waiting for superman | book three

five

"I've known Josh for a long time," Zach starts. "I know," Chloe says, still looking out the window.
"And I've never seen him cry. Never. He's never cried, until Sunday night on the bus," he continues.

"He cried?" Chloe asks and Zach nods his head. The guilt comes rushing back to Chloe and it overwhelms her. Josh doesn't cry. Everyone knows that. So the fact that he cried because of what she did to him breaks her into a million more pieces. Her heart was already broken for what she did and now each little piece is broken into a million more microscopic pieces.

"I don't think he stopped the whole night. The entire bus ride to the restaurant he was crying and then once we got there he just called a taxi to come pick him up and take him home. I've never seen anyone cry so hard. So I don't know what you did or how Cody was involved, even though we have a good idea, but you really hurt him Chloe. You broke his heart," Zach explains.

Tears sting at the corners of Chloe's chocolate eyes and they trickle down her cheeks like they have for the past four days straight. She hasn't stopped crying. She doesn't know if she'll ever be able to stop. She keeps thinking that she'll run out of fluids to cry, but she never does.

"Did you tell me this to make me feel guiltier than I already do? If so, mission successful," Chloe spits. Zach walks over to the window seat she is sitting on and plops down next to her. She shifts her body so that he has room to sit.

Zach moves her head so that it is lying on his shoulder and he can feel her tears hit the fabric of his t-shirt and her body tremble with sobs as he wraps his arms around her slim shoulders.

He whispers, "That wasn't the purpose of me telling you that. I don't want to make you feel guilty, even though you should. I told you that so that you know you can't hide from that truth forever. You're not hiding from Cody, Josh, or anyone by missing school. 

You're hiding from yourself because you know that if you go back and you see everybody, reality will strike and you don't want that. You just want it all to be a dream. It isn't a dream and you need to face him. He needs you to face him. I think he deserves to know."

"But what if the truth will just hurt him even more?" Chloe questions.

"You're not in love with Cody. Everybody knows that. Even Cody knows that. I don't know what could hurt Josh anymore than what he already knows," Zach coos.

Chloe thinks back to the night of the kiss. She thinks back to why it had happened in the first place. She wasn't lying when she told Josh that she wasn't herself when it happened. 

She really wasn't Chloe Elizabeth Lukasiak. She was a stranger. She was a girl who had been pushed around her entire life and had finally been pushed over the edge. Over the edge into a world full of drugs and blurred nights that she will never remember. Into a world where everything was okay because nothing could hurt until she woke up into the real world.