You don't even want me

9.

[Camille]

"You know what makes brave people brave?" Dad asked with raised eyebrows. I sighed, shrugged and tucked a curl behind my ear. "It's not that they're not scared of anything, it's the fact that they face their fears, and conquer them."

A short silence fell over us while I slowly processed his words. "Brave people" he continued, "don't have nightmares about their past. They let it go and move on."

He pronounced every word explicitly and they reached me loud and clear even though there was a lot of noise coming from the rain on the windows.

"Only the weak get caught in the past."

I loudly gasped for breath, my eyes wide open when I sat up straight in my bed. The rain was hitting my window, creating loud noises in my dark room and making everything worse. My breathing was heavy and uncontrolled, my chest aching when I inhaled.

I frowned and wiped my wet hair out of my sticky face, ignoring the alarm clock that said 2:18 AM and the tears streaming down my cheeks; I tried to calm myself down by focusing on my breathing.

It took longer than usual to get my breathing to normalise again, but maybe it was harder due to the tears. Or the rain. I didn't think about it too long and fought the urge to rub my right ribs as it wouldn't help anything, and like he'd said, only the weak got caught in the past.

But it was hard to move on when the past was marked on my body, constantly reminding me of it.

I laid myself down and buried my head in my pillow, squeezing my eyes shut in order to stop the tears from rolling down my face, slowly drifting off to sleep again.

~~~

That morning it was still raining, and I biked to school alone.

Grace and Jasmine had let me know they wouldn't bike to school but take the bus as they didn't want to be in the cold morning and to arrive at school wet because of the rain. I didn't have a choice: without a Buzzy Pazz, you couldn't get on the bus. My Mum couldn't bring me to school either, she was needed at work.

I biked the 8 km at a quick pace as I didn't exactly like to bike alone in the rain in the early hours of a Tuesday morning. I arrived at school, locked my bike and walked to the playground, soon standing with my friends in a cirkle, sheltered from the rain.

I was leaning against the wall of the school building and we all started talking to each other. Tim asked me if we'd already changed places in class; we hadn't but I knew that was coming soon. The bell rang and everyone walked inside the building to begin the day.

~~~

The day went by really quick and before I knew it, it was already the last period of the day: chemistry.

Everybody switched places and this time, me and Jasmine decided to sit in the back of the class instead of in the front. I was busy making myself comfortable, taking my stuff out of my backpack slowly so I hadn't noticed who came to sit in front of us. When I looked up, I almost fell from my chair in surprise to see James's brown eyes.

He saw my reaction and chuckled, giving me a boyish grin before turning around and looking at the front of the class.

I almost jumped up when Jasmine leaned in closer. "This is going to be a fun lesson" she whispered, a giggle escaping her pink lips. I faked a chuckle, not liking the fact that they'd come to sit in front of us. I actually wanted to stay away from him a bit, I tried to prevent a world where I was hopelessly in love with a boy I'd never be able to get.