Chapter 15: Chapter Fourteen

[A/N] Sorry this is late my darlings. This is a bit of a transitionary chapter... but we've gotta have them... sets us up for some fun... (˶≖ ᵕ ≖ ˵ )

Do you ever feel it at night? Like your head is heating up, and a terrible migraine strikes all at once, a ringing, a sharp pain, the low drum like a pulsing a headache marching closer. Black as anything, but suspended.

It's not like I'm dreaming. There's nothing there. There's nothing happening.

But I don't feel like I'm in my bed anymore.

I wade there in a world so dark I wonder if I'm dreaming that I've gone blind. It's peaceful. If not for the splitting migraine, and the strange prickling in my chest, it would be nice.

Sometimes I think I should open my eyes and look to see where I am, but when I eventually manage, I'm just in my bed.

I'm usually in my bed.

This time when I finally unglued my eyes I was still in that darkness, and then that darkness shifted as I moved and turned to look down at me.

Bright yellow eyes seemed to question me for getting up.

I blinked at the cat, before remembering where it came from, and slowly relaxing back against my pillow, breathing out softly. I felt well rested. The headache forgotten.

"Good morning." I told the cat.

It didn't seem to have been asleep. It meowed lightly.

It was laying on top of me, initially with one paw over one side of my neck and the other over my head, its upper body over my face.

"Are you hungry?" I asked it, my voice rumbling, low from sleep.

She ignored me. It was a she, I noticed, as it stretched its ass in my direction, tail curling and flipping up, and then jumped off of my bed.

"Aren't you weirdly relaxed being around me?" I asked the cat.

In typical cat fashion it didn't answer.

Instead it dug around with something under my bed and came back out with a sock of mine, jumped back on the bed  and started slapping it around, making an odd little growling noise.

I frowned at it. "Don't put holes in that. Those are my school socks. I only have two pairs."

I left to go to the bathroom and clean up and dressed for school. It was still dark outside but getting brighter, six thirty wasn't the time I usually got up but it was fine because I wanted to walk.

Then put out some food for the cat.

"I'll get you something nicer on my way back." I told her, sitting on the dog bed near her, leaning against the wall. "You can do a taste test. Is this all you ate at home?"

The cat sat quietly and ate with dedicated concentration.

That guy... with the sharp eyes and menacing gait, slightly dark skin and cold eyes... he'd be searching for him now.

My hand tingled, I clenched it lightly.

The cat ate so elegantly, not like Milk, Milk needed a tray under his bowl because he enjoyed spreading his food out and sticking his muzzle as far into the bowl as possible and then licking up the rest.

"Done cat?" I asked when she was finished. She looked at me, licked her paws, licked her legs, licked her paws and wiped her face, and then stepped up to me, slowly, almost as though she was trying not to scare me off, and curled up in my lap.

I sighed, I had to go to school, I didn't want to have to be driven there by leaving too late to reach it on time.

I meant to pick her up, but instead felt how soft her fur was and leaned down and buried my face in her side.

I closed my eyes for a moment, then pulled away and exhaled and she looked back at me when I set her down on the floor of the bathroom.

I stood up. "Sorry I have to leave you here, I don't have a litter box, I'll get one. I'll come back with something to play with..." I looked back at my sock laying on the floor near her food bowl. "Other than my sock."

Another small meow, a little odd sounding, like a wookiee but high pitched.

I grabbed my backpack and closed the door behind me, and then left my room.

Irene was just waking up, walking out of their bedroom in a bathrobe, dark circles under her eyes, looking around groggily. "What are you doing?" She seemed startled to see me standing there in the low gloom of the hallway.

"I'm going to school."

"Oh, well okay... that's good to see... I'm glad you're so eager..."

"There's a cat in my room."

"What?"

"A black cat."

"Why?" She looked baffled. "Why on earth do you have a cat in there!?"

I shrugged, and the lie came easily to me. "It's a friends cat. I'm keeping it for them. Their grandmother's staying with them, she's allergic to cats."

"For how long?" She looked incensed.

"A week and a half."

She looked deeply unhappy. "Really I think you should ask him if he doesn't have any other friends that could take care of this cat. I mean you're supposed to be out looking for Milk, not looking after another pet you won't take care of. If it's a stray you've picked up I'm going to very cross with you..." She narrowed her eyes at me.

It felt so strange to have so little of an emotional reaction to some of the things she said that I stood there for a while, feeling like I should know what to say in reply, but coming up short.

Instead I looked at her for a moment. "It isn't." I said, and without giving her a second look moved down the stairs, pulled on my shoes and left the house.

~⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣~

By the time I reached the school I was exactly on time. The sun was now a little brighter in the sky and the air still crisp and cold. There was a crowd of students collecting at the front. Girls hugging each other like they hadn't seen each other in years and kids getting dropped off.

Just as I reached the gate I noticed Irene's car pulling up. If I was being my usual self I'd have nervously jogged ahead, not wanting people to see Colby with me, but why would I bother? I had walked, he had been driven, that didn't look much like brothers.

