Ok, i'm not going to complain or rant or anything because let's face it, I suck at uploading and have legit excuses but know you don't want to hear them so I sincerely apologize for the wait, but would like to say I am going to try to update more often now, and I mean that.
Hugs, kisses and virutal ice cream sundaes to: HazzCool, xoxogossipgirl, leleberry6, Solano_805, RebelAngel, oneGirlOnFire, luvnfamily, terranalleen, Spicychic18, and BeautifulLies for commenting very nicely and hilariously on the last chapter like 50 years ago, which inspired me to finally release this chapter I have been sitting on for ages, you're banging!!
Also, vritual kittens and fudgecakes for: xoxogossipgirl (extra for you since you messaged me twice yay :) ), xxCassiexx, Xx_Wee_Bubbles_.., Chimesgirl, oneGirlOnFire (extra for you too since you messaged me 4 times lol :D ), and ivygirl who all helped me immensly with good, old-fashioned death threats, bribes and pleading that kicked me in the a** enough to post, you're magical!!
One other quick note, these next few chapters feel..weird to me, and are part of the reason i did not want to post them so if anyone has a problem with them then please leave me a comment so i know i'm not alone.
COMMENT MESSAGE VOTE EVEN THOUGH I'M A WANKER
please :)
thanks xoxo
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REcap:
“I’m not wearing it if Sage picked it out,” I retorted, knowing that he would gloat, and hold it against me. Secretly, I desperately wanted to wear it despite the fact that my enemy had chosen it. I was stubborn though, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I had some pride.
“He went for a walk actually, and he usually stays out all night on ‘walks’, so he wouldn’t have to know that you chose his outfit,” Finn said tentatively, his voice cracking once or twice like he was afraid of what I would say.
He would lie to Sage for me? I meant that much to him?
I smiled, a genuine smile, and on a sudden instinct that came from nowhere I hugged him, noting how he smelled like clean rain, and a hint of spices. He jolted in place, like I was somehow attacking him, but soon after he realized I wasn’t, he relaxed, his arms circling me tightly as he laid his head on top of mine gently. It was merely friendly, nothing more, nothing less, but for the first time in awhile, I felt like I had someone who cared…a friend.
“It’ll be out little secret,” he murmured quietly, patting my back before accenting his words with another strong squeeze. “Don’t you worry.”
“Thank you so much,” I told him sincerely, still beaming, as he let me go and returned my smile, his lighting up his own face like a 1000 watt bulb.
I again, noticed how cute he was with his disheveled blonde hair and little dimples, resolving to ask at a better time if he had a girlfriend. If not, I would try my hardest to set him up, he would make some girl so happy, I was sure. He deserved it.
“Now get out you pervert, and let me change!” I playfully scolded him, ruining the mood effectively. I could only take so much mushy stuff before I melted after all.
“Aww come on, we just had a moment didn’t we? It’s the least you could do!” he whined, scrunching his face up into a puppy-dog look that was as heartbreaking as it was fake. He was good.
I shook my head anyways, throwing a pillow at him before closing the door on his cheery face, feeling better than I had in years, feeling like I was actually cared for.
Like I was home.
*** STILL SCHUYLER'S POV
Nerves.
Nasty little buggers that sneak into you at the worst of times. They pray upon you like ants on a being much bigger than themselves, and they overtake you from the inside, feeding on you while you wait helplessly for them to cease.
Sometimes——actually most times——they made the wait, the passing time much worse than whatever is to come, and afterwards, you feel a fool for succumbing to their spiteful torture, telling yourself that next time you wouldn’t do so again.
Yet you always did.
Personally, I really hated being nervous——not that I actually knew anyone who claimed to like it—— however, here I sat, eyes trained unblinkingly on the clock as the minutes ticked away, my fingers clenching tightly together the only visible sign of my inner turmoil.
7:55
What if I make a fool of myself? I was bound to…
7:56
What if he asked me out on a dare? I would feel so stupid…
7:57
What if he didn’t show? I would be so disappointed…
7:58
What if I look like a complete idiot? I would never live it down….
7:59
What if he realized what a huge mistake he was making? It would confirm my worst fears…
7:59:59
OH MY GOD WHAT IF HE WAS SECRETLY A CLOWN?
I. Would. Die.
8:00
Ding Dong.
