GUN IN MY HAND

CHAPTER 11: SPINNING SCALE

'Cursing myself, I burned the furniture

A million times in my head

I'm feelin' low

Got nowhere to go

But back up again'

A black leather jacket, greased hair, tattoos, a shiny engine... Was it enough to know someone? Or was it the raw words escaping his devious smirk, the sharp cutting edge he played with, the bad intentions in his clear eyes?

Was it what you saw? Or what you heard? I wasn't sure anymore. Could I trust my eyes, or the gossips going around? It wasn't easy when my eyes were red and puffy, and all the rumors going around were about me, well, about me and two particular boys... Spencer, as the topic didn't seem to subside, just like my broken face, just like his daily gifts. But now, Blade had also joined in the subject since our Wednesday encounter at the diner.

Could I believe all the love and shine I'd seen in his warm brown eyes? Or the obvious image of my cousin on his naked body? The sharp edge of the knife threatening people, or the transparency of his gaze when he'd looked at me?

Could I trust the gossips saying Spencer and Diane had a secret relationship, and not the ones telling that Blade was a criminal who had just got out of jail? The truth was that I was scared to know.

"Dorothy?"

I was pulled out of all these doubts, or more exactly, out of my contemplations about existential questions, and when I blinked my eyes around, I realized I wasn't lost in the green leaves of the trees dancing in the sky. I was still in class, and two blue eyes were staring at me.

"With whom are you pairing for the project?"

My gaze instinctively trailed to the figure two rows away, but a tuft of perfectly straight brown hair was already standing in the way. I just caught a glimpse of brown, sorry eyes shadowed by a frown before I looked away.

"It's her who's jumped to get paired with him." Rachel offered me a half-smile, having followed my gaze, which was now fixed on my twiddling thumbs.

"He didn't protest though. It's all very well the flowers, gifts, and beautiful words, but they're not actions." I discovered a new tone in my voice; the cracks had turned into tight bitterness by dint of piling up, and it made the silence following even more awkward.

"Anyway, do you want to pair up with me?" I tried to sound cheerful as the poor Rachel was for nothing in all of this, and she had even paid the price in this story.

"Yes, if you want?" She adjusted her glasses on her small nose as if to be sure I was asking.

"Of course!" She was one of the best and most serious students, and she was much nicer than some other ones. "Let's start to work on..."

"The end of our high school years," Rachel finished for me before my wide eyes could find a clue on the papers in front of us, and as they stayed as large, she probably guessed I had no idea what the teacher had talked about during the whole hour, which was a first for a serious student like me, because she added, "Like for a legacy, we have to say what it represents for us. For example, what we'll remember of the classes, experiences, people... things like that."

'Memories' and 'high school', this was exactly what I was avoiding.

"How about a nest for hypocrites?" I couldn't help the mutter as my gaze was drawn by a high-pitched laugh from two rows away.