I was used to being somewhat invisible, and make no mistake I all eyes were not on me, but the casual glance here and there, lingering just a little too long, the forced smiles of the teachers as they looked at me, friendly looking for a second, uncomfortable the next, even as I approached the class the way the few students inside went a little quieter... I realised the bruises on my face were still there. Somehow I'd forgotten about them, even as I'd shaved and washed and dressed.

I'd only been sitting in the class for about a minute before a teacher peeked in and called my name.

"Elliot?"

I looked over.

A female teacher I barely recognised from the hallways with brown curly hair tumbling down past her shoulders and green eyes crooked her finger for me to approach.

I got up and walked over.

"The headmaster wants to talk to you, alright? Won't be long. Got your things?"

I nodded.

She put a hand on my shoulder and directed me out of the classroom. We walked there and she told me to wait inside for the headmaster to come to speak to me and rolled in a swivel chair for me to sit on opposite his brown leather chair.

A moment later she was moving another chair inside the room next to me and the headmaster was followed by a very unhappy Patrick.

I waited for the subtle weight of fear to make me tense up, let the cold sweat brew on my back, maybe expand the air in the room until it seemed too thick to breathe in... but nothing happened.

Instead I waited patiently, almost bored.

I felt his eyes on me from the side, glancing at me after a while of me staring straight ahead.

"Right..." The headmaster looked us over for a moment and then leaned to look past us at the door. "Miss Sandy could you come back in and wait with us?"

She did so and sat in the corner in one of the heavy metal chairs.

"Is she not coming in then?"

"Caught in traffic I'm afraid sir." Miss Sandy replied.

He exhaled through his nose and folded his arms, looking between us with a discomforted expression.

"I'm glad you're feeling better Mr Brushwood."

I didn't reply, just stared at him.

He waited for a reply, then pursed his lips and turned to Patrick. "And your father was supposed to be in yesterday."

Patrick shrugged and leaned back in his chair, swinging slightly on the back legs. "He has a job sir."

The headmaster folded his hands on the table in front of him. "You really don't want to be pushing your luck right now young man. You should know how serious this situation is."

Patrick didn't appear convinced beside me, but did occasionally look at me and wait for me to look back, I could see it out of the corner of my eye.

The headmaster asked for me to describe everything that happened that night, and to go into detail, so that Patrick could then share his version of events. I kept it short, I didn't have the energy to say much more then 'they pushed me into the lake' and that sounded so pitifully small that I could see Patrick relax a little beside me.

Patricks version of events was that they were messing around and that I had volunteered myself to be thrown over the bridge but that I had tried to back out last minute by which point it was too late. It was such a good lie that for a moment I could see the headmaster genuinely believe it. Then he looked at the marks on my face, he pressed his lips together and asked who the other boys were that night.

Nearly all of the boys that were on the trip in the first place. Disciplining all of them would be a nightmare, which was why I got the feeling he was trying to pin it all on Patrick. But even that didn't work.

A moment later Patricks father burst in through the door with the navigational aid of another teacher, and grabbed his son by the shoulder and informed us both that they would be leaving.

"My son won't be slandered by this utter idiot." He glared at me with such a fire in his eyes that I would have been surprised if I wasn't so empty.

"Let go of me dad..." Patrick grumbled.

His dad moved closer to me, tapping a pointed index finger on my chest with his chest all puffed out, trying to broaden his already pretty broad shoulders. The guy clearly worked out and maybe even took steroids. "Do you realise what a serious crime it is to be slandering someone?!"

"Me?"

The headmaster tried to argue with him while I responded.

"I'm not slandering him. It's the truth."

"Yes you are, you're a dirty little liar!" He spat at me, his face red, maybe from anger, maybe from too much sun and too little sunscreen.

I wiped a drop of the saliva from my chin.

He turned and pushed his son through the door and then marched out ahead of him. The headmaster and Miss Sandy soon followed to chase him down to speak to him and Patrick glanced back at me through the door as I got up, ready to leave.

"If you write down a single name, try to get me in more trouble, even fucking talk about what happened in class. I'm going to kill you." He glared at me, fierce eyes flickering angrily.

"You had all that coming and more. I don't have anything to feel bad about. You fell in a fucking pond, big deal, we're guys, we mess around. This is why you don't have friends. Literally the whiniest fucking baby. Imagine calling an ambulance over falling in a fucking pond... Get over yourself." He hissed.

He disappeared before I could really reply but I had nothing to say. Instead I left for form room, where I assumed he had to be heading as well, unless he was suspended, the headmaster hadn't actually let me know.

For some reason the words settled in my head though, repeating themselves, like a window breaking, and a fresh breeze sneaking through.

You're a dirty little liar!

I hummed as I thought about it. Really, what was stopping me from lying to get what I wanted?

I was bad at lying though. I'd be no good at it...

[A/N] Thank you warmly to the Wattpad Creators Program and my patrons. My darlings. (づ ˘͈ ᵕ ˘͈ )づ 💖