Was that the doorbell? It couldn’t have been, it was probably the oven. Yes, the oven, that’s it, it had to be the oven. No doorbells here. None at all.
Ding dong ding dong ding dong
Since when did the oven ring repeatedly? Must be a new feature.
“I’ll get it!” I heard Payton yell from downstairs, his voice echoing in the hallways, “Since all you lazy asses can’t be bothered. JEEZE!”
My chest constricted, each breath feeling like my last, and I sat down swiftly–—before I fell down—–at my vanity, the sight of the familiar stranger reflected in the mirror making my lungs close up completely.
The stranger’s strangely shaded hair was naturally wavy, down to her hips and brushed away from her face to uncover large eyes that appeared to be larger now due to anxiety. This stranger’s skin was pale—–—the color of cream, not vampire-wannabe pale——the supple redness of her cheeks highlighting how unblemished and structured her face really was. Her lips, naturally the color of pale pink rose petals, were currently being worried by her teeth, but despite all that the thing that stood out the most was…she looked like my mother.
Which meant…..I looked like my mother, so much so that for a split second I thought it was her. I shakily reached out to touch the glass, hoping that like a body of water the surface would ripple, the waves distorting the presumed false image before me.
My quivering hand met nothing but the cold, solid glass though, and the image remained untarnished, the figure in it still the image of a younger Selene Jackson.
What would my mother have said had she been here?
Maybe she would have been happy for me; I mean, me going on a date with a boy?!! I was sure her excitement would have been just as great, if not greater than my own minus my general disbelief at it all.
She probably would have helped me get ready, expertly doing my hair and my makeup since I had no clue as how to do either, all the while fondly commenting on how old I was getting.
She would have stubbornly insisted on taking pictures even after I would insist that I’m an adult, and not a child. Then my dad would have had the “talk” with Adrian, making sure he knew that if I got hurt then he would hurt his face in return even though I hardly remember him even hurting so much as a fly.
They both would have watched me leave, my mother smiling hugely with bubbly excitement, my father with his arms crossed in severe worry because he “knew what boys at that age wanted”.
Perhaps, when I later returned, I would find that mother had eagerly awaited for me to gush about how it went with ice cream——preferably chocolate—– to share while one of her favorite gushy romance films droned on in the background. Father would be pretending to be asleep in bed, his fatherly worries finally relieved as he sneakily listened to mother and I giggle like children, both of us happy as could be.
I knew—as corny as it sounds—in my heart that they both would have done so, yet——in reality——I didn’t know that at all…all because of me. Because of what I had done.
Because I was a murderer.
The usually whisper-quiet voices in my head, the ones that sprang forth whenever I let my guard down, came forward, louder than ever before. They made all my doubts, all my deepest regrets and fears so clear that sometimes all I could do was believe them , all I could do was listen. I listened now.
How have you lived with yourself all these years after what you did? You selfish, disgusting being, how can you sleep at night with the thought that you killed everyone you loved? It was all your fault, and you don’t even care, I mean look at you trying to go and act normal.
You deserve their fate, it should have been you who perished, not them. They had done nothing wrong.
I know.
I eyed the familiar stranger again, watching her tears stream down her now deathly pale cheeks, and I became disgusted, almost nauseated.
How could I resemble my mother and be glad of it after sending her to her grave?
Murderer.
Killer.
Failure.
Nobody.
Selfish.
Alone.
The light blue nearly teal eyes of the stranger seemed to age right before me, the feeble ray of light they had once held extinguished so quickly it was like it had never existed at all; a candle once feebly lit in a hurricane. They were empty now, dead, numb.
Like me.
The familiar stranger’s pale face suddenly shattered into a million different fragments, startling me with the discordant sound, and I watched as the pieces of glass that held the false image fell unearthly slow towards the ground.
I was watching myself fall to pieces, inside and out, physically and mentally, figuratively and literally.
I was broken.
Yet, unlike the other times this had happened, I didn’t think anything could fix me now.
Not all the king’s horses, nor all the king’s men could put my heart back together again.
*** AGAIN, STILL SCHUYLER'S POV
You know that ever increasingly irritating moment when you’re desperately trying to get to sleep, but your mind won’t shut off? Outside thoughts fly through your brain, and when you start thinking about one thing then you think about another and so forth…Personally, when this happens, I tend to think of a big blank black wall, nothing special about it, no designs or patterns or special paint, it’s just one color throughout and it’s just there.
