Lead Me Out of the Dark

Blackbook

I had gotten up early so I wouldn’t have to see Deck. I sat there at the island in the kitchen. I had gone to Dunkin Donuts and gotten a huge box of donuts. I figured the kids would get a kick out that. I left the coffee I’d gotten for Linda on the counter and written LINDA in huge letters on the top so she wouldn’t mistake it for an old coffee cup. I couldn’t find my keys or my car, so I’d taken Linda’s car. I figured she had to run out to get something, so she’d run out and used my car. I was sitting there staring at my hot chocolate, sipping it every once in a while. Why did I feel like shit? I couldn’t understand why I felt like I was walking through mud. The only thing I knew was that it was a Hellish feeling and I wanted it to end. I’d figured the sugary goodness of Dunkin Donuts would aid me, but it didn’t even come close to helping.

My hands felt strangely empty, and I suddenly realized why- I didn’t have my iPod. I wasn’t wearing my hoodie, where I’d left my iPod. This was Deck’s hoodie. I charged back to my room, being careful not to wake Deck up. I lifted my hoodie that I wore yesterday, but it wasn’t in there. I started to panic. I looked through everything I owned, but it wasn’t there. I started to hyperventilate. Where could it be!? Had I lost it!? Where could I have left it!? Anxiety riddled through my bloodstream like a toxin. That iPod was my life.

“Are you looking for this?” Deck asked, holding up my iPod. I nodded furiously. He tossed it over to me. I let out a huge breath of relief, cradling the iPod to my chest.

“Where was it?” I questioned. I checked it over for any damage, but it was fine. It was even on full battery. I stowed it in my hoodie pocket, relaxing slightly. I suddenly realized that having a conversation with Deck meant I would have to look at him. I bent down and began pretending to look for something beneath my bed, just so I wouldn’t have to look at him.

“I wrestled it away from Brianna. She was using it to check up on Justin Bieber’s Twitter,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes. I jerked my head out from beneath the bed. That was a straight up lie. Brianna absolutely loathed Justin Bieber. She blamed him whenever there was a natural disaster. Taylor was the one who liked him. If he was lying to my face, we definitely weren’t friends anymore. The thought brought tears to my eyes. I’d finally gained a friend and I’d ruined it.

“What?” Deck asked. I blinked, realizing I’d been staring at him. Unfortunately, the movement caused a tear to roll down my face. I wiped it away quickly.

“Are you crying?” He gaped. I shook my head, pretending to look underneath the bed again. Now I was hiding my face from him. God, I absolutely hated him. How could he do this to me!? Sharing a room with him was going to be Hell. Deck gripped me by the arms and yanked me out from underneath the bed.

“Why are you crying?” He asked. He searched my eyes as if they would betray the answer. He reached up to brush the tears away, but I yanked myself away from him. I moved to wipe the tears away myself, but that made me realize that this was Deck’s hoodie. I threw it off, chucking it across the room. I got so childish when I was angry, but that wasn’t stopping me.

“Because I fucking hate you!” I hissed. He jerked backwards faster than he would have if I’d shot him. He was the bane of my existence. He was my arch rival. He was the reason I had nightmares at night. I saw him as I threw him off of a cliff, my cliff-

“Why do you hate me?” He asked. His voice was so composed. While I was lost in my thoughts, he’d recomposed himself so he was now casually interested. I saw through the façade as if it were made of cellophane. I looked underneath the bed. This conversation was over as far as I was concerned. Deck tried to pull me out again, so I grabbed onto the first thing I saw. Unfortunately, the thing I’d grabbed was my small black notebook. It did no good, and Deck was able to yank me out easily.

“Tell me,” Deck said. I looked down at the black book in my hands. This notebook used to be my life, and now I couldn’t remember the last time I’d written in it. Wait, I thought. I paled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d written in it. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

“Deck,” I whispered. My voice broke slightly. He looked down at the book in my hands and then up at me again, not understanding the connection between the two.

“What? What is it?” he asked.

“I can’t remember the last time I wrote in this,” I said quietly. He looked at me like I was the stupidest fucking idiot he’d ever seen. I cut him off before he could make some snotty sarcastic retort.

“Deck, I write when I take my medication in this book. I haven’t been taking it lately.” I said. My words came faster now. I was hyperventilating again. The anxiety from earlier hadn’t entirely gone away. “When you combine prescription strength meds with regular ones, there’s a chemical reaction and you die. What if the person who kidnapped me was trying to kill me?”

 Deck jumped off of the floor. He grabbed his wallet and pulled out a small white card, calling the police officer assigned to my case. I wasn’t sure when the police officer had given him that card, and I honestly didn’t care. I curled my knees to my chest, grabbing my iPod and jamming the headphones into my ears. The song Why by Secondhand Serenade came on. It sounded like a song written by Deck about me, except instead of writing it because he loved me, he wrote it because he hated me.

In that moment, I hated Deck more than I could imagine. That was what made me start crying. I was crying because Deck wouldn’t dare comfort me. He stood above me, even when he’d finished the call, looking at me with a mangled expression on his face that I couldn’t decipher. He left me all alone in the room. I cried even harder. It was like the Deck I’d used to know was gone, and I hadn’t done anything wrong! I felt like shit and it was all his fault. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before Deck came back into the room. John was with him. When John saw me on my chaotic state on the floor, he shot to my side. Yet when he wrapped his arms around me it felt wrong. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like Deck.