of that. I have to say that this boy was full of surprises. “Uh, thanks?”
“So, you’re not mad at me?” He asked.
“Why would I be mad at you?” We started walking to our next classes. “I thought you were mad at me.”
“Well, a bit for putting my name on my paper, but I guess it was for the best. If I did that to Darren he would have put his own on it. I thought it was cool that you would do that for me, so I owed it to you.” Ahhh, he was so adorable. I wanted to grab his smiling and dimpled cheeks and squeeze them like some scary grandmother.
Luke and I talked all the way to my English classroom.
“So, do you want to hang out tonight?”
“Uh, I slept through first block so I won’t be in the room until five or five thirtyish.”
“That’s fine, I have practice anyways. Today’s Hell Day, so we won’t be done until late.”
“Hell Day?”
“Yeah, one hundred one hundreds. Sucks. Anyways, I will see you at five then.” He outstretched a hand.
“It’s a date,” I grabbed it and shook it. Luke and my first ‘date’. How romantic.
Gym ended and Parker and I split. I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to him during class so I figured I would catch him after, but he flew out of there so fast that I didn’t end up catching him. I changed in a stall, as normal, and left with my bundle of clothes. Ms. Beffert said that I had to be to detention by three, and right now it was two-forty, so I had time to get some stuff from my room. In my old school, detention periods were used to do work.
I went to my room and grabbed my ipod along with Luke’s calc book and some of my English work. I headed down to Mr. Kridd’s room with ten minutes to spare. When I arrived the door was closed, but lights were still on. I huffed and reached for the knob, but then a voice traveled to me. It was Mr. Kridd’s voice, and he didn’t sound all that happy. Instead of opening the door I leaned in and listened.
Mr. Kridd shouted something and that was followed by the sound of skin slapping skin. The person I assumed that he had hit, hissed and let out a small yelp. Mr. Kridd yelled again, but this time he was telling the other person to be quiet. Not telling, threatening. A sound similar to a book falling onto a carpeted floor came next, along with an ‘umph’ from the person exhaling. What was Mr. Kridd doing? That was it, I reached forward and grabbed the handle. I turned it painfully slow and peeked in.
Mr. Kridd was standing on the side of the room that the windows were on. He had one arm over a boy’s head, his arm on the window, the other was in the shape of a fist. Mr. Kridd was saying something to the kid in a low voice. Then I noticed the kid.
“Payne?” I questioned. He was slumped up against the wall. He had one arm laying on the windowsill and it was the only thing that kept him standing. His face had a large hand print on one side, and his lip was bleeding.
“Charles,” Mr. Kridd spun to face me with a smile. I looked from Mr. Kridd to Parker my eyes growing with fear. “What do you need?” He asked. As he spoke Parker gained his footing and went over to the front of the room. He drug his feet against the ground, holding one arm to his stomach all the while. He stopped at a desk in the front and sat down. Mr. Kridd adjusted his glasses and fixed his hair a bit.
“I, uh, I had detention. I skipped first block.” I was speaking to Mr. Kridd, but all of my attention was directed to Parker whose back was to me.
“I didn’t assign you any detention for that.”
“Oh, but Ms. Beffert did.”
“That’s okay,” he smiled. He had such a charming smile, but his voice was strained and sounded on the verge of breaking into a scream. “You can go.” But I couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave Parker here, not with Mr. Kridd after the scene that had just went down.
“Can I stay and get some work done here? I have a question about bio, and maybe some calc if you could help me on that by any chance.” Mr. Kridd nodded and gestured for me to come up to him. I set down my stuff and drug out my homework and bio book. I came up to him and made up a bogus question, but it did use up some time. After that I went down the aisle and took out a stool and sat down by Parker. Mr. Kridd looked agitated still, but after a while he ignored us. He started to grade some papers and put them online.
‘Parker,’ I wrote on the corner of my paper. I elbowed him and he looked at it, and back at me. He wrote ‘what’ on his own paper.
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing? Didn’t look like it.’
‘We can talk later.’ I nodded and that ended our conversation. I turned on my ipod and put in my ear buds. I brought out my calculus homework and started to go through my lesson. We had started a new chapter today and I was confused once again, I would have to ask Luke about that later.
I pretended to do my homework as I doodled. I drew dragons and ice cream cones along with occasional song lyric scribbled onto the side. I kept Parker in my peripheral vision all the while. I scanned him out of the corner of my eye. The hand print was now becoming a nasty bruise, and his lip was starting to grow and swell. I could see that the hoop in his lip had ripped through his lip to some extent because it was sitting at a strange angle that was a little too far to the left. Parker kept one arm around his stomach the whole time and his breathing didn’t become steady until detention was almost over.
“Charles, Payne, you two can leave now.” I nodded and gathered my stuff. I would have said that it could have been worse to Parker, but I decided against it. I started out the door with Parker, until he jerked to a stop. I continued to the door before turning around. Mr. Kridd had a grip on his arm and he was whispering something into Parker’s ear. Mr. Kridd looked up at me and so did Parker. Parker nodded and Mr. Kridd let go of his arm.
I didn’t dare speak to Parker until we were out of the building.
“What was that about?” I asked him. He was still holding his stomach and now that I mention it, he was slightly limping too. Man, Mr. Kridd was quite a small guy, but I guess Parker was smaller if he was able to do this much damage. I shifted my books into my other hand and wrapped an arm around his waist. He leaned onto me gratefully.
“My mom.”