That’s sort of how I felt inside right now. Blank, empty, irrelevant.
I wasn’t even sure how long I just sat there, staring at the shards of broken mirror, or how long I examined the blood sluggishly flowing from my hand before I finally moved. It could have been hours, or it could have been seconds.
Either way, I wasn’t really concerned.
I walked though my hallway, and down the stairs with the wall ever present in my head. I didn’t dwell on anything; the bright colors, the different shapes, the thrumming sounds or the few smells…nothing. I had gone back to the way I was before Sage, Finn, and Payton had come into my life. Before I cared.
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” came a hushed voice, the harsh tone cracking my wall for just one second, and I paused slightly, stopping my hand from opening the kitchen door to listen.
Yes, I knew I shouldn’t be eavesdropping because it was not only rude but wrong yet I couldn’t resist, the tone of both voices, and my curiosity getting the better of me.
So sue me.
“I don’t know what’s been up with him lately, I’m really worried, and I have a bad feeling…where do you think he went on his walk this time?….What if he doesn’t come back?” another voice asked, and I was pretty sure that this was Finn. He was the worrying type, it seemed.
I discerned they were talking about Sage not only because it was obvious, and he was the only one not present but also because I was pretty sure those two didn’t really know how to make other friends.
“The hospital maybe? He was supposed to go last week. And he’ll come back…I’ve never seen him like this, ” whispered Payton, his voice too, laced with worry. If Payton was worried then that meant it was serious, and a sense of worry seemed to settle deep in my stomach too.
“He could be there…but aren’t the visiting hours over?”
“I don’t remember, and Sage has a way of sweet talking his way around visiting hours…then again, maybe he’s at the cemetery then? Or the bar? He can’t be playing at the club.”
“Well,” sighed Finn, aggravation settling in his tone underneath the worry, “he won’t answer my texts or calls so I’ll just leave him be…for now.”
“Maybe we could ask Schuyler to call him,” speculated Payton out of the blue, his voice sounding like he was dropping a bomb that he’d been holding onto too long, “he would answer her, I know it.”
“Bros before hoes dude, he wouldn’t answer.”
“Chicks before dicks idiot, he would answer.”
“Best friends over dead ends.”
“Potential sex over the noncomplex.”
“Wangs before bangs.”
“Boobs before noobs.”
“Dudes before prudes.”
“Hotties before huge stupid smelly dickheads LIKE YOU!”
“Jock straps before——HEY, THAT DOESN’T EVEN RHYME!”
“Yeah, well my fist rhymes with your FACE! ‘Tis a beautiful melody, wanna see?”
This last shouted comment was followed by a low muffled thump, and some screeching that sounded too girly to possibly be coming from either of those two, but then again…
I sighed out of pure fatigue, and entered the kitchen after taking several steadying breaths, and getting my walls back in place. I was stable.
I came across Payton and Finn (Obviously) rolling around on the ground with the upper part of their bodies obscured by the bathroom door.
“Guys,” I said, my voice barely audible, even to myself. They ignored me, which was fine with me. Normally, I would have yelled or made my presence known, but not now. I was stable.
“You’re crushing my baby maker, geroff!!!” Finn gasped, his head reappearing around the door as they continued thrashing around. His face was flushed from the fight, or maybe it was from Payton kneeling on his chest and…other sensitive areas. Ouch.
“Good, I would hate for you to reproduce! Can’t imagine something looking as ugly as you,” snarled Payton as Finn threw his body off his own, his arm retreated behind him as he reached behind him to grab what I assumed was a weapon of some sort. Finn did the same.
Oh no.
“Admit I’m right or I’ll blow your head off,” Payton spat out, holding my very girly purple blow drier pointed strait at Finn’s head while Finn brandished the dirty toilet bowl brush. If this had happened sometime earlier today, I might have laughed at their sheer likeable stupidity, but now I didn’t find it very humorous, not even when Finn actually took Payton’s words as a threat.
“W-w-w-what is that thing?” he asked with frightened eyes, his face paler than mere minutes ago. His hand holding the toilet boil brush dropped slightly, as he eyed Payton’s fierce “weapon.” He didn’t know what a blow drier was?
