L U K E
I had been avoiding Daisy. This was easy because she was avoiding me too. I was sure we could go on avoiding each other for the rest of the school year, at which point we would hopefully go to college in different cities, and never see each other again, thus making actively avoiding each other no longer necessary. I was sure and yet I couldn't avoid her anymore. I had to apologize.
I had apologized the morning after already, when I found her sleeping by the foot of my bed, and after she told me she had come in because she had heard me scream in the middle of the night. I had been having a nightmare, the same nightmare I always had, and after failing to wake me out of it, she had also failed to go back to sleep on the couch because I had grabbed her and refused to let go.
This was new. I had done plenty of strange things during my nightmares over the years, but never anything that included other people. Mostly I walked in my sleep, which often led to me falling down the stairs, or making it down and into the kitchen, which, in turn, often led to me fighting the air with a steak knife, sometimes a butter knife. These and many others had been the reason dad had started locking my bedroom door at night. I had jumped out of the window a few nights after that, but dad had taken care of locking that up from the outside too.
Daisy hadn't accepted my apologies that morning. She said it was just a nightmare, that it happened to the best of us. I was not the best of us, so that made no sense, but I hadn't known what else to say, and so I had hidden in the bathroom for a while, and eventually she had gone home, leaving behind only a thank you note with the words, let's just forget about it.
This proved to be harder than expected when a few days later I noticed I had left a bruise on her wrist. A bruise. I had grabbed her so hard for so long that I had bruised her. I had to apologize. Again.
Lunch break was about to end. I had finished my pizza slice sitting in the back of the school's kitchen, courtesy of Aida, who had let me hide there on the account of me being a good boy. I saw Daisy on the way to my locker, her bright pink shirt hard to miss by the stairs that led to the first floor.
"Hi," I tried. I had practiced this on the way to her, but my voice had broken down somewhere between the h and the i, something I didn't think was possible.
She looked up from her phone and smiled awkwardly, "Hi Luke."
"I've been avoiding you." I hadn't planned to say this.
"So have I," she admitted, putting her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. "But that's not new, is it?"
I smiled, "No, it's not."
"Right, so what's the problem?" she went on, the smile revindicating itself, "Cause I was reading a really good fanficâ"
"I'm sorry," I stopped her. This was nothing like what I had planned. "I wanted to say sorry again. Iâ I saw the bruise on your wrist. That was me, right? That nightâ"
"What bruise?" she asked, like a good liar. "Look, you need to get over yourself. I saw you in gym class. You can't even do a push upâ"
"I can do a push up."
"Not a very good one."
"That's not the point. I know I hurt you, I didn't mean it, and I think you know that, but I just wanted to say I'm sorry again. I have these nightmares. I've had them since I was a kid actually. I would rather not to have to talk about them, butâ"
"Luke," she stopped me again, grabbing me by the shoulders. "You don't have to talk about them. It's fine. We're fine. I promise."
She let go of me to hold out her pinky. The sleeve of her shirt fell down to her elbow when she did it and I could see the yellowing bruise on her wrist. I pointed at it.
"That bruise."
She shook her head, pinky still up in air, "I did that playing volleyball."
"You're lying."
"I'm not. I'm really shit at volleyball." She smiled, looking at her pinky and then back at me. I managed a smiled too and raised my arm to join my pinky with hers.
"Kinky," someone else said.
We dropped both our hands and turned around. Zoey was coming down the stairs in a knit vest and jeans, a big smile on her lips, hair barely up.
"I thought you were in class," Daisy said, surprised to see her.
"The teacher let us out early," Zoey explained. "What's going on?"
"Daisy still believes in pinky promises," I said.
"Yeah, so do I. What the fuck? They're sacred. You'll lose your pinky if you break one. Anyway, guess what I got us, Daisy?!"
Daisy showed her a half-smile, "What?"
"You have to guess."
"Just tell me."
"No."
"Come on."
"No. You have to guess."
"I don't know."
"You do."
I kept looking at them, not knowing if I should leave or not. Could I just walk away without saying a word? Would that be rude? Wouldn't it be ruder to interrupt whatever was happening between them? I decided I would stay.
Zoey pulled her phone out of her vest's pocket and after some typing showed the screen to Daisy, who said, "No fucking way!"
