Count On Me(23)

I do the assignment and of course I give it in the way I’m expected to, but I don’t think I’ll get a very good grade on it.

Free writing, even when I hate what I have to write, does make my day easier. It’s this kind of happy go lucky thinking I’m filled with as I make my way from the class. It’s only when I see whose leaning up against the lockers, with the same smile from earlier plastered across his face, that whatever happiness I was beginning to feel starts to fade.

What’s he doing here? What does he want with me now?

It had taken almost the entire class to get his voice out of my head and just when I think that it’s gone and I’ve escaped him, here he is, reminding me that no matter where I go, especially here in school, I will never truly escape him.

When is he going to learn that whatever it is he wants from me, he’s just not going to get? With the amount of girls I’ve overheard talking about what they want to do to him, he’s got no shortage of people to give him the attention he obviously craves, so why is he here trying to talk to me?

“You ready for lunch?”

Excuse me—what?

He can’t be serious right? There had been a part of me yesterday that was excited at the idea of him standing outside of my class like this. It even made me stick around waiting until I almost missed my chance to eat, but today it’s not at all the same. The excitement at seeing him here is gone and like earlier, all I want to do is get as far away from him as I could.

So that’s exactly what I do.

I turn from the classroom, making sure to tear my eyes away from where he’s leaning and I start making my way down the hall toward the stairs. I don’t move fast enough to miss his reaction though.

“Son of a bitch!”

If I actually smiled for people to see, this would be one of the times I’d do it. Kayden Walker is an acknowledged asshole and he won’t get any argument from me, no matter how cute his eyes look when he smiles. The time for him to be waiting for me would have been yesterday. Today he’s too late.

Let him see that coming.

I start taking the stairs quickly, knowing that it can’t be long before he’s on my heels and making me face him, but by the time I get to my locker and take a look around me, I realize he’s nowhere in sight. What I expected him to do based on the way he reacted this morning when I got off the bus, he hadn’t done.

Crap. I thought I was being so smart. Turns out again, I’m the one being played.

Turning back to my locker, determined to get my lunch and make my way out to my normal spot, I don’t realize that anyone has come up behind me until I see the shadow of an arm stretch out over my head.

Guess he found me after all. I think as I close the door and look up, expecting to see his very annoyed face looking back at me. It’s not him I see though as my eyes come face to face with the person invading my personal space. It’s someone even worse.

Noticing what I’m sure is a shocked expression, he smiles at me and the minute it happens, I’m taken back to two days before and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach returns.

“Expecting someone else? Maybe, I don’t know, Kayden?”

Keep it together Belle. Do not let him see how he’s getting to you. I repeat over and over in my head as he stares at me. I want to say something to him, but like usual, the words won’t come. I don’t entirely understand sarcasm but right now, I wish I did.

“Oh that’s right, you can’t speak. I forgot you’re retarded and mute.”

I hate those words. I’m not any of those things, but with the amount of times I hear them, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I start believing them. I let my eyes scan the hallway around us, looking for a teacher or even another student that might be able to stop what’s about to happen, but when all I’m met with is other members of the football team, I know it’s a waste of time.

They’re going to recreate what they did with me in the parking lot and there’s not a thing I can do to stop it. It only makes me wish I’d stayed with Kayden when he’d been waiting for me. If I did that, then maybe they wouldn’t be doing this to me.

I’m scared and I’m pretty sure he knows it because as he bends in closer to me, he laughs as my body shivers. He has to know what being this close to me is going to do, yet he’s making no move to get away from it. It’s almost as if he wants it to happen.

“You know, I’m trying to figure out what he sees in you. What it is about you that he’s willing to ditch all of his friends for. I can’t figure it out. So, why don’t you tell me?”