Τέσερα
"Four"
▷ Play
When's Mom getting home?" I ask impatiently. Dad winces at my question, and that confuses me. Mom's late getting home, which is weird. Usually, she's here before I am, even if I do have a car now.
"Be patient, Derek. She's at a doctor's appointment." Dad has always been a man of simple phrases, of few words. I suspect that's where I got it. I know it's stupid to worry about Mom – a routine check-up is hardly anything to get excited over. But somehow, I just have this really sinking feeling….
◁◁ Rewind
…It happened a few days ago. Mom fainted while she was working in the kitchen and Dad had to revive her. I was only there for the last two minutes of that ordeal, thank God. I'd come home from school only to find Mom passed out on the couch and Dad poised to call 911.
After that, she promised to set up a doctor's appointment, just to make sure. After all, she hasn't been feeling on top of it, lately.
▷ Play
My head darts in the direction of the kitchen door the minute I hear it open. I can feel my mouth crack into a warm grin at the sight of my mother: Mom is my saving grace. I love my Dad, please believe, but Mom has always been the one who helped me through the tougher times. From every cut and laceration to the first heartbreak, she has been there to hold my hand and talk me through it.
Mom never gives me advice, just her experiences.
"How are you feeling?" I ask reflexively. Dad's already standing in the doorway behind me. I'm sure I could guess what his face looks like; no matter what's going on between them, my Dad always looks at Mom like it's the first time he's seeing her. I hope that I might find someone who makes me do that someday.
"I'm fine, Derek, sweetie." As if nothing ever happened, Mom bustles into the kitchen, setting down bags of groceries. "Allan, could you help me put this stuff away?"
"I'll help too, Mom." I hop off my seat, but Mom stops me.
"No honey, you'll just be in the way."
"Oh. Okay." I sit back and lose myself in my thoughts with the crinkling of plastic bags filling my ears. I find myself lingering on Carson….
◁◁ Rewind
Charity is saying something to me, waving her frail hands in my direction. But I can't listen. I'm hard at work, silently concentrating at keeping my food down: the burn inside my stomach is threatening to send it all back up. I was fine until I saw Ryan Bolton sit down beside Carson for lunch.
They hardly ever leave one another's sides.
"Derek?" Charity backhands me in the elbow, but it doesn't hurt.
"What?" I ask sourly.
"Why aren't you paying attention?" When I don't answer, she plants her gaze in the same direction as mine. She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms, scowling knowingly. "You're jealous, aren't you."
"I'm not jealous," I resolve, "just frustrated." And I am. Ryan's sitting beside Carson, and I can see that under the table, they are holding hands. Ugh. There is a tingling inside my fingers, an itching as though I have to do something. But what? I keep watching them, and I'm pleased when it looks as though things might turn ugly with Carson's freaky friends. After all, they don't look thrilled in the least with this new addition. And I wouldn't blame them: Ryan isn't one of them.
Molly is saying something sweet to Charlie. Charity and Melanie are conspiring together, per usual. Lindsey and Karl are giggling. Jesse and Marissa are canoodling. Anthony is throwing flirtatious glances at Melissa.
I am here, alone. And that only make me angrier.
But not jealous. Never jealous.
I force my head to turn the other way, away from Ryan and Carson. I can't bare to look at them together, not for so long…not if I don't want to hurl. I know I should feel good for Ryan. He really, really likes her. I don't. I really, really like her body. Ryan wants to spend time with her, and he wants to tell her things that I don't think I could.
He wants to love her. I can respect that. But right now, I don't.
Ryan is walking past me now, headed to dump his tray. He stops beside me when I tug on the sleeve of his shirt. "Hey, making any progress with her?" I ask.
Ryan grins. Fucking grins. "I think so," he says, and walks off. Jesse looks at me with a sad expression and takes off after Ryan, deciding to save him the trouble of going back to those creeps in black. He is also reluctantly assisting me in separating him from Carson. Seeing this, she walks over to Ryan. She's just searching the cafeteria – for what, I don't know.
Our eyes meet. I wish she wouldn't look away from me. Something crumples in my chest when she does. I stand up and begin making my way towards her, wishing with all I have that she isn't trying to get away with Ryan, that everything she wants isn't to get away from me.
But I'm smarter than that.
I chase her down to the edge of the cafeteria. I start to ramble at her, unsure if what's coming out my mouth is the same thing as what's inside my head. She stops me and mentions something about needing the bathroom.
"Then I'll wait," I offer. She just cocks her head and studies me before taking off in the direction of the bathrooms. I wonder if she knows when she's looking at me. I follow close behind and stand propped up against the wall outside the girls' room. I dig randomly at my fingernails, unconcerned with the dirt but very concerned about what I could possibly do to appeal to Carson.
Eventually, she emerges from the bathroom, and she looks surprised to see I'm still here. "What?" she asks me, eyes wide and looking flustered. She looks hot. Her makeup is smeared in the sexiest way…I wonder if that was done on purpose. Is she torturing me? Or Ryan, maybe?
