Bird Song (32 page)

I returned her hug and then waved as she drove off, waiting in the icy air until the red glow of her taillights were gone from my view.
 
I walked into the house and quietly closed the door.
 
I turned around to walk towards the stairs and nearly screamed when I saw Robert standing in front of me, a smirk lifting up one side of his face into a beautiful, yet crooked line.

“You scared me!” I whispered fiercely.
 
“Why are you down here?
 
What if my dad or Janice comes down and sees you here?”

His smirk turned into a grin and he swooped down, my feet leaving the ground in the living room and then being placed back down in my bedroom with incredible speed I would have sworn up and down that I hadn’t even been in the living room to begin with.

“There, now there’s no need to worry about that, is there?” he said smugly as he placed his hand at the base of my collar, his hand skimming the slight hollow that appeared between my shoulder and neck.

I pushed his hand away and turned towards my dresser, intent on searching out for something to wear to bed, but more interested in a distraction from the warm tingling that insisted on turning into a small crackle of sparks.
 
“That’s not the point,” I managed to say, though my voice sounded winded as I struggled to keep pace with my rapid breathing.

He chuckled, silently moving up behind me and placing his hands on either side of my hips.
 
“Why so nervous?
 
Is it because you’re afraid that my charms might make you do something you don’t want to do?”

With remarkable speed, even for me, I whipped around and started to hit him with a pair of boxers.
 
“You were listening!” I accused.
 
“That was a private conversation between Stacy and me!
 
I cannot believe you did that!”

He held his hands up defensively even though he knew that he’d cause more damage to the clothing than it would him, and I stopped hitting him.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
I didn’t mean to, but I’m not going to say that I’m not glad I did.
 
It was very insightful.
 
Your mind has been shutting its door to me quite often these past few weeks and I’m beginning to feel like I’m not welcome in there anymore.”

“Well, if you keep pulling stunts like this, you won’t be,” I muttered and turned around to finish grabbing some clothes to sleep in.
 
“I’m going to change,” I announced before I left the room.
 
I stomped—softly, of course; I didn’t want to alert Dad and Janice to any trouble—to the bathroom and nearly slammed the door before realizing that doing so would shake the entire house.

I quickly changed clothes and brushed my teeth, hoping that counting to a hundred would be enough to calm my nerves.
 
I hadn’t planned on talking to Robert about this until much later.
 
I had wanted to plan out what I was going to say, needed to actually think about what all of this meant to the both of us, but that was obviously not going to happen tonight.

“You chose this life,” I said to my reflection before flipping the light off and heading back to my room.
 
It was empty.

I spun around, half expecting him to appear from some corner in yet another attempt to change the subject or distract me from my intended goal, but when I didn’t see even a hint of smoke or silver, I relaxed.
 
I sat on the edge of my bed and saw the fluttery movement of a piece of paper that had been left there.

“Something came up.
 
I’ll be back before you wake.”

“Oh sure.
 
How convenient that something came up,” I muttered before crumpling up the note and throwing it on the floor.
 
I crawled beneath the covers of the bed and turned my back to the window.
 
After what only amounted to a few minutes, I crawled out of the bed and fumbled in the dark for the note.
 
I did my best to iron it smooth with my fingers and then placed it gently beneath my pillow.
 
I laid back down, this time with my face pointed towards the window.

The week following Valentine’s day was as up and down as it could possibly get.
 
Graham and Stacy alternated between fighting, arguing, and waging an
all out
war.
 
Lark appeared unmoved by it all—a front she put up to keep her true feelings from being exposed again—and chose to remain neutral when asked for her opinion about certain arguments by Stacy.

I felt like I was being pulled in three different directions by Lark and Stacy. who each felt it imperative that they give me their take on the situation.
 
And by Graham, who hadn’t spoken to me since our conversation in the movie theater, but to whom I felt a loyalty that I simply couldn’t ignore because of the silent treatment.

The only one who kept me from pulling all of my hair out was Robert, who didn’t understand how such trivial issues for him could be so stressful for me, but remained supportive as I vented and railed, ranted and cried about what this quadrangle was costing everyone.

Things came to a head during lunch, when Stacy and Graham began arguing about the virtues of French versus Steak cut fries.
 
It was as ridiculous an argument as you could start, but anything could turn into one with them and they made it a point to prove it.
 
I had always felt grateful to have a table with friends to sit down with during what could have been a very isolating time for me, but right now, all I wanted was to become invisible.

Every eye was trained on the two people sitting directly across from me as their voices reached a crescendo of substantial proportions.
 
Their voices bounced around us, echoing off the walls and filling every table with enough gossip fodder to last until the end of the quarter.
 
This was better than television for most of them, and I hated that I was sitting front row, center.

“Will you two just break up, already?” Lark finally hissed at the two of them.
 
Her face was a deconstructed study on anger.
 
She was so beautiful that it was nearly impossible to detect the rage that lurked just beneath the surface, but I knew.
 
“You guys do nothing but fight and yell and scream and shout.
 
You’re making complete asses of yourselves.
 

“Either make good on your equal hatred of each other and break up, or get it over with and sleep together because I refuse to listen to another ridiculous and inane argument about potatoes, or clouds, or grass or…whatever it is that you two find so important you have to disagree about it.”

