At sometime late last night Gordon Jones told his parents he was going out with friends. He stole his dad's credit card and took out six hundred dollars. When midnight rolled around and he didn't show up, his parents started looking for him. He didn't answer his phone, and his friends said they hadn't seen him. That's when they called the police, who immediately looked into it but nothing had been discovered yet. That's what Chase told me. The credit card had not been used since then, and nobody had seen him for a few days.
I had gone through the texts he sent me the night he disappeared.
Gwen I'm so sorry
I wish I could tell you what's wrong but I can't
You'd hate me
You probably already hate me
I can't tell anyone
Everyone hates me
I shouldn't tell you this
I'm sorry
You're ignoring me, that's fair, I would too
If I go away no one will miss me
I don't know why I'm telling you this
I'm going
Far away, probably
I'm sorry I couldn't love you like you deserve
You deserve better
I hope you find it
bye
It sent chills down my spine. Guilt racked my body the next day as I dragged myself to school. I considered calling in sick, I really did, but we were so close to the last says of school, there wasn't really a point. I knew it was all in my head.
The real horror didn't settle in until I walked up to school that Monday, anyway. Overwhelming crowds of children filled the halls and I knew that Gordon was not one of them, because he was gone, and nobody knew what happened to him. He had texted me, and I had been too busy kissing Rosie to look. I had been to busy severing every tie we had.
Could I have stopped this?
"It's not fair to blame yourself," Rosie told me when I voiced these worries to her.
"Really?" I frowned.
"Of course, he's your ex, you didn't want to talk to him. It's not on you, it's on him," she squeezed my hand gently.
"But I don't know if he's okay," I groaned. "I don't... if he's not okay... then the way we ended things is going to haunt me for the rest of life."
Rosie could see I was struggling, she hugged me tightly, "he's going to be okay."
"You think so?"
"It's Gordon, you know he's resourceful."
That was true. It calmed down the sick feeling in my stomach for a bit. I managed to make it through half of the school day, then lunch rolled around and I didn't want to eat anything. It only got worse from there on out.
Chase was radiating a powerful energy, she sat on the bench this time instead of on the table. I noticed the heavy mascara she was wearing, and the dark blue highlights were back in her hair, which she was wearing up in a topknot. She looked scary, her eyebrows sat low on her face. Johnny was sitting next to her, he was quiet. They weren't touching each other. Ramon sat across from the two of them, picking at his awful cafeteria food and not making eye contact with anyone. Rosie silently sat down next to him and started sharing her food. I sat down next to Rosie.
"Did you get texts too?" Chase asked me, breaking the silence.
Uneasiness ran down my spine, "what?"
"From Gordon. Two days ago." she said, completely monotone, staring at me.
"Yeah," I admitted.
"I knew it," Chase slammed her fist down on the table, Rose and Ramon startled.
"Whoa there, baby-" Johnny started.
"Why didn't you answer him?" Chase demanded, hissing.
"I... I didn't look at them," I stammered, reaching for words to defend myself but they weren't there.
"Chase," Rosie moved in front of me, which was something she never did, "stop. She was hurt, she didn't know what to do. You would have done the same."
"No, I wouldn't have," she snapped back, "because I'm better than that. I don't let other people control my emotions."
"You don't let other people in, you mean," Rosie bit back, standing to meet her challenge, Ramon shrunk away from the two of them. "Because you're cold hearted."
"What, am I supposed to be offended by that?" Chase laughed.
Rosie's hands were shaking, I took in gently and pulled her back down.
"Don't talk to her like that," Johnny said quietly.
Chase whipped around to face him like she was a viper, and she bared her fangs at him, "oh, and you're backing me up?"
Johnny paused, confused, "yes?"
"Shut up, Johnathan," She snarled. "You're not allowed to comfort me on this, because you're just as fake as everyone else is this disgusting flea-bitten school."
He hesitated, "baby I don't understand-"
"Our whole relationship is a scam!" She yelled at him.
People were starting to go quiet and stare at our table. I felt their stares on the back of my neck. Johnny flinched away from her, like she had struck a hard nerve. His eyes glanced nervously around the room and he opened his mouth, I think he was telling her to keep her voice down but Chase kept going.
"No, you know it's true. You don't love me, and I don't love you. And I was okay with that for a while, because it was nice to kiss someone and just forget everything, but not anymore. You're pathetic on the inside Johnny Laurens. Your nothing more then a shivering, pathetic little worm on the inside. You're so worried about your reputation that you got a fake girlfriend to kiss you while your parents and the school was watching. Because you're insecure, because you're stupid, because you can't get good grades without help, because you think your daddy doesn't love you!"
