James pressed his palms against my forearms, looking desperate

The Story of Gwynn Argon

James pressed his palms against my forearms, looking desperate.

“Lukas, please,” he whispered, “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

He almost looked like he was about to cry, and I couldn’t look at him anymore. How did he go from crazed murderer to the shaking mess in front of me?

“W-What rumor, James?” I lied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t, Lukas. It’s serious. Tell me what you heard.”

A few people were looking at us, but James ignored them, staring intently at me with large, pleading eyes.

“Let go of me, James. I’ll go outside with you, but…not here.”

He hesitated for a minute before taking a step back and following me outside. It was only the start of second period now, but I had a feeling we wouldn’t be going back to our classes that day.

Neither of us spoke as we walked to the edge of the school grounds, sitting in a small gathering of trees that would hide us well enough.

“What did you hear?” James asked after we had sat down.

I looked at the grass in front of me, pulling tufts of it out as I thought of what to say.

“Lukas.”

“It was just a stupid rumor, right? You didn’t hurt anyone. You wouldn’t!” I ripped a fistful of grass out so fast, a clump of dirt rose with it. I couldn’t bring myself to look up at him.

“What did you hear? I can’t confirm or deny anything unless you tell me what I supposedly did,” he answered calmly.

“Todd said you killed someone. No… You beat someone up. A senior. Did you?”

James sighed somewhere above me but I still didn’t look up.

“I didn’t kill anyone. And the guy hit me back.”

“So you did?” I cried, finally looking up at him. “You beat him up? Sent him to the hospital?”

“We got in a fight and started beating on each other. True, I did more damage, but its not like I came out of it just fine. Neither of us had to go to the hospital, but his mom freaked when she saw him and made him go anyway.”

“So…you did get into a fight at your old school?”

“Yes.”

“And you started it?”

“Yes,” he sighed.

“Okay, so you were in fight,” I summarized, more for myself than for him. “Why?”

“What?” Why did he look so surprised? Of course I would want to know why.

“Why did you get into a fight?” I asked again, speaking slowly and drawing out syllables.

His lips twitched slightly, holding back a smile, and as much as I wanted to snap that this was a serious question, I was glad he was acting a bit more like the James I met – laughing whenever he got a chance to.

“I got into a fight because that bastard was talking shit about my older sister,” he finally answered, his voice turning cold when he mentioned his sister.

“You have a sister?”

“Yeah, she’s twenty-one now and that fucker was saying…” James clenched his fists tightly. “We got into a fight over something he said about her and I punched him.”

“What did he say?”

James pressed his lips together, glancing up at me while thinking it over.

“If I tell you, you won’t tell anyone else?”

“I swear I won’t,” I nodded solemnly.

He was quiet for a little while before looking up at me.

“In the town I used to live in, news traveled fast. And the place was really small – I mean really small. Everyone knew each other and all that retarded, small town crap.

“My sister wanted to be an architect, so she went away to some big college in New York and it was a big deal in town. Most people were all amazed because its rare anyone would go from our home town straight to New York.”

“Your home town sounds like a cult colony,” I said. This place he was describing was just freaky.

“I know,” he laughed. “It wasn’t, though. It was a nice town. Like that one everyone throws a fit over in California. You know, the one that makes apple pies?”

“Yeah, you mean Julian.”

“Right, that place. Anyway, people were going apeshit over my sister’s school. Everyone was congratulating her and crap, but there’s always gotta be some bitches to ruin things, and it was the old people in town. They’d lived there all their lives and were against big cities and told my parents not to let her go. My mom and dad told them not to bother us, but the old hags wouldn’t shut up about it. They were telling anyone who would listen that my sister was going to be corrupted there and some shit like that.”

“Corrupted? How?”

“In my old town, people were really old-fashioned, I guess they just thought she’d come back wearing barely anything and smoking and cussing or something.”

“So what happened?” I leaned closer to him slightly, eager to hear his big secret. Call me what you want, but I can’t resist gossip. I love hearing it, I don’t know why. I don’t tell people stuff, but I’ll sit listening in on someone’s conversation for hours as long as they have some interesting news.

“She came back pregnant.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. She came back after a year of school with transfer papers. She told our family she wouldn’t go back to school in New York and would find one closer, even if it didn’t have a big reputation.

“My parents freaked because they were really happy about her going to college, and wanted to know why, but she wouldn’t tell them. It wasn’t until almost three months later that we realized she was pregnant.”

“Three months? Wouldn’t she already be barfing every morning or something? Or get some baby fat?”

“Gwynn – oh, that’s my sister – always wakes up early and her room was on the top floor, so no one heard her up there. Mom finally noticed first and tried asking who the father was, but she wouldn’t tell her. Mom tried really hard for a few weeks, but when Gwynn wouldn’t tell her who the father was, mom told Dad.”

“So Gwynn told your parents then?” I asked, frowning. I couldn’t blame Gwynn for not saying anything, especially to her family in such an old-fashioned town.

