Wished

Chapter 23 - News Is Never Good

Do you ever get that feeling of dread? It just settles in the pit of your stomach and makes you worry about everything. It pulls on your mind and makes you over analyse and be afraid of absolutely everything that might just happen. Sometimes it gets so strong that you feel like you can't breathe.

That's all I was feeling as I walked into school the next day.

Some people had come up to me. Random people who I had never seen before let alone spoken to. Some of them were nice. They said they were sorry that something like that had happened to me and they didn't believe the picture was real. Others weren't so nice. The names they called me were things that I never even wanted to repeat in my thoughts they were that horrible.

One thing that I'd never get used to though was the looks and whispers. No matter where I went people were either sneaking looks at me out blatantly staring and whispering with their friends or out right having a conversation about me right in front of me.

Shauna in bed dying with sickness but she had called me yesterday and ranted about all the things she was going to do to Crystal when she got her hands on her.

It seemed like the gossip had spread like wildfire. I guess I hadn't expected anything less than that.

I had one mission today though. I had to apologise to Luke. Hours of reflection the night before had made me realise just how stupid I had acted. I was upset, humiliated and hysterical all for good reasons so I guess that was an excuse. I was afraid, horrible deathly afraid of Crystal and what she would do to me if I spent any more time with Luke. Heck, I still was. But Luke was my friend and I couldn't act like that no matter who it was. Especially to Luke. He was right. He was there for me. Just trying to help me and I was horrible.

* * * * *

It was about halfway through the day when I finally caught sight of Luke in the hallways.

I had been blushing out of embarrassment non stop all day so far. It was like everyone had either heard about the picture or seen the picture. I was causing quite the controversy in school. I was like The Dress of the school. Some people were on my side and some people were against me.

I couldn't even begin to describe how grateful I was for the support. I hadn't been expecting to have people fight for me. Not in the slightest. A guy had come up to me and started calling me some horrible things and after a minute of the onslaught of words, a guy stepped in front of me and started chewing the guy out of it. I couldn't thank him enough.

When I was able to get to Luke, he was alone at his locker. I was so glad that I had caught him alone. I really didn't want to apologise in front of a bunch of his scary, intimidating friends. Jake wasn't bad but he was tall and muscular and it was just scary.

"Luke!" I called, pushing past a few students to get to him before he could walk away. He didn't turn around but I knew he heard me because he visibly straightened up.

"Luke. Luke. I'm sorry," I apologised, hoping that there was some way that he'd forgive me. I had been horrible, I knew that and I felt terrible.

"For what?" Luke asked, turning to look at me. His blank face made me feel worse than if he had have been raging mad at me. Emotionless was a lot more intimidating.

"For saying what I did yesterday. I didn't mean it and I'm so so so sorry that I say it. I was humiliated and hysterical and there was so much going through my head when I realised all the reasons behind Crystal's humiliation. You were there for me when no one else was and you comforted me when I was so upset and you made me feel better and I can't thank you enough for that so I am so so so sorry for saying those things to you," I apologised, tearing up at the memory but I blinked back the tears before I embarrassed myself. That was something I didn't need anymore of.