Johnny's face went completely red, and he stood up, "sh-shut up!"
Chase's face curled and twisted up into a nasty grimace, her teeth flashing, "You know it's true, but it's all okay as long as I'm here right? Because I'm prettier then most girls? Because with me you don't have to think about how you can't see your string? You're so dumb, Johnny Laurens, if you really wanted to be loved, you'd be able to see your stupid string."
He was still blushing when he glanced around the cafeteria, at the prying ears which were eating up all of his secrets. He stammered out a few apologies, before reaching out for her shoulders, probably to calm him down.
Then Chase Lisa pulled back her fist and punched him in the face.
Johnny flew back and landed on his butt on the floor, teachers were making their way across the room now, and Chase turned on her heel and ran out of the room.
"All of you are fake!" She screamed before she was intercepted by teachers. "Every single one of you!"
The three of us sat there, in stunned silence, before Ramon snapped out of it and jumped over the table to see if Johnny was all right. He was sitting up and nursing a bruised eye when we got to him. He muttered some incoherent things, mostly nasty things about Chase, then a teacher sent us to the nurse's office with him and a little while later Ramon was helping him hold an icepack onto his face.
Rosie and I held back, we would have to head to class soon, that and neither of us wanted to get in between the tender way Ramon made sure Johnny was okay. That he listened to Johnny even though none of us could understand him. The way he spoke that made Johnny stopped fussing, now that Ramon had told me how special Johnny was to him, it was obvious how much he loved him.
"She's right you know," Johnny muttered, the first coherent thing he'd said since Chase stormed off. "We're fake."
"What do you mean?" Ramon asked.
"Well look at Gwen, for instance," his dark eyes flicked to me and I tensed up.
"What?" I frowned.
"We all thought your relationship with Gordon was perfect but obviously, something was wrong, and you just hid that from everyone. Gordon is obviously messed up, something's wrong with him. He probably belongs in an asylum. You're pretty, but deep down you're just as ugly as me," his words were cold and they pieced something in me that hadn't been touched before.
"Shut up!" I gasped. "You're one to speak!"
Johnny laughed, is was the empty shell of a real laugh, "you're right. I never loved Chase, she definitely never loved me. It was always just for show. I was never under the impression, at any point in time, that maybe things had changed since we made that agreement and she did actually care about me. I'm always wrong, you're always right Gwen."
I opened my mouth, but he just kept going, leaving me gasping like a fish out of water.
"That's the problem with you, isn't it? If you're not right you just angry. Maybe that's why Gordon cheated on you."
"Johnny!" Rosie inhaled sharply.
"You know it's true," his eyes were slits, he was just as snakelike as his ex-girlfriend, "You're just quiet and you stay so far out of trouble that nobody actually cares about you-"
He stopped talking when I raised my hand, I had been seconds away from slapping him. God knows he deserved it, but I paused when I realized that's what he wanted. He wanted someone to hit him, that's probably all he knew. I could feel the rest of them room slowly realize this.
"You're not ugly," Ramon said quietly.
Johnny glanced around at us, there was panic in his eyes as he realized he wasn't going to get reprimanded, "oh, you think you can figure me out? Tough luck, because I don't care. I don't care about any of you. You should stop being friends with me, we aren't friends. All of you hate me anyway, you're just faking being friends with me because Chase brings me along when we hang out. I'm just her dog."
"You're not her dog," Ramon insisted, growing more confident, "you're our friend."
"S-stop!" he flinched, flustered. "You're no better then me either. You just follow me around because you're weak and if you weren't friends with me I'd probably bully you. Stop being so gay about it. I'll fight you, I've sent kids to the hospital before. I can do it to you too."
Ramon's bottom lips started quivering and Johnny locked onto this, realizing he had gained the upper hand. "That's right, you thought we were friends? We're not friends. I can see the way you flinch when I use slurs and beat up on smaller kids, you hate it don't you? You hate the way I act, but I protect you, don't I? That's so pathetic-"
"Johnny stop," I warned, watching Ramon as he grew closer to breaking down.
He didn't stop, he was on a roll. Johnny Laurens had been hurt and was lashing out, determined to destroy every close friendship he'd made in the last three years. He was a thunderous god, raining down his destruction from above, he was Zeus with lightning in his fists and on his tongue, biting into us with his teeth made of hollow, fake insults because that is the language he speaks. And we understand it, because we are fake people too.
"We're not friends, we never were, and we never will be," he spat.
"I have to go to class now," Ramon choked out, and I could see the tears that fell down his face as we made our way out.