Chapter 27: Chapter Twenty Six

[A/N]  Sorry about the delay, I have a lot of other books to write and I try to write them in order. Then I decided the chapter needed some revisiting. So much to do... so much to do...

Just for fun I searched around for a face to put to Arran. I usually don't because I know people have already got an image in mind. But I found a German model called Désiré Mia who feels like he fits my version of him. I would have added other images but it only lets me post one...

Thoughts?

The following morning Colby and I were bundled into the backseat to head off to the mall with our mother and father, for some quality bonding time at a restaurant called Bologna that employed a thirty one year old waitress that used to babysit us that my father stares at every time she's in view.

I never liked going there, the atmosphere was uncomfortable between us and the conversation nearly always dissolved into an argument where I was made out to be the bad guy, someone with an uncontrollable temper who would probably shoot all of them dead one day.

Nearly every other time we went there I'd gotten red in the face and close to kicking something and stormed out, accompanied by the knowledge that they were definitely talking about me, agreeing on just how terrible explosive my temper was, and how much more calm the atmosphere was without me.

It got to a point where I really felt like the servers there must have felt the same way about me, they only saw me storming off and my parents were socially conscious enough to never argue with me while in front of others so it was just me arguing in front of them while they brought up the drinks.

At some point I'd realised the slight sourness to their expressions when they addressed me. Only our ex babysitter smiled at me when she took my order.

This time I sat down and smiled at them as I ordered the food and saw them look a little surprised, but smile back.

It was around about when my food arrived that I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.

We'd talked on and off throughout the night but Haley had clearly fallen asleep at some point.

Actually, we got on pretty well.

I wasn't entirely sure how good that was.

She was a surprisingly genuine person, her love of poetry wasn't a half-hearted attempt to look deep or intellectual, she didn't get great grades and wanted to become an equine doctor and liked to crochet. She sent me pictures of things she had crocheted. They were very cute.

I couldn't quite wrap my head around the fact that she was dating someone like Pierson.

The way they chatted about girls I'd have thought they'd be dating those ones that have those black feather boas for eyelashes and colour their lips a pasty pale white who laugh obnoxiously loudly while discussing how cliché one of their friends are.

I looked at the pasta in front of me and looked over at my family, Colby was busy picking out the pickles from his burger and my dad was cutting up his wife's steak while observed him closely, well satisfied.

I waited for a moment until I saw Colby sink his teeth into his burger, his first bite always the largest.

"Right." I stood up. "I prefer cold pasta, so I'm going to go look around for a bit and be right back, okay?" They all blinked up at me shock. "Colby, you wanna come with too?"

He tried to chew his bite fast but couldn't get it down fast enough.

"Alright." I smiled and and left the booth without waiting for a reply.

I doubt he would have come with, given the food had just arrived, but I didn't want him to just in case. Ironically Colby didn't actually get that much time to hang out on his own because Irene followed him everywhere, and I could tell he would usually jump at the occasion when it appeared.

I took my coat with me, because it had my phone and some money in it.

I moved to a bench in the middle of the shopping centre and sat down with a lemonade to message her.

We chatted for a while and I felt oddly relaxed sitting there just texting as people moved by.

Haley:  why dont you have a pciture of yourself for your profile?

I hummed and smiled after a moment.

Me:  I'd get in trouble with my friends haha

Haley:  ??

This was only a part of the conversation, but a notable part. This was because only about ten or fifteen minutes since she asked that question, with us continuing to converse, and her sending me all of the photos in her camera roll of a half finished octopus plushie she was crocheting, I suddenly spotted them.

Patrick, Pierson, Tariq, Adam and someone else I didn't recognise moving through the shopping centre together.

I stood up slowly and blinked at them.

I forgot how close we all lived.

I tucked the phone in my pocket, took my lemonade and followed them at a distance.

There was a sort of buzz in my heels. I wasn't even sure what I was following them for but it felt weird. I think I felt, for the first time, as though I was hunting them. And as bad as that sounded, it felt nice.

