"People fight, they get angry, they do drugs, and they do crazy things." - Steve Adler, American lawyer and Democratic politician
-Two years ago-
Maggie and I are playing grounders with Dallas and his brothers. The park is empty, it's almost dark, and I haven't lost one round. Easton, Wyatt, and Jack have continuously been it, Maggie's been it once, and Dallas is currently staring at me from the bottom of the play structure.
"I'm coming for you," he says.
"You're just bitter that Jack caught you," I tease. Jack, Easton and Wyatt are triplets and two years younger than Maggie. All with sandy blonde hair and bright eyes. All bad at games, and especially at this one.
"I'm actually more annoyed that you haven't lost yet," he smirks. He quickly sticks his arm through the bars of the structure and I jump back so he doesn't touch me. Maggie and his brothers laughing at the situation. "Come on, Rosie, it'll be fun."
"It won't be," I assure him. Running on up a slide with my eyes closed only to fall in the ant-infested sand just doesn't sound like a good time to me.
"It will be," he laughs, "Just come closer and let me touch you."
"That sounds wrong," I laugh.
"At least Stella isn't here," he smirks. I want to ask him why he would care if Stella were here - I'm sure she would find it funny - but I think better of it. He's always making those sort of comments, there's no need to say anything.
I slowly back up and take a step to the lowest part of the play structure where the kids are. They're huddled together in a corner but Maggie's smarter than them - she knows he's not going to lay a finger of anyone but me - so she's calmly watching us and laughs when the triplets scream
"If you don't forfeit," Dallas taunts. "I'll have to climb up there and grab you."
"You can try," I laugh as he lunges at me through the bars, "But you'll fail."
"I'm faster than you," he states, getting closer to the stairs of the play structure.
"I'm smarter," the triplets cackle at my remark and Maggie's trying not to smile. If he tries getting up here, his eyes will have to close, and one movement from me will have him missing his target and blindly stumbling around the structure. Even if I'm cornered, I'm sure I can duck given my size.
"You've left me no choice, Rosie," he sighs before sprinting towards the structure and shutting his eyes. I jumped away from his wandering hands and escape under his arm, hurrying to the sand. If he yells grounders then I'm screwed.
I'm running. Running as fast as my legs will take me, as far away from the structure as possible without leaving the park. I can't get caught. I've gone so many rounds without being tagged, I am not starting now.
Without warning, a body crashed into mine. They're tall and lean and tackle me to the ground. Suddenly my joy has ended, my adrenaline of needing to win has faded, and I don't recognize who is on top of me but I feel like I should. They're familiar. Their body shape, their weight, everything. Just not the face. Their face is bright red.
I scream. Loud.
The face comes closer to me and all I can hear is buzzing. Buzzing like a bug is near me and taunting me before it speaks. I realize that the man's face is made of bugs - red ones that clustered together to form the shape of a head. It makes me wonder if his whole body is made of them and they're just covered by clothes.
I continue to scream. Bugs are underneath me, crawling from the long grass to my ears, talking to me. There's too many to comprehend any sentences or words, but I know they're talking to me.
There are too many bugs out. All I can hear are small voices screaming in my hears. I can feel them scurrying across my body. I try to get up, to push the man off of me, but I can't. I can't move. All I can do is sit and scream.
"Are you okay?" I hear. In a split second the bugs are gone and I can move, hear, and stop screaming. In fact, my mouth is closed, as if I never screamed. I open my eyes to see Dallas kneeling over me.
"What happened?" I ask. Clearly what just happened wasn't real. It felt real, though. The voices always feel real.
"I got you," he smiled. "I'll always get you."
-Present day-
They decided to sit outside on the bleachers. My back rested on the seat behind me, Dallas sitting in front of my legs, and Stella lying between us, staring at the clouds. I'm eating a sandwich that Dallas's mom made, he has a burger from the cafeteria, and Stella has a Gatorade.
"Dallas," Stella whines. "Tell Rose about your cousin."
"I was going to," Dallas laughs, poking her arm.
"You have a cousin?" I ask. I know he has a cousin that's about two years old, Samuel, from his mom's side, but I'm assuming that the toddler isn't who they're talking about.
"He does," Stella chimes. "He's our age and probably not ugly seeing as he's related to Dallas. Maybe you two will hit it off and we can all double date or something."