Ryan. That's right – that's what I'm here for. "Are you going out with Ryan Bolton?" I ask. I'm trying very hard not to let any emotion escape. It paid off: my voice remains flat and detached.
She casts a suspicious glance at me. "Maybe," is all she offers. It sounds coy in her seductive voice.
Besides. I think I've earned my suspicions about Carson Cassimov. "Maybe as in yes but you just don't want to tell me?" I ask, confused and too interested for my own good. "That kind of maybe?" If she's playing me, it wouldn't surprise me.
"No," she says as she walks away from me. "Maybe as in I don't really know yet." Her hips sashay a little extra when she's angry. I want to grab those hips; I want to devour them.
"How can you not know?" I continue to chase after her. I think she's lying. I think she's trying to hide something. I hope she is trying to fuck with me. Anything but 'yes, we're dating.' I charge onward. "You seemed pretty close today!" I call after her. Can she hear the resentment in my voice?
Do I care?
"So what? I'm not allowed to have close guy friends?" She still hasn't turned around. She is still walking away from me.
"Not without something going on between you," I reply loosely. That stops her in her tracks. She turns slowly around to face me. She looks pissed. We're standing in the middle of an empty hallway and the silence is deafening.
She seems to think for a few moments before asking me, "Is that what would have happened, Derek?" Her voice is full of a distressed, passionate loathing. And of course, it's for me.
Unsure of what she means, I ask her. I cross my arms, feeling strangely vulnerable.
"If you and I had ever had the chance to be considered close friends." She states this solemnly, and there is a world of hurt behind her eyes. "Would something have had to have 'gone on' between us?" Without giving me a chance to answer, she walks away. That's not going to stop me though. I follow closely, but then she says, "I'm not Charity, you know."
My heart drops. What does she think happened with me and her? It takes me a moment to realize that I've stopped walking. I am frozen in my spot, paralyzed with the sting of her statement.
Fixing my stare to the ground, I mutter, "Charity was different." I am a coward.
"Yeah," she says skeptically. "And so was Kari," the mention of my ex surprises and hurts me, "and Ashlee and all those other girls you banged. I get it." She tries to stomp away, but an involuntary finger points at her and she stops. Carson looks mildly scared.
"Not that kind of different," I insist. I know what she's thinking; she thinks I meant that Charity mattered. She could never matter. "I never liked them. Yeah I slept with them," I find myself losing control over my mouth, "they're good-looking, I'll give them that. But they didn't mean anything to me, Carson." Her name sweetens the taste inside my mouth. That, I can't explain.
She looks shocked. And yet the words that spill from those perfect lips are superficial and dismissive: "So? What's your point?"
"My point is," I struggle against myself to dam the impending sentence and failing. I can't protect myself anymore, it would seem. "My point is that you could mean something to me."
For one lovely slice of a millisecond, Carson's face softens towards me, but then instantly her pretty features harden in disbelief and anger. She storms right past me and I follow her.
What I see next, though I hate to admit it, tears me apart.
▷▷ Fast-Forward
"Come on, dude," Jesse's voice crackles in my ear, "you can't say that you didn't see this coming."
"Yeah," Anthony adds, "you know he's probably already hit that anyway."
"Would you shut up?" I ask. Maybe a three-way call wasn't my brightest idea. "Not you, Jesse." I'm lying on my back, and it hurts to breathe. I don't know if it's the strain of gravity or…something else.
"What? All I'm saying is that Carson's obviously got it bad for Ryan." Anthony's statement is in the lee of logic and observation. Things I try to avoid.
"Um, I'm pretty sure Derek doesn't need to hear that right now," Jesse comes to my defense. "Seriously Derek," he says, "they're probably not going to be together for that long. For all we know," he sounds too sympathetic to be telling the truth, "Carson did that just to mess with you."
"Yeah, right." Suddenly, there is a beep. "Can you guys hold on? I'm getting another call."
"Yeah."
"Sure."
I hit 'flash' and answer, "Hello?"
"Hey Derek!" Oh God; it's Charity. "So, I just got off the phone with Carson."
"Yeah?" I can't stop myself from getting excited. Charity and Carson have been getting real friendly lately – maybe she told Charity something about me? Maybe…maybe she wants me? "What'd she say?"
"What do you mean?" Charity asks, just to toy with me.
"Why would you call me and tell me that you just talked to Carson if this had nothing to do with me?" I ask, impatient.
Charity giggles stupidly. "Oh fine, I'll tell you." She sighs, inhales and speaks. "Carson's parents are getting a divorce."
Something somewhere inside me cracks. Fuck. What am I trying to do? "Oh. Okay. Bye, Charity."
"What?" she asks, confused.
I hang up on her. If she calls back, I won't answer it. I switch back to my previous conversation, only to find that Anthony has dropped out of it…perhaps that's for the best. "Hey Jesse," I say. "That was Charity."
"Is she after you again?" he asks, amused.