“No, she only told me. We’re really close, so after she couldn’t hold it any longer, I guess she felt the most comfortable telling me.”

James leaned back against the tree behind him, looking up at the leaves above him and avoiding my eyes.

“I thought she had just gone too fast with a boyfriend, but she didn’t even know the guy’s name.”

“Did she go to a party or something? She got drunk?”

“It was at a party, but she wasn’t drunk. The guy was, though.”

“He…”

“Forced her. She told me she couldn’t push him off and everyone was downstairs and didn’t hear her calling for help. It was a party for the school year ending, and she got a plane home the next week after seeing if she had any diseases from it.”

“Did, I mean, does she?” I whispered. James looked like he was going to cry. Or scream. Or beat the shit out of me.

“No, she’s clean,” he sighed, dropping his head forward to scratch the back of his neck. “She said it was easier to tell our parents after she had told me, and I sat with her when she told them. My parents asked what she wanted to do and Gwynn said she’d keep the baby. Our parents told the family to stay quiet about it, but you can only hide pregnancy for so long. The town found out, but we all refused to saying anything about it.”

“And that guy made fun of you for it?”

“No, he told everyone but me that she was a whore,” he ground out.

“What a bitch!” I shouted.

James smiled a bit and leaned forward to clap a hand over my mouth.

“Shh, Lukas! We’re gonna get caught if you scream like that. Now be quiet and I’ll tell you rest, okay?”

I nodded against his hand and he let me go, leaning back against the tree again to continue the story.

“When I found out, I confronted him, and he finally said it to my face. And so, the famous fight ensued,” he said, smiling a bit. “It felt great to hit that jackass. I met him after school on this forest path and fought for a while until my friend pulled us apart and said someone called the cops. I went home and sat with my sister because I knew we’d get a call from either the cops or his parents soon, and his mom called a half hour later.”

“Were your parents mad?”

“They were angry I had fought someone, but when I told them why, they just told me off about fighting and let me off with that. “

“What did his mom say when she called?”

“She called me a menace and said she was going to press charges. There was this big deal because that lady just wouldn’t let it go, and my dad finally managed to calm her down after a month of her bitching constantly. She had refused to listen to my side of the story, but my dad cornered her and made her listen. When I told her what her son said, she didn’t believe me and said I was lying, but kids at school vouched for me.”

“So she dropped the charges?”

“No, she called my sister a whore, too. My mom was the one who started screaming at her.” James smiled to himself at the memory. “Gwynn agreed to tell the lady what happened, and that stupid bitch finally had the decency to apologize and drop the charges. She promised not to tell people, but we moved anyway.”

“How do people at school know about it, though?” I asked. The story seemed believable, but he didn’t say he had been expelled, so how would our classmates know?

“I didn’t know why at first, either. I called my friend after I moved and he said that someone’s cousin from out of town had been down to visit when it happened and he told people at his school, who told others, and so on.”

He sighed and closed his eyes for a long time. “You know, you hear things like that happening, but never in real life.”

“Yeah, total movie-verse! So people wouldn’t leave you alone about it?”

“Yeah, we had to move from my last school and ended up here.” He looked at me and smiled. “It would suck if I had to move again.”

“Don’t move,” I whined. “I’ll tell Aaron and Todd to shut up, or tell them some other story to distract them.”

“I doubt that’ll work, Lukas.”

“Don’t worry, people here are retards and have short attention spans. You’ll be fine.”

He grinned widely, finally looking back to normal. “Sounds great.” He looked back across the PE field to the school. “Want to go back?”

“Ugh! No!”

“My sister’s the only one home today, wanna ditch to my house? Mom and Dad won’t be home until after we’re due home from school.”

“Sure, we can watch Peter Pan,” I teased.

“Shut up,” he laughed, “I got a little brother, so Disney movies are all over.”

“You do? I’m an only child, so all the kid stuff is in storage.”

“An only child? How lonely,” he frowned. “I’ve got my kid brother, Benjamin, and my nephew, Darell, so it’s never lonely at home.”

“I like the quiet. Kids don’t seem too like me too much, anyway.”

James smiled strangely. “Really? You don’t like kids?”

“They’re hands are always sticky,” I said. “Little kids are so gross! They always have something on them and they cry for everything.”

“Oh, you’ll love my house, then,” James said. He had a weird little smile on his face.

--

So this chapter is shorter than my new average of about eight-ten pages, but six page isn’t too bad.

I was looking at my account the other day when I realized that in two months, it would be a year since the last time I updated this story. I couldn’t believe it, and I’ve been updating a bit lately, so I decided to write this chapter, next.

Because of my lack of updates, most of you don’t know about my bet, HurtMe. Well, she rocks and you should read her stuff.

So...Wanna hear excuses? Of course you do! Well, I’m lazy, I can’t sleep lately, so when I’m “up” during the day, I can’t really focus on anything, and as the summer is slowly winding down, I have to get my homework finished. Also the usual bouts of depression have hit, per usual. End of excuses.