Stella sometimes likes to casually insert her wanting me to get a boyfriend into conversations. Last month it was our exchange student from Spain who ended up being an asshole and her dreams were crushed. Javier ended up hating the school and leaving, anyway.
"I do," Dallas shrugs, ignoring Stella's comment. "His name is Harper and he's coming to the school soon."
"When is he coming?" I ask with a mouth full of food.
"Tomorrow," he answers. "He's moving in tonight, so I'm supposed to show him around."
"Why didn't I know he was coming earlier?" I wonder.
"You never answered my texts," Dallas points out. I read them and none of them mentioned anything about his cousin coming but I suppose his argument is that if I answered he would have told me. I should apologize for ignoring him.
"I'm sorry about that, I was helping Maggie with school work," I try to come with an excuse better than being freaked out by flies but I can't seem to. "I meant to text you back but so many things came up that I just didn't get around to it."
A group of girls came near us, waving to Stella. Stella screams and rushes over to them, jumping and squealing. They're loud but they're too far out of earshot to make out what they're saying. I guess it's fine - she wasn't really part of the conversation, anyway.
"It's alright," he quickly changes the subject. "Last week when we went to the museum I think I left my hat at your place so maybe we can catch up tonight, yeah? Before Harper is supposed to come, I can tell you about him."
"That would be nice," as long as Maggie or mom is in the room, too. I need as many people near me as possible - I'm not risking another mental episode where I'm paralyzed and see flies everywhere.
"We can also talk about Stella," he says casually.
"Why?" I'm usually not one for gossip - that's one thing Stella and I don't have in common. She'll run her mouth about anything you tell her if you're not careful.
"There's just things I need to talk about with you."
"Is this about the marriage proposal?"
"Yeah... and other stuff."
"Like what?"
"Maybe the fact that he likes you more," I quickly turn around to catch the voice. I stare at the seat behind me to see an ant, standing on its hind legs and then falling back down, as if it's trying to get me back down to its level so that it can chat more.
That's not happening.
It will never happen.
"Like us," Dallas doesn't seem to take notice of the ant.
"What about us?" I ask, leaning towards him to get away from the insect. He doesn't get the chance to answer because Stella starts screaming at us.
"Guys!" Stella calls out. She's obviously excited about something. "Rachel's throwing a party tonight!"
Apparently nothing important.
"Can't go," Dallas yells back. "Harper's coming."
"I have homework," I lie. I don't know Rachel. I hate parties.
Stella slumps her shoulders and pouts, turning back to the group of girls.
"So disappointing to hear you lie," this time it was right next to my ear. I clap my hands together near my head and check. It was a mosquito. How did it know I was lying?
It knew I was lying because the voice isn't real. I have to keep reminding myself of that.
"I hate mosquitoes," Dallas nods to the squished bug in between my fingers, it's limbs ripped off and attached to my skin.
"Me too."
***
Dallas comes over in ten minutes to talk about his cousin and Stella so I'm taking this time to discuss the day with Maggie.
"So who was bothering you today?" I finally ask. I hate an elephant being in the room, I immediately feel the need to get rid of it whenever there is one.
"Just a boy," she tears at her bread, purposefully avoiding looking at me.
"What was he doing?" I pry. Maggie is the only person I'll actually try and get information out of - she won't say shit otherwise and she needs to start speaking up.
"He was calling me names," she said. "And he told me that dad was crazy."
What a fucker.
"I can report him and get him in shit," I tell her, immediately forming a plan on how to destroys this kid's life. He can't treat her like that and get away with it.
"Please don't," she begs.
"Why not?"
"That'll just make things worse - I'll be known as a tattletale."
"Better to be known as a tattler than a doormat."
She doesn't say much after that but I know the show knows I'm serious. I'll tell the principal that some kid is bullying my sister, I don't care if she wants me to or not. Maybe it'll make things worse, maybe telling a trusted adult will do absolutely nothing, but it's their job to take care of bullying and it might help. It's probably better than doing nothing.
"What's his name?" I ask for when I tell on him.
After sighing she answers, "Malakai... but don't mention my name if you tell anyone."
"How am I going to get him in trouble if I don't mention your name?"
"I don't know, but please don't."
"We'll see," I was absolutely mentioning her name.