"Yes, but that's not what that was about." I hate every note of remorse in my voice. I never feel guilty. "Dude," I say, "Carson's parents are splitting up."
"Oh. Shit."
"Yeah."
After a pregnant pause, Jesse says, "I think I gotta' go. 'Kay, man?"
"Yeah. Whatever." We hang up. Still on my back, I stare up at my ceiling, wondering if what I'm feeling is more than sympathy. I'm wondering if maybe I should feel good about having seen Carson kiss Ryan. What if he is the only thing that is making her happy right now?
After all, I know I can't.
□ Stop
I've stopped seeing Christine. She was very understanding about it. Especially once I explained that I really just need some time alone. She encouraged me to dig a little deeper about things…things I may not want to look at.
I think she's right.
▷ Play
The phone is ringing. I'm not on it, today; I just don't feel like talking. I ignore it and inhale, coughing up a ton of smoke. God I hate the smell of this shit. Unfortunately though, it is all that's keeping me sane right now.
"Derek!" my Dad's voice bellows up the stairs and into my room, filling my ears with a ringing sensation. I chuckle.
"Yeah?" I call back. I have no idea how loud my voice is.
"Telephone!" he yells back.
Ugh. Okay then. I pick up my phone and wheeze, "Hello?"
"Hey. It's Ryan."
Well I could've figured that out; I'm not so stoned. "Hey man," I take another drag, "what up?" I hold my breath, suspending the smoke in my lungs for a few seconds. I cough and Ryan laughs at me.
"Well, I'm home from Carson's." Oh, that's right: they had their little 'movie night' tonight. Whatever.
"Yeah? How did that go?" As if I give a crap.
Ryan makes this weird, shuddering noise. "God, she's so…good." Um. What? "We pretty much missed the whole movie; all she wanted to do was make out with me."
Great. "Sweet. Did you get any farther than that?" You'd better tell me 'no,' you motherfucker, or I'm gonna' knock your roof in….
"Nah," Ryan says, only sounding slightly down about it, "not really. She copped a couple feels, though."
Things could be worse. "That sucks. I'm surprised: you've been going out two months and nothing? I don't know dude," I inhale once more, choking, "I imagined she'd be sluttier than that by now…no offense."
Ryan laughs easily. I wouldn't laugh if someone said that about my girlfriend. "None taken."
We talk for two more hours, but I'm hardly paying any attention to what he's saying.
▯▯ Pause
It must be five in the afternoon. When I came home from school today, I took a little nap and woke up just in time to be seriously disoriented. I love it when that happens. I'm lying down, stretched out across my bed with my laptop open and a piece of cherry-cheese danish sticking out of my mouth.
I'm doing my best to ignore the crumbs that keep falling between the keys.
Carson still hasn't added me on MySpace. Fuck, does she really hate me that much? Was I that much of an ass last year? I don't remember actually saying anything nasty to her…or about her, not to her face, anyway. Most of the time, she didn't cross my mind.
I'm on her page right now. I like it: it's interesting. Most people have some tacky, prefab layout (myself included), decorated with a few unoriginal icons (also guilty as charged), but Carson's profile is…really unique. Not in a freaky way at all, but just…plain different. I suspect she put her own background together because it's not anything I can recognize; it's some kind of really cool graphic art; a sunset with the silhouette of a cliffside and a lonely tree. It's pretty. Instead of endlessly searching the internet for icons to promote her favorite things, she cleverly drew pictures of them and encoded them onto her page: she likes to watch M*A*S*H* (I've never actually seen that) and House. She has drawn several replicas of her favorite album covers. I don't know her bands. That saddens me.
But. She is guilty of one MySpace cliché: the Blogthing. After each of her lists of favorite things are various Blogthings. One blurb in particular caught my attention: apparently, Carson's not a player, but she dabbles in the game. Good to know.
I click on her message button and wait for the screen to come up. I get up and stretch, then walk downstairs with the plate from my danish and rinse it before shoving it in the dishwasher. I chug from the milk jug, knowing that it doesn't really matter as long as no one sees me do it. I walk back up the stairs and into my room.
I heave a sigh and begin to type. I start smooth, neglecting my usual endearment for Carson. She doesn't seem to like it as much as I'd hoped.
hey there.
I decide not to beat around the bush. Instead, I get right to the point:
still dating Ryan, are we?
I want to say something funny, yet effective. I want her to laugh and still understand that I think Ryan is out of the question, even though I don't. Not really. They look good together and I know that Ryan is a good kid.
But fuck, I want her.
You know, I've got nothing against the kid, but how does it feel to date a former criminal?
I finish off with the cherry,
hit me up, sexi.
And hit 'send.' I have no idea when she'll get it or what she'll say back. Hell, I don't even know if she'll reply. She did to my last one, and we've talked on AIM, which always leaves me confused. She isn't usually vicious online, so why is she such a bitch to me at school, I wonder.
Oh well. I don't have the time to think about it right now. I've got a stack of homework to do, so I close my laptop and grudgingly open my binder. I have a week's worth of ignored French staring up at me, mockingly.
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