Page 47 of Speak

On the contrary. Jonas deserves better than me and he knows it. He deserves someone that doesn’t shut down. Someone that can talk to him, tell him about her day, fuck him, love him openly, moan and scream his name, everything I can’t.

I try to pull my hand away, looking away from his usual cool blues that are an icy-clear like aquamarine. Anger flashing, he tightens his grip, pulling me down to him and I roll my lips inward. That music is beginning to play in my mind again, like a soft hum. Flashes of him bloated and face down in black water playing along like a movie montage.

“What the fuck did you do to him? I haven’t seen him like this since-” he closes his mouth and shakes his head, blonde hair falling forward over into his eyes. He flashes those freaky straight white teeth in an eerie smile and chuckles, finally letting go of my hand. “Never mind. You’re fucking trash now.Unclaimed. Good luck out there, Spooks. You’re fair fucking game now.” He jerks his chin to the doors.

I sit in my seat in Harrington’s class when Jonas comes in looking freshly fucked. He pauses for a second beside me and I tense up… but he goes up the stairs, away from me. I ignore Maverick’s stare. I know Jonas is sitting beside her, I can hear his laughter from where I’m sitting. Every word he whispers to her is a bullet in my heart – every laugh sends a dagger into my stomach.

This is what he deserves. To be around others that he can speak with freely. Laugh. Everything he can’t do with me. I mean I tried… for the first time inyearsI tried to speak and my throat closed down as if I were allergic to my voice.

My tears rain down, the pain so deep I feel it in the marrow of my bones because I can’t give him that and Jonas deserves the best. I keep my head down while I scratch at my wrist, wanting to feel anything other than the tears that want to spill, my thoughts spiraling.

I will never be what Jonas Anderson deserves and I know that now.

After Harrington gives the name of the new serial killer we’re to debate about, I get up and leave without a word, Jonas’ low chuckles echoing in my brain and shattering my heart.

_______

Wednesday morning, I don’t sign in. I merely turn in my handwritten paper on Amelia Dyer, not making eye contact with Maverick. I hear Jonas’ voice in the hallway close yet so far from me and look up to see Cecilia still under his arm. My gut wrenches. They make a cute couple. She’s so petite compared to me. A natural, beautiful blonde with blue eyes and a radiant smile. She’d make a perfect trophy wife. I send a silent prayer that she makes him happy. That she gives him the best world-breaking orgasms. That she never breaks his heart like I did.

I look down at my shoes like they’re the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I push past them, and Jonas grabs my arm, looking down at my injured hand that Chase squeezed to inhuman proportions on Monday. I’m sure if it wasn’t broken, Chase had finished breaking it. I should get it checked out. It’s gnarly and swollen and purple but the pain of it reminds me that I have survived yet another thing - a broken heart.

I lock eyes with Jonas, eyes that remind me of a forest, with drops of the sun. The look on his face reminds me of the day he pulled me into his lap.

“I’m going to maim whoever did this to you, baby.”

Us, Jonas. We did this to me. I did this to me. And then sickeningly, I think,at least it was my left hand. I don’t need it much.The thought almost makes me laugh.I’m a hazard to myself.

I pull my hand to my chest and cradle it with the other then back away slowly, jutting my chin to the door of Harrington’s lecture class, telling him he should go, I’m no longer his to worry about. I gather whatever strength I have and turn around, walking away from the love of my life.

That night, when I’m in my room, ear buds in, on my loveseat, huddled over my laptop looking up more names from the ledger in the eighties, the little hairs all over my body stand on end at once. A chill rolls into my room and all the lights, except my sleep light turn off. A shadow moves about before I’m hurled into a world of darkness.

I wake up in my bed with the worst hangover I’ve ever experienced. My stomach rolls and I crash into my bathroom before I vomit bile into the porcelain sink, heaving until there’s nothing left. My stomach is empty. Completely empty. I haven’t eaten since… I can’t remember. I brush my teeth, sinking onto the tiled flooring of the bathroom. I crawl back into bed since I can see through my window that it’s still dark outside. I haven’t checked my phone in days. It’s as useless as I am. My neck hurts, my hand is pulsating, my head is pounding, my stomach is cramping and all I can think of… is Damon.

I need him, his guidance now more than ever.

I lift my hand to grab my phone… but I’m so tired. I close my eyes and let the sandman take me away again… let the darkness consume me.

_______

Thursday afternoon I’m sitting in the quad beneath a willow on a blanket after my Art and Music History class, far away from the dining hall where I know the trio are eating. My injured hand is palm up on the ground beside me, not as purple as yesterday, greener today, telling me it’s just very badly bruised. I hope. I have my head down, neck sore and stiff, reading about Ludwig and other artists that lived in his time when a shadow takes away what little sun I had. Chase kneels beside me.

Blue eyes glower at me from beneath brown lashes. He grabs my wrist and tugs it toward him. This time I don’t hide the pain on my face.

“Relax, Spooks. Jesus you’re fucking jumpy.” He has a bruise on his cheekbone, red and angry.

It pleases me.

I arch a brow in question, a motion that tells him to hurry up and leave me alone.

He pulls out a bottle of water from his backpack and thena wrapped… something from it as well and sets them both in front of me. “When was the last time you drank water? Your lips are so chapped you look like you’re possessed. I know you heard me call you fat… but now you’re just bones and you look fucking sickly. If you’re on a diet then pass it over. Otherwise, you gotta eat. Unless you actually are possessed? Regan? Regan’s demon? Is that you?”

I blink at his attempt at humor. Which sucks because I love horror films and The Exorcist is a classic. If it had been Brina or even Axel saying any of this to me, I would have cackled. He unwraps the… well it’s a fucking wrap. Gourmet. It smells delicious. It makes my stomach cramp. He holds it out to me. I scrunch my nose at it and go back to my textbook.

“For god’s sakes it’s not poisoned.”

I didn’t think it was. I just don’t want anything he has to offer. I just want to be left alone. I’m staying in my lane.

“Look,” he takes a large bite out of the wrap with his freakishly perfect teeth I now suspect are fake, almost half of it gone, opens the bottle of water and swallows both down simultaneously then holds them out to me. I take them both and set them on the blanket. Truth is, I wish I could eat. But after last night, everything is nauseating. I’m pretty sure I was drugged. But by whom? “I’m not allowed to leave until you eat it.”

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