I hear a knock at the door. Dallas is early. I excuse myself to go and answer just to find nobody there.
"Dallas?" I ask loudly.
"Norton misses you," I hear. "He hasn't seen his poor children in weeks."
That wasn't Dallas.
I swing my head around, looking anywhere for a visible insect. I can't see it.
"When will you visit him next? I was told to report back."
I see it above my head - a worm crawling on the edge of the door frame. I don't know how it got up there and part of me thinks that it was the one who knocked on the door, but I know that's impossible.
It has to be.
I jump for it only to have it fall at my feet. I try and stomp but it's too quick - it slithers into the grass and I begin to panic. I can't let it live if it knows how to knock on doors, that's terrifying.
For a split second, I swear I see it grow longer - it grew more than an inch in length and half an inch in width. It's massive.
I sidestep into the grass hoping to squish it. I can't see it anymore, though, and it's not under my feet. If it needed an answer for Dad then I don't see why it would run - it's a horrible messenger. It's not like it knows I'm trying to kill it.
"Boo!" I stumble back with the surprise from Dallas popping out of seemingly nowhere. Perhaps I was too sidetracked to notice he was in front of me in the first place. "You should have seen your face! You looked like you saw a ghost."
Worse; I saw an earthworm.
"Did you knock on the door?" I have to know if he knocked on the door; a worm shouldn't be able to do that.
"Yeah?" He seems confused. I don't care, I need to find that worm. I step beside him and frantically search the grass. "Are you okay? Sorry if I scared you."
"Did you happen to see an earthworm?" I ask.
"No..." he trails off. I'm sure he says more but I don't listen. Suddenly his arm his around me and I'm distracted from the worm.
"What?" I ask.
"I said that we should go inside, you seem kind of jumpy," he's worried about me. He should be - I'm going absolutely mental.
"Okay," I admit defeat. The worm was never going to get his answer anyway. Besides, my jars are almost all full.
"Hey Maggie," he greets her. She shyly nods and says that she has homework. She doesn't have homework, I asked her earlier. I don't want her to go - the fly incident can't happen again.
"You can stay," I offer her, almost pleading.
"It's okay," she says. Why does she want to leave me alone with him? "Math shouldn't wait."
She left.
"Where's Kate?" Dallas asks. I start to clean up anything that could attract bugs - sugar, crumbs... I even turned off the light. "Are you sure everything is okay?"
"Yeah, I'm just saving power," I can't have another tornado of houseflies. "Mom is at work, she doesn't have Thursdays off anymore."
"Why not?"
Because she doesn't want to be in the house any more than she has to.
"She likes money."
He laughs, knowing that isn't the truth. I close the window near the kettle.
"So when is your cousin coming?" I ask.
"Half an hour," he answers. "And despite what Stella said today, you two probably won't 'hit it off.'"
"Why not?" I wonder.
"He just got out of rehab," he says. "He's a dick and an addict and I don't think you should be near him."
"He might not be an addict now," I point out. "That's what rehab is for - to stop that kind of behaviour."
"He's still a douche," he grumbles.
"He shoots water up people's bodies?" I joke. Ho doesn't seem to think I'm funny. I take another quick glance around the kitchen - no Hexapods, nowhere they can get in, and nothing they can be attracted to. Perfect.
"Just stay away from him," he sighs.
"He won't want to hang out with me anyway," I point out. "People tend to stay away from me, they don't like me much."
I'm sure they're actually indifferent about me at this point, but when I was a bit younger I was teased a lot. Word got out about my dad and the kids weren't nice about it. It sucked.
"I like you," he says quietly.
"Thanks," I say, not wanting to discuss it further. I sound like a pessimist when I admit people don't like me. I'm not - high schoolers just have a bad taste in people.
"I mean it," he comes closer. I don't want to have this conversation.
"Thanks again," how do I get out of this? "Buddy."
"Buddy?" He chuckles. "Are you friend-zoning me?"
"You're always friend-zoned," I say. "You're practically engaged."
His face drops and he takes a step back.
"I should get going," he says.
"I thought you had half an hour?" I point out as he walked towards the door. I'm fine with him leaving, but he said earlier that he had more to talk about.
"He might get here early."
"I thought you wanted to talk about Stella?"
"Yeah... I think I'm going to say yes."
"Okay."
"Okay."
He left and he didn't even get his hat back.