1,000+ Reads!! THAT’S CRAZY!! I LOOVE YOU ALL MY READERS!!! <3
Chapter Nine
“What?” I ask, not sure if I heard him correctly.
“I said, will you go out with me?” He says, gray eyes boring into mine, almost like he’s daring me to say no.
“Why?” I ask.
“Why not?” He replies teasingly.
“Danny, I’m serious.”
He shrugs nonchalantly, “I dunno. I like you and we’re friends right?”
“Yeah we’re friends” I say stupidly. Not knowing what else to say.
“So, why shouldn’t we go out?”
“I never thought that you liked me that way.”
“Well, what’s there not to like? You’re hot, fun to be around, and we get along really well.”
“Danny, I’m sorry I jus-”
He sighs audibly, shoulders slouching in defeat. “Hey, it’s ok. I understand.” He says giving me a small reassuring smile. I can’t help but feel guilty about saying no, even though I’m not doing anything wrong, but his question came out of nowhere and caught me off guard.
He takes a step closer to me until we’re only a few inches apart. “Just think about it, okay?” He asks, lifting his hand to brush it against my cheek gently.
I just nod in agreement, a little startled by the sudden contact. He smiles in satisfaction and goes back to work.
The rest of my shift goes by quickly and soon it’s closing time. I usually leave first and let Danny lock up, so I go to the back to say bye trying to get over the awkwardness that I know I’m going to feel now.
“Bye Danny, I’ll see you later.”
“Okay. Bye Mikayla.” He replies with a smile, back to his happy-go-lucky self.
I smile back at him and walk out the building.
On my way to my car I decide to check my phone. I usually leave it on silent while I’m at work.
I look at the screen and see that I have 13 missed calls!
6 missed calls from Ben, 4 missed calls from Jason, and 3 missed calls from Seth. All times ranging from 3:30 till about an hour ago.
I fumble with my phone a little bit to try to call one of them back, but I’m starting to panic. Why did they call me so many times?
Just as I’m about to hit the call button on Jason’s number, Ben’s number pops up on the screen.
“Hello?” I say into the phone.
“Why don’t you answer your phone?!”
“Ben! I was at work. What happened?”
“You need to come home, like right now.” I made it in the car by this time, pulling out onto the road.
“Okay, I’m coming. I just left. What happened?”
“Well it’s not so bad now.”
“What do you mean? Ben, will you just tell me what happened?”
I hear him take a deep breath before he starts talking again. “Okay, so today was my day to pick everyone up right? So after I got Seth and Kim, I went to get Liam and the twins. Well when I got there, only the twins were there standing outside. When I asked them about Liam they said they weren’t sure. So I had to park the car and go look for him, but I couldn’t find him anywhere! That was when I called you the first couple times, but you didn’t answer so I called Jason to see if he got him but he said no so I told him I couldn’t find him and then he showed up a few minutes later. By this time Seth is helping us look for him, but we still can’t find him. We asked the teachers and the administration people but they said that he left. Now we’re really starting to panic because that means he’s not at school anymore, so w-”
“Ben! Just tell me you found him.” I say interrupting him, not being able to take the suspense anymore. Liam, my fourteen year old brother, was missing and he wants to tell me every single detail.
“Yeah we did, eventually. He was down the road from the school sitting on the sidewalk.”
“Oh thank God, is he okay?”
“No, when we found him it looked like he just got out of a fight but the only thing he would tell us is that these four kids from his class beat him up.”
I feel my eyes sting with tears, I hate when my siblings get hurt. I take a deep breath to calm myself down before I tell Ben that I’m almost there and then hang up.
When I pull up to the house, I get out of the car quickly and rush inside. Everyone’s sitting downstairs in the living room doing nothing in particular, except Liam.
“Where is he?” I ask, looking from Ben to Jason.
“Upstairs, in his room.” Jason replies gently, looking at me carefully. He and Ben both know how I feel when one of us gets hurt.
I nod in thanks and run upstairs.
When I get to Liam’s room, the door’s closed so I knock on it softly.
I hear a muffled “go away” from the other side of the door. I knock again, “Liam, it’s me open the door, please?” I say softly.
There’s silence from the other side, almost like he’s hesitating. My younger brothers can’t say no to me, especially when something’s wrong.
“Liam?”
Silence.
“C’mon Liam, talk to me.”
Nothing. He’s really resisting.
Finally, I hear shuffling on the other side and a couple seconds later, the door opens. I step inside and close the door lightly behind me before I face him. He has his back to me, head down and shoulders slumped making him look smaller, even though he’s a bit taller than me, and more vulnerable.
I walk toward him slowly and place a hand on his shoulder when I’m close enough. His body tenses and he flinches slightly, like he’s afraid I’m going to hurt him. I carefully turn him around and I have to hold in a gasp of shock when I see his face.
He has a huge purplish bruise on his cheek, which is starting to swell a little. His lip is cut and so is his forehead. Looking at the rest of him I see that he has scratches on his arm. His shirt is ripped and dirty and so are his jeans. Then I notice that his knuckles are bruised and bloody, like he was somewhat successful in fighting back.
When I’m done looking him over I sit him down on his bed and head to the bathroom to get some hydrogen peroxide and cotton balls to clean his cuts, along with some Band-Aids. Then I go downstairs to the kitchen to get some ice for his bruises.
I get back to his room and proceed to take care of his injuries in silence. After I’m done I sit next to him on the bed and wait silently for him to tell me what happened.
After a few minutes, he slowly starts to tell me. “I had just gotten out of my last class and was heading to my locker when I saw these guys making fun of this other kid in my class. No one really talks to him ‘cause he made the mistake of telling everyone that he was gay. I’m the only one that’s ever really nice to him because you, Ben, and Jason always taught us to accept people for who and what they are. So anyway, they were making jokes and calling him a fag. I couldn’t not do anything, so I went up to them and told them to leave him alone. But, then they told me I needed to mind my own business and all four of them turned to me. So I ran as fast as I could to get away from them but they caught up to me and beat me up. I tried to defend myself but I was outnumbered.”
He stops then and looks so defeated that I want to cry, but I don’t. Instead I put my arm around him and, after a minute, he lays his head on my shoulder.
I pull my head away after a few minutes to look at him. “You may think that you lost, but I want you to know that I’m so proud of you.”
He scoffs and looks at me confused, “Mik, I got beat up. Why are you proud of me?”
“How could I not be? You got beat up because you defended that kid. I’m proud because you stood up for what’s right.” I say, smiling proudly at him.
He looks down at his hands, brown hair falling over his periwinkle blue eyes. Then he looks up at me with a slightly happier looking expression on his face, “Thanks, sis.”
I plant a small kiss in the side of his head and say “You’re welcome.”
***********************
(a/n): I know this chapter doesn’t have much (aka: no Tristan) but I needed something to happen to Liam because things are gonna start happening with her siblings more often.
Also, I haven’t really decided about Danny. I want to know what you guys think about him. So comment and tell me your thoughts. Danny or Tristan?
Thanks again to all my readers! You got me to 1000 reads!! :D :D :D You have no idea how happy that makes me.
I love you all <3
~SOTD23