The Arrangement Anthology 1(31)

Memories flit through my mind and I can feel Sean’s hands on my skin. I wish Black hadn’t shown up. I wish things progressed further. I wonder what it would feel like to have my sweat-covered body slip over his, what he would feel like inside of me. My body warms at the thought.

I’m so out of it that I don’t hear Marty until he’s next to me. “Well, looky what we have here.”

I jump out of my skin when he speaks and twist in my chair. I had no idea he was there. Marty laughs at me. He’s wearing a pair of dark jeans with frayed patches on the thighs, coupled with a tee shirt and denim jacket. His blonde hair is spiked. He looks like an 80’s remnant.

I swat at Marty, meaning to slap his leg, but he dodges my hand. “You scared me to death!” I whisper yell at him.

He laughs and drops his backpack on the floor next to my desk, and then takes his extra tall body and leans against the wall. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he says, “Only people with something to hide get all skittish like that. What’d you do? Kiss a girl?” He winks at me and grins.

I cover my heart with my hand, willing it to resume a normal pace, but it ignores me. I don’t look at Marty when he speaks and he catches on. “So, you do have something to hide. Is it juicy?” I glance at him, thinking that direct eye contact will help, but the guy sees right through me. In a hushed voice, he squeals, “Oh my God! You have to tell me!” As Marty talks, he falls to his knees and scoots toward me, clutching his hands under his chin, like he’s begging.

I laugh it off. “There’s nothing to tell.” I squirm in my chair and go back to reading my textbook.

“You’re a bad liar.”

Sighing, I say, “I know,” and slump forward, planting my face in the book. “I can’t lie, but I can’t tell you.”

He grabs my shoulder and pulls me up. I look him in the face as he asks, excitedly, “Is this about the questions you asked the other day?” My face must answer for me, because Marty gets more excited. “Oh my God, you did something morally deplorable, didn’t you? What was it?”

When I don’t answer, he starts reasoning it out, which scares me to death. He ticks off his fingers, “Well, we both know it’s nothing to do with lying. So that leaves cheating,” he ticks off a second finger and pauses, looking at my slumped shoulders, and says, “Yeah, I can’t see that one either. You’re hardwired to not cheat. That leaves stealing, adultery—”

“Are you just going to list the seven deadly sins and hope I confess when you hit mine?”

He waves a finger in my face. “Ah ha! That means it was one of the big seven.”

“You’re an ass. Leave me alone.” I pretend to read my book. Marty grabs the pages and yanks it away. “Hey!”

“You tell me everything, why can’t you tell me this?” he says holding my book just out of reach. I make a grab for it and miss. He’s too damn tall.

“Because I can’t. And it doesn’t matter now anyway, because everything is all fucked up.” I stop jumping for my book and sit down hard in the chair. It feels like a wave of hopelessness crashes into me. Suddenly, I can’t breathe and my heart is pounding. I grab the hair on the sides of my head and look at the floor, saying, “I can’t do this.” My breathing becomes labored, like I’m having an asthma attack.

Marty puts my books down and kneels next to me, placing his hand on my back. “Whoa, Avery. Calm down. Slow your breathing.”

Tears well up behind my eyes, but they won’t fall. For once, I wish they would. I wish I could just cry and have this part of my life over with. I rock in the seat. “I can’t do this.”

“Do what, honey? Be more specific.” Marty’s hand rubs small circles on my back. He leans closer to me. “Tell me, love. I’ll help you however I can.”

“But that’s just it,” I look up at him with glassy eyes. “You can’t help me, no one can. I have to do something that I don’t want to do. I’m fucked every way ‘til Tuesday with no way out.”

Marty keeps his hand on my shoulder and looks at me with an expression that I can’t read. It’s not pity, it’s something else, more like pity’s bastard cousin. “Avery, you ever think that you’re alone because you want to be?” I bristle at the suggestion, but he presses a finger to my lips to shut me up, and shakes his head. “No, don’t talk. Listen. There’s a time for listening, and that’s now. I know you’ve got no one and that you’re all by yourself, but you don’t have to be. I’m here and so is Mel. You shut us out, Avery. When things get hard, you retreat into yourself and no one can get through those walls you put up. It doesn’t have to be that way. Friends are your family now. I know that I’d do anything for you, you don’t even have to ask.”