"Front row, baby!" was Zoey's add-on, right before breaking into a dance. Or at least I thought it was a dance. Daisy was smiling, teeth and everything, her eyes big and shiny as she watched Zoey move up and down the stairs, arms going up and down, then sideways, then up and down again.
I didn't know what to do. I didn't even know what was happening. Finally, Zoey stopped next to me, already short of breath, and showed me what was on the screen of her phone. Concert tickets. Of course. I didn't know the band.
"Cool," I said. "Cool. Cool. Cool."
Around us, the hall started crowding with other students. Daisy noticed and checked the time on her phone, then she grabbed Zoey's face and kissed it hard before saying, "I love you, but I have to go. I wanna get to practice early."
"Go be a superstar," Zoey said, pushing Daisy away from us, and then watching her disappear in the comings and goings of students. Then she turned to me. "What do you have next?"
I had expected her to just turn and leave once Daisy was gone, so it took me a while to compute that she was actually asking me something.
"Chemistry," I managed. "You?"
"Lunch break," she said, and she was going to say something else, but before she could, someone shouted my name from the end of the hallway. Most people didn't know my name, so I was confused. Zoey looked confused too. She climbed up a few steps to check who it was.
"It's Jason." She looked even more confused.
So was I, "You know Jason?"
She opened her mouth again, but somewhere in the hallway, coming our way in crutches, so did Jason, "I've been looking for you!"
Suddenly I could see him too, looking like he wanted to punch my face in, more and more as he got closer and closer. I didn't move. I didn't know how. I just kept looking at him move angrily through the thickening crowd of students. Next to me, Zoey had begun biting her nails.
"I think you should leave," she said under her breath.
"I can't."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Just leave."
Too late. Jason was standing right in front of us, his hand reaching for the collar of my sweatshirt so he could drag me closer to him. I got ready for whatever was coming. Not Zoey. Zoey reached out to grab Jason's hand and shake it off me.
"What are you doing?!" she asked.
"Stay out of this, Zoe."
"He knows you too?"
None of them answered. Instead, Jason said, "Daisy showed up on Saturday with a bruise on her wrist and dark circles under her fucking eyes. She said she slept over at a friend's house, but everyone knows she doesn't have any friends apart from Zoe, except perhaps you, Luke. So, what the fuck did you do to her?"
"It's not what you think." This was exactly what people said when things were exactly like what others were thinking, but I couldn't come up with anything better.
"Not what I think? I think you hurt Daisy and I think I'm gonna hurt you," he said, letting go of me so he could shake himself off of his crutches and punch me in the face better. Great. This was fucking great.
"I didn't mean â" Too late.
There was a fist coming my way. I had just enough time to cover my face with my hands and close my eyes, but then nothing happened. Not to me at least. I opened my eyes. Zoey had stepped in to try and stop Jason again and she had taken the punch to the face herself.
"I'm so sorry!" This was Jason, looking worried out of his mind, trying to get Zoey to let go of her face so he could see the damage he had done. She had a hand pressed against her mouth and she was shaking her head at him. She was trying to say something, but it was impossible to understand it. Jason tried to pull her hand away again, but she just turned her back at him.
"I'm so sorry." This was me, right before, "You're crying."
Behind her, Jason grabbed his crutches from the floor and made his way around her, so she was facing him again, "Let me see."
"I'm fine!" she said, even though she was crying. She was definitely crying.
"You're not," Jason said, pointing at the blood dripping from the hand she had pressed against her mouth. "You're bleeding."
"Let me take you to the infirmary," I said.
She shook her head, "You have class."
"I'll take you," Jason said, right as the bell rung. "I'm in my lunch break."
She shook her head again, said she could go herself under her breath, and then started making her way through the hallway. I followed. So did Jason. When he noticed we were both going after her, he stopped to hold one of his crutches in front of me. I stopped too.
"Haven't you done enough?" I couldn't help myself.
"Watch your mouth," he said â warned me â I didn't care. "And no, I haven't. Now get the fuck out of my face."
"I'm taking her â"
"No," he stopped me. "I'm taking her to the infirmary."
In truth, Zoey had already taken herself. She was nowhere to be seen and I was late for class. I looked at Jason.
"Fuck you."
Then I walked away.