She stood up and stormed out of the cafeteria, the doors blowing open before she reached them.
 
I watched the faces of those who had witnessed this and sighed with relief when they seemed too preoccupied with what would happen between Stacy and Graham now.

Stacy’s face was a beet red as she noticed the eyes focused on her.
 
She looked at Graham and his expression was one of shame.
 
I immediately felt a need to jump to their defense but Robert’s hand stayed me.
 
Stacy quickly mumbled an apology and ran off after Lark, too confused and upset to deal with Graham at present.
 
Graham, in turn, fell back to his old stand-by.
 
He reached for Stacy’s lunch and began to finish it off.

I turned to look at Robert, needing his reassurance that things were going to be okay, that my semi-normal group of friends wasn’t going to begin tumbling down around me.
 
He smiled and shook his head.
 
I felt a bit of relief at that, but couldn’t quite build up enough of it to make any headway when it came to easing my fear.

The clangor of the end of lunch broke through my melancholy, and I glumly stood up and prepared to head to biology.
 
Robert carried my bag and kept his free arm wrapped securely around my midsection, the brace for my wobbly and unsteady frame to lean against as we walked towards my dreaded class.

The door was wide open and the smell of formaldehyde instantly clung to my skin and clothes as we approached.
 
“Thank you,” I whispered to Robert as I looked inside, dreading the next hour.

“Anytime,” he said smiling and pecked my cheek in that same, chaste manner that I had described to Stacy.
 
I couldn’t help but feel more depressed as I lumbered into the classroom and sat down on my stool, my bag tossed haphazardly onto the exam table.

The chatter around me did nothing to help lighten my mood as I caught snippets of names that I recognized, little bits of conversation that were focused on what had occurred during lunch just a few minutes ago.
 
It was on everyone’s mind, and their eyes kept flicking back to me, the friend who had done nothing to stop it, done nothing to prevent it either.

I shook my head as the guilt that I knew I shouldn’t feel began to grow inside of me, each layer being placed by each lingering stare from all around me.
 
The whispered words and snickers were starting to sound like a trance beat inside of my head, and I placed it down against the cool surface of the table, hoping that I might get some relief from it.
 
At the very least, I’d be able to shut out half of the noise.

“Grace, could you come here, please?” I heard being called out.
 
I cringed as the thick voice of Mr.
Branke
said my name once more, insuring that if no one had heard him the first time, they did the second.

With resignation, I stood up and began the short journey to the front of the class where Mr.
Branke
had a stack of papers to pass out.
 
I was two tables away from reaching him when my boot made contact with a substance on the floor that caused me to lose traction and I fell, quite quickly, to the cold linoleum beneath me.
 
My head made a loud cracking sound as it hit the ground and a high-pitched hum began to fill my ears.

There were spangles of black and white that appeared in front of my eyes as I tried to focus on something, anything.
 
I could barely hear the murmur of activity around me as people began crowding over me, their voices a dull buzz, their faces blurred and spotted.
 
I moaned when I tried to raise my head and felt something push me back down.

“Don’t move, Grace,” I heard someone say, but the voice was indistinguishable.
 
“You hit your head very hard on the ground.
 
Just lay there while someone gets the nurse.”

“I need Robert,” I mumbled as I closed my eyes, knowing that no nurse would be able to help me the way he could.
 
“Get Robert.”

There were giggles.
 
I heard them as a female voice said snidely, “I’ll get him, alright.”
 
I wanted to say something in reply but a sharp pain slashed through any intent I might have had.
 
I could feel the throbbing on the side of my head now, a steady base beat that pounded its rhythm permanently into my mind.

As the buzz of voices grew more intense, I felt the need to see what was going on around me.
 
My eyelids lifted and I was staring at a pair of gray pant legs.
 
I lowered my gaze to their shoes and felt my breath catch.

They were brown.

With black laces.

My lungs began to fill with an intense pressure and I blinked, hoping that what I had seen would simply be a reaction from hitting my head.
 
I blinked twice, three times, and the shoes only became clearer.
 
They were a bit more worn than I had remembered them, but they were the same shoes that I had seen that night I had been mowed down.

Even the color of the pants was the same.
 
I exhaled and inhaled at a rapid pace, knowing that I was setting myself up to begin hyperventilating, but not caring.
 
I just needed to get away from this person, whoever it was.

“Grace?
 
It’s okay, Grace.
 
The nurse is coming.”

I shuddered as I recognized the voice that was attached to those shoes as belonging to Mr.
Branke
.
 
I flinched when I saw his feet tip forward, he knees bending as he knelt down to touch my hair and my shoulder.
 
“It’s okay.
 
You’re going to be fine,” he said, his voice wanting to be comforting but failing miserably.

“Grace?” I heard being called out and my heart leapt as I recognized it.
 
“Grace, it’s Graham.
 
Oh God, what happened?”

“Graham!
 
I slipped on something and fell; I hit my head pretty hard and they won’t let me sit up,” I managed to squeak out.
 
I wanted to shout to the world—or at least to the class—that Mr.
Branke
was the man who’d run me down a few months ago, but I was too afraid, the horror of that night replaying itself in my mind like a movie stuck on repeat.

Graham grabbed my hand, his grip firm and reassuring.
 
I felt instantly safer and nearly blurted out to him what I had discovered when the sound of more activity shook the two of us apart.