Adam laughed raucously at something Patrick said, pressed together the can in his hand and chucked it at a rubbish bin, nearly catching someone else walking between them and the bin. They bought some ice cream which they shared between the four of them before apparently deciding they didn't care about it and leaving it on top of the next rubbish bin outside the Apple store and headed inside.

I didn't follow them inside but watched from outside.

The store sort of resembled a fish tank, I realised, as I watched them move through the well illuminated store, laughing and messing about with the devices.

For a while they chatted normally, quietly, between each other, but I was too far away to hear anything, they looked briefly annoyed with each other and then picked out an iPad on display and started taking selfies with it, drawing up some more of that fake laughter.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, but I barely felt it.

I watched and blinked slowly as the lightbulb above my head flickered into life.

I waited for what must have been only a few minutes but felt like a whole hour for them to leave and then walked slowly back up to the device they had been using.

I opened the camera roll.

I tried to send it to myself but the account wasn't connected to an email so I stood there for a while and eventually took a phone with my phone, impressively this worked out pretty well, it would be hard to tell it was a photo of a screen at all.

Opened up my phone as I headed back.

Me:  you can have a photo of me tho. so y know what i look like

Me: [Image #183 Sent]

I returned happily to the restaurant where my family judged me with puzzled expressions, but limited interest.

Haley: oh thnx

Me:  handsome? lol

She took a while to respond to that and I almost thought I lost her, which would have been fine too, for my purposes this much should be enough.

But she did reply.

Haley: honest ly thought youd look totally different.

Haley:  arent you one of my bfs friends??

Haley:  you called me fat...

My blinked at the screen and looked around for a moment, unsure how to reply.

I'd completely forgotten she might have met Adam before, even interacted with him already. Did that change things?

I licked my lips and took a breath.

Me:  that was because he was right there... shld i have said u were hot right in front of him?

I had to assume Pierson was there, because otherwise I wasn't sure how the two might have met.

Her next reply took even longer.

Haley:  but why say something so mean?

Me:  didnt kno what to say. i stared too long.

Haley:  you are flirting with me then? be honest.

My reply took even longer than hers. I had to be careful here, I had to picture him, had to remember the way he spoke, make it something that felt right, and not forget to finish with an insult.

Me:  yes

Me:  its not like he cares about you

Me:  and obviously he thinks you're ugly as shit

Me:  or hed post pictures of you

Me:  its not like he d care if we slept togehter. hes cheating on you all the time anyway. he doesnt talk about you but he talks about other girls. no one fuckin likes him.

Me:  im an upgrade

~⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣~

There was a strange hostility in the air by the time I returned to school on Monday. I got there late because I hung up a few more posters on my way to school. I took my time, enjoyed the walk, I never realised before how nice the area was. Long tall redbrick buildings flanked either side of two clean streets with aesthetically cracked pavements and the young twigs of birch and maple trees which lined them, even the asphalt of the road seemed to be cleaner than most other streets.

I even admired the school building on the way in, well I tried, there wasn't much I could pick out to describe as aesthetically pleasing about it but I appreciated the clean windows.

When I got to registration Miss Sharma was already half way through the list and she frowned at me as I entered and ushered me inside. I said nothing and just sat down.

Today I was invisible again.

Arran stared out of the window, leaning back in his chair, and didn't acknowledge or look at me as I entered the room, nor did he answer to his name as Sharma called it, stared at him, shook her head slightly and still marked him with a tick in the registration book.

I relaxed in my seat.

As usual she left to grab a secret smoke break while registration extended into a self study period.

There was whispering at the back of the class.

I didn't look, I felt strangely calm.

The sun outside was warm on my face and the breeze sounded like waves. I closed my eyes and for a split second dreamed of a boat at sea on a sunny calm day, the rusted hull disguised by the blanket of water, its anchor was somewhere behind it.

