Chapter 33: Playground Fights and Knockout Nights
Myra slammed her tray down on the table where Alex and Marie sat, and both of them looked up at her as if she grew a second head.
"Woah there, firecracker...who got your panties in a twist?" Alex breathed into the cool summer air. A bit of ketchup fell off of the sandwich he ate, and it landed on his collar. Marie sat looking as if she hadn't gotten any sleep the past decade, and stole fries off his tray. She leaned forward and dipped a fry into the ketchup dollop that fell and put the fry in her mouth. Alex looked at her deadpan and Myra could feel how close they were. How the word 'family' strung along the atmosphere.
"Goldilocks, you keep your nasty mind away from thoughts of both me and my panties" Myra answered, and waved her hand motioning for both of them to stop staring at her. Alex muffled a laugh and inched to the side to let Myra scoot into the table. Myra's hair was wild and her body rang with electricity.
"And that is an awful saying, Alexander Banks. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" Marie asked waving a fry in her hand for emphasis. Alex opened his mouth to fire a statement at her, but he was cut off short.
"- No, he kisses yours instead, Mare" A voice came from across their table. Jonathan Roux waltzed over to the side of the dining hall that they sat in as if he was king of the goddamn lunchroom. He might as well have been because as Myra turned to look around, she noticed that there were hushed whispers and stares coming their way all around with the students who were in the building. Every single pair of eyes in the dining hall was on them.
Not them, Myra corrected
Him.
He was practically a dead man walking.
Myra heard a curse come from Alex's direction and the slight sound the fry made as it dropped from her hand onto the floor. Marie looked at him as if her whole world lost it's axis. She stared as if someone had just proved Newtonian science wrong to her. In fact, Myra wasn't even sure if she was breathing.
Jonathan stopped short in front of them with a sheepish grin, and a hand that was playing with the back of his neck. Everything about him was off. He had lost weight from the hospitalization and Myra could hear the slight beep a sound made coming from his ankle. She looked down to see a small gunmetal colored device strapped around his ankle. He was being tracked. He was being monitored for everything he did. But yet there he stood, with four juice packs in his hand and a crooked smile.
The boy standing before everyone was not supposed to be alive.
Marie pulled one leg out from the table and then followed the other leg. She walked slowly to face him and looked at his face as if he was a completely different person. Myra could see her eyes pooling as she followed every corner and crease, imprinting him into her memory once more.
"Hey, Mare" Jonathan whispered so that only she could hear. The smile on his face was gone now and he looked sad. There wasn't another word to describe it, Myra had seen her fair share of broken hearts before and Jonathan's heart wasn't just broken. His whole skeleton was. Every organ ripped to shreds for the girl in front of him, and she didn't even know it yet.
Myra closed her eyes and sighed. Was this what she was doing to Clifton?
Her eyes snapped open as a loud sound ricocheted through the hall. Myra saw it at it's closing, but Marie had slapped Jonathan's cheek, hard enough for his whole face to follow through to the terminal destination of her hand. He was turned away and he twitched his jaw and groaned when a clicking sound made it's way out.
It looked like Marie was about to do it again, her hand raised higher and the tears ow splashing down her cheeks as she cried softy. Jonathan braced himself, not moving an inch away from her. Alex and Myra didn't even intervene. This was something more.
"You selfish bastard" she breathed out so softly, Myra was sure she wasn't supposed to hear. Marie turned around, took her bag and walked to Alex. She whispered something into his ear to which he nodded. She didn't look twice before running out the dining hall.
"I suppose I deserved a lot more than that" Jonathan spoke to the ground. He inched his way to the opposite of where Myra and Alex sat. He looked at them and puffed out a breath of coughed air. Both Alex and Myra knew that he was weak, they just didn't know the extent till now.
"How you holding up, man" Alex asked cautious. Alex had his eyes plastered on Jonathan and every move he made. Myra followed his gaze to the small prick marks he had along his arm and she knew.
"They taped me back up" Jonathan said his voice a ghostly shell of what it used to be. Jonathan passed each of them a mixed fruit capri sun and what seemed like a long pause after, all three of them took the straws out and pierced the plastic. But none of them drank.
The problem with taping someone back up, is that they will never be the exact same as they were before. Not truly. And all three of them knew this, but decided not to comment.
"Can.. Can we just talk about something else... just for now", Jonathan asked "Please"
Myra nodded furiously. She realized she hadn't spoken in a while and turned towards Alex "Why is there a fucking faculty meeting?" she asked him. Alex turned his face towards her, but only stopped looking at Jonathan at the last instant.
He looked at her confused and shrugged. The air around all three of them was heavy with unspoken tension. She looked towards Jonathan and pleaded with her eyes for there not to be. He needed to be himself again... no matter how long that took. Myra would find a way to make sure everything came back to it's equilibrium.
"You mean why is Blaize waiting outside that faculty meeting?" Jonathan asked. Myra nearly choked, her eyes wide she looked at Jonathan with simmering frustration.
She motioned her head towards Alex and then fixed her frown on Jonathan as if to say 'He doesn't know, you fuckwad'. Jonathan just shrugged and looked towards Alex, quickly attempting to change the topic.
"Banks, please tell me you're coming to the Mexico trip... I'm on 24 hour surveillance and apparently don't even have a choice in the matter. But you fucking have to promise me you're coming"
Myra noticed that Jonathan seemed less on edge than before. It made her wonder if they gave him the same pills that they gave her.
"Faye's going. So I'm already in" he replied. Alex had a certain charm about him that Myra couldn't help but notice. His energy practically burst out of him, but there was still something missing. It was like he was a full circuit waiting to be switched on. But there was a wire loose or a cable missing. Maybe everyone had something missing in their circuit, Myra thought. Maybe it's up to you to find out what it is and how you can fix it.
"Well I sent in my papers last night. But I'm going for the hours, not the people, Goldilocks" she mused.
Alex lightly punched her arm and she rocked back ever so slightly. She had a smile on her face and looked up to see that so did the other two boys she sat with. All of them sporting those dysfunctional smiles of people who had very little reason to smile, but chose to anyway.
Jonathan shook his head slightly and looked down to his juice pack and then he looked at the one that he placed on where Marie had sat. Untouched, it would probably sit there until it was picked up by someone who didn't even know what that damn mixed fruit Capri Sun meant.
It was an apology.
Myra saw Alex as he looked down and noticed that no one had actually drank their drinks, the same time she noticed it as well. He raised his juice pack in the air, at the middle of the table. He raised his eyebrows at Myra and Jonathan when they didn't follow him.
Myra went to grab her juice pack and raised it to touch his. Jonathan straightened his straw and did the same.
"Cheers," Alex said " To girls you can't have"
Myra smiled and added softly, not looking at either one of them. "And to girls you can't get"
Finally, Jonathan tossed in "And to girls that knock you out flat"
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Kitkat