“Oh,” his voice cracked as he had said that and his chest hitched. “Here,” I grabbed his and my books and set them down. I made him sit on the ground too as he dug out his inhaler and drew in a deep breath of albuterol. He closed his eyes and allowed his head to fall back and rest on the building behind him.
“How was that about your mom Parker?” He shrugged. I grabbed his shoulder. “Parker, I told you that you can tell me everything.”
“You know, that is what it’s about.”
“What? Parker, I’m confused.”
“He knows that you know. You act differently around him and he doesn’t like it, he thinks that I told you.”
“That’s not fair, I found it out myself.” Parker smiled sadly.
“Yeah, but you know. He was pretty much making me shut my trap again.”
“Why don’t you tell the authorities? He hit you Parker, if they can’t get him for what he did to your mother they should be able to do something because what he is doing to you.”
“It’s not that simple Charlene.”
“Yes, yes it is.”
“No it isn’t!” He snapped as he pushed himself to his feet. That was a bad move. Once he reached his full height he wavered a bit and started to teeter, I grabbed him and allowed him to lean onto me again. I decided that the topic was closed as I grabbed our books and walked him to his room. Luke had said that his practice would be long so I felt it was okay if I was a little late.
I led Parker to his room and opened the door for him using the key that he had given me earlier in the week. Like every room, there were two keys, and since he trusted me he had given it to me. He had said for emergencies only, and this seemed like a worthy emergency. I brought him over to his computer chair and sat him down. I then put down our books and went over to the sink. I grabbed a washcloth and got it damp with some cold water. I came back over to him and kneeled in front of him. I grabbed his face in my hand and gingerly started to dab some of the blood from his lip away. Doing so allowed me to get a better look at the lip, and the ring which had ripped through it. As I did this, it also took off his lipstick. I smiled a bit and started to scrub at his eyes. He kept them closed and seemed to start dosing off as I cleaned him off.
Once his makeup was off I felt rather proud of myself. He looked normal, and man, when he was normal I couldn’t help but admit that he did look rather hot. Of course, for a scrawny kid that was. I cleaned off the rest of his lip and then looked at his ring.
“Can I take this out?” I asked and he nodded. “Uh…how?” He smiled a bit and opened his mouth. I grabbed his lip and flipped it over a bit, he winced as I did so. “Sorry,” I murmured as I twisted up the end and slowly pulled it out of his lip. I put it onto the table next to us. I then dabbed it off some more with the rag.
“Well,” I started. “You’re face looks beautiful, well, as beautiful as it will ever get.” He smirked at that comment. “Is your stomach okay?” I asked. I reached forward and touched his stomach and he winced. “Apparently not,” I put the rag down and stood up. I grabbed his tie and loosened it. I assumed that it wasn’t bothering him because he let me do it.
After his tie was off I slowly and lightly unbuttoned his black collard shirt. I opened it slightly and then threw it open widely.
“Parker.” I said.
“Huh?”
“What do I do about this?” I pointed to the tank under his shirt. “I’m sorry but you are going to have to take that off.” He shook his head in amusement as he took the collard shirt off from his shoulders and then stripped off his tank. He grabbed it from the bottom in the style that often reminded me of girls. He then pulled it up and over his head. He threw it off to the side by his bed. I gasped at the sight of him.
His stomach was starting to turn purple and green in several different places, but that wasn’t the thing that shocked me. He was so thin. And by thin I meant unhealthy kind of thin. Every rib stood out clearly against his skin.
“Jeez boy,” I tried to make a joke of it, “Don’t you ever eat?” He turned his head so he wasn’t facing me. Now, I just needed something cold that he could put on his stomach to stop some of the bruising. Ah ha! Genius. I went over to his fridge and grabbed out a pop. I tossed it lightly before turning back to him. His eyes were closed. I snickered to myself. I bent down so I was at eyelevel with him and then I thrust my arm forward. The pop touched his skin and he jumped out of shock from the sudden cold. His iced blue eyes flew open in complete surprise. I smiled.
Then, time stopped. We stayed like that. Him, big eyed on the chair, and me, bent over looking at him. My smile slowly started to fade as his eyes started to bore into me like the old times. I started to blush. What was with these cheeks? Then, my eyes flickered down to his lips. Even now, with the large open cut beneath them, they still looked so welcoming. I leaned forward. Wait, what? Charlene, use your brain, you have a super hot roommate waiting for you in your room right now. I looked back to Parker’s eyes.
“I-I should probably get going,” I stammered. He nodded, still focused on my eyes.
“Yeah, your roommate is probably waiting.” He nodded and grabbed the pop from my hand. His fingers slipped over mine and I jumped, ripping them away from his icy touch. He grabbed the pop and pressed it into his stomach. He grimaced but gutted through it.
“I-I’ll see you.” I said as I opened the door, my cheeks were still on fire. He nodded. I stepped out and ran into something solid. I fell back into the now closed door behind me.
“Owch,” I said and Luke laughed.
“I was just coming down to look for you, I thought you forgot.”
“Trust me,” I looked up at him. His hair was still wet from swimming and there were a few delicate beads of water sticking to his eyelashes, making them sparkle. “I wouldn’t forget.” He smiled down at me and took a step back.
“You ready to go?” He asked.
“Yeah, sure,” I jumped in excitement as I left with my roommate. The incident that had happened earlier was still playing over and over in my mind. Why was my body doing this to me? My mind was screaming Luke in every physical way yet my body seemed to react to Parker. I officially have issues.