Someone threw something behind us and it clattered across the floor loudly, a girl sitting at the table next to ours squeaked and I was just one of many of us who looked back to see what was going on.

Pierson was red in face, Adam, who already had a pink mark on his cheek was shaking his head as he snatched a sharpener off the ground where it had cracked. "You're such a mental patient..." He hissed. "Fucking get a straightjacket!"

Pierson's eyes nearly bulged from his head. "Do you have a sister? Huh?! Do you have a sister?" His voice got louder.

Adam got up from his chair and stuck his chest out. "You wanna fight me?! Yeah?! You wanna threaten me?! Are you fucking mental?!"

Pierson got up and matched him but both of them were wrestled back. Patrick grabbed a choke hold on Pierson and pulled him back, there was some squabbling between them Tariq pushed Nick for whatever reason and then shoved Adam off of Pierson and bear hugged him.

"You're both mental!" Patrick snapped. "Sit the fuck down!"

There was some glaring and posturing back and forth for a while but the incident winded down with both parties reluctantly being shoved back down into their seats and cussing at each other.

"Idiot bitch..."

"Test me." Pierson hissed.

The only people in class that didn't seem to be paying attention to the group in the back was myself and... Arran.

He sat as though completely separated from the activity taking place only two desks behind him. Lounged was probably a better word, leaned back and appeared to almost not notice them at all.

He was chewing gum, I realised, and the more I stared, looked a little tired.

He rolled his neck and his eyes slowly slid to me, catching me in the act.

I looked away quickly.

When I next looked up I realised Victor had arrived at some point, and so had Miss Sharma.

He was staring at me from across the room, and smiled at me when I smiled at him.

In the past I noticed the moment he entered, every time without fail. My eyes remained glued to him from when he took his first step into the room to fifteen minutes into the lesson when he finally, possibly, acknowledged me with an arresting smile.

This time he must have walked in quietly, like a ghost.

"I hope that's not all you planned." Came the smooth voice from behind me that startled me.

I turned around to look at him.

A cold disconnected gaze stared back, hooded and unblinking, I always felt strange with those eyes on me. A tingle that came with a certain warmth crawling up my neck, a hyperawareness creeping up my shoulders. Between us the air seemed warmer and harder to breathe than the air did anywhere else.

He chewed the chewing gum weirdly too, his jaw flexed as he rolled it between his teeth, and then he swiped the bottom lip with his tongue. I watched transfixed because I wasn't thinking, my heart sped up and I kept absorbing the sight.

He stared back at me, eyes that felt too far away to see me, yet blazing enough to capture every detail from my pores to the hairs on my jaw.

He slowly raised a brow.

My heart thumped in my chest and I realised what I was doing.

I looked back up at his eyes, overcompensating and edging towards his forehead.

"That would be a waste of a cat." I replied smoothly, my voice low and relatively quiet, and I turned to face ahead of me.

Was it something about the eyes that made me feel so strange? The thumping heart, the warm skin, the clammy hands. Nervousness, I mean it wasn't odd to feel this way given what I knew about him, but it felt strange. I felt hot.

Being so hyperaware of him felt like hard work.

I looked off into the classroom and saw Victor looking at me again, his expression flat at first, then another charismatic smile painting his lips.

I meant to wave but he looked down before I could fully raise my hand.

His smile dripped away from his face nearly immediately as he looked down at his textbook.

Instead, just for a split second, something completely disinterested and frosty appeared, as though he had completely lost interest in me all of a sudden.

[A/N]  Just as a quick explanation in case the line doesn't seem like it makes much sense; by 'that would be a waste of a cat' he means the bargain he made for the knife would be pointless if he didn't use it.

As per always, warm hugs and thanks to the Wattpad Creator Program and my patrons... Maybe if the WPC is on board I can give you guys physical copies as loyalty rewards when the book is finished.  (ฅ' ˘ 'ฅ) ˚⊹ ᰔ