“If you thought I was crushing your baby maker before, wait until I hit you with this,” Payton laughed manically, looking very crazy with his hair sticking almost straight up due to the scuffle. His face deviously excited, he faked left then right, and pretended to turn the drier on, aiming the fake stream of air right at Finn’s “baby maker.”
“NO!” Finn squealed in a very high-pitched voice, darting into the hallway, and disappearing into the foyer without another peep. His abandoned toilet brush lay forgotten on the floor.
Payton appeared immensely satisfied, chuckling to himself and not even noticing me watching him. “Idiot, like this magical girly device could actually hurt anyone,” he sniggered while messing with the buttons in a cocky manner.
“AH! HELP ME JESUS! HELP ME SATAN! HELP ME KANYE, WITH YOUR POWERS OF DOUCHE!” he screamed shrilly after accidently turning the blow dryer on, and comically hitting himself with a blast of hot air right in the face. He dropped the blow dryer, kicked it viciously for good measure while blinded, and bounded straight into me.
Due to the fact that I in no way saw that coming, I didn’t move out of the way in time, resulting in the both of us tumbling to the floor. Since luck always seemed to be on my side I was the one on the bottom, or in other words, the one who painfully hit the floor AND then got a heavy body slammed into me.
Today was turning out oh so good, I couldn’t wait for the rest of it.
“Ugh,” I grunted like some kind of animal, not really able to form any actual coherent words. Payton felt like he weighed ten thousand pounds, and judging by my empty fridge, and cupboards, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.
“Whoa, I thought Sage was the one trying to get on top of you. Who would have guessed that I would be the first one?” Payton chuckled, his head on my chest like a child’s. When I made no move to answer his inquiry, he raised his head while frowning, something I had only seen him do a couple times. It damped his good looks, and his eyes now resembled that of a puppy told it was being bad.
Wall, remember the wall. I didn’t care.
“What’s wrong, Schuyler?” he asked, his eyes and voice filled with real concern. I blanched, wanting to tell him but remembering in time about my wall. Then I wondered, was my new change that obvious on my face? I asked as much, in a roundabout way of course.
“Nothing, why would you think something’s wrong?” I kept my voice as normal as possible, trying to seem nonchalant.
“The fact that you didn’t inflict violence on me for saying Sage wanted to sleep with you for one, and you don’t seem to mind me crushing the crap out of you, which normally I’m sure you would have yelled at me by now,” he finished somberly, not cracking one joke or smiling which made my wall crack a bit; I hated it when others suffered on my behalf. My suffering was bad enough to bear, others shouldn’t have to as well.
“Nerves,” I fake chuckled, the sound hurting my ears since I was so used to actually laughing now. I’d forget, eventually. I had before.
Speaking of forgetting, I wondered how long Adrian had been in the apartment; it seemed like ages, but that was probably just because I had forgotten about him completely. Maybe I would let that slip later, his ego needed to be taken down some more…
Frowning but not replying to my answer, Payton pulled me up to stand without another word, and walked off looking disappointed while making no jokes, not pressing the issue, or getting angry. It was actually much worse than if he had done any of those things. Something in my chest panged, maybe what was left of my heart, and I scolded myself again; I kept forgetting my wall of indifference.
I used to be so good at blocking people I had come to love out, why now, was I so extremely bad at it? Why did I suddenly have the will to care so much?
I had lost all the friends I had ever had, watched them talk to me day after day, asking me repeatedly if I was ok or if anything was wrong, I’d replied nothing day after day. With no feelings whatsoever, I watched them slowly stop asking, watched them slowly stop caring for me, and yet it didn’t bother me one bit.
I watched my brother, a strong, humble person turn into something he wasn’t, something horrible and I hadn’t even done anything to stop him. I watched him become scared of me, watched him move away. He left me like they all did.
None of these things caused me pain, yet now I could suddenly care about people? I could almost be…normal?
Why? Why now?
Unable to answer, I entered the foyer silently while wiping the questions and few tears away so that the wall could secure itself. I was so ready for the night to be over with. If only.
Sadly, the night had only begun.
Yay.
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Leave me a comment pretty please, even if it is just to yell at me, i will still be greatful! Next chapter should be up in a minute :)... or maybe :( idk :P