ᵍᵒᵈˡʸ • ˢᵒᵘᵗʰ ᵖᵃʳᵏ

[8]

⇾ BELLYACHE

In one word, school was hell. That was to be expected of course. There had never been a year you'd went and thought to yourself, 'that wasn't so bad'. It had always sucked, but today was more than that. More than anything you'd ever really been through before. More than you could bare.

You'd always yearned for more, but this was more than anything you'd ever wanted. This was, well to be completely blunt, totally fucked.

You were half way through eighth period now, meaning when the bell rang you were free to leave. Finally. The only obstacle was making it home with the least amount of emotional damage.

All day people had been sharing whispers and nasty cackles when you passed by them. The occasional "Ew, emo!" didn't shock you, you knew if it wasn't about that then their sour feelings had to be about all the business with you and Stan. Business that wasn't theirs of course. Fucking sharks.

Another little spur of luck that had been gifted to you straight from the beaming hands of God himself, Stan and all of his friends had nearly every single class with you. Better yet, you'd be going home to wash all the spitballs out of your hair, shot from the mouth of Eric Cartman.

But this period had been calmer. If you could call it that. Though when the teacher wrote up the seating chart and conveniently placed you right next to Stan, you were anything but calm. You managed to keep your legs from shaking when you walked over to the desk next to his, but upon sitting down you had to put a hand between your knees to keep them from clacking together.

Your whole body shook lightly, and you cursed yourself for it a hundred times inside your head, and even after a hundred more that didn't stop your body's natural reaction to the man's presence. You told yourself you weren't scared of him, never would you ever let yourself come to fear another human being, but sitting there in the cold plastic seat you felt you might just flood it with your piss.

You tried not too look at him, his, 'don't look at me don't talk to me blah blah blah,' monologue echoing in your head, but your head turned on instinct when you heard the tiny clink of paper bouncing onto your desk.

Stan was looking dead into your eyes with the terrible traces of a smirk left on his lips. There was a small, tightly crumpled ball of paper sitting promptly in front of you on your desk. You eyed it cautiously before picking it up. You tried to make minimal noise as you unfolded it, the teacher was still at the board writing out math equations. The crinkling of paper echoed through the classroom but no body so much as glanced your way.

You smoothed the paper flat on your desk, feeling the soft graphite of pencil marks against your itchy palm. The paper couldn't lay completely flat, it was scarred with the folds and crevices from having been crumpled up. But you read the message clearly.

The message? Truthfully, you didn't know if you could call it that. It seemed less like a message but more some kind of omen, not written out on paper by the one individual you hated most on this planet, but something sculpted, mindfully and carefully crafted in the aged and cracked hands of God.

There were no words on the sheet, not much of anything at all. The white of the paper matched your skin tone, even though it read nothing threatening that didn't stop the alarm bells rocking through your skull.

It was a heart. Not perfect, you'd always adored the small charm of Stan's boyishly terrible hand writing, but it felt perfect to you. You had to physically restrain yourself from tracing your finger over the shape, the delicately simple outside edges written in smooth grey pencil marks.

A heart. A tiny declaration of care. A little letter folded with anything but care, though still dripping with the remnants of a bittersweet puppy love long dead. A message that said 'I still think about you, and it's in a good light. A light so good and silky sweet that it's golden, baby we're golden.'

But it didn't say that obviously. The mostly blank sheet of paper stared back at you, the blue lines pasted on it by the factory it was made in making a ghostly echo on your skin. It didn't say any of those things. It didn't say anything at all. It was just a heart.

It didn't say anything but it told you everything. Usually when people get a new smidgen of information, they are elevated. Their mind seems a little clearer, things fall into place and fit together snugly like a puzzle that just makes sense. Knowing is powerful.

Though none of this was applicable to you in the moment. It felt like someone had lifted the hatch that was the top of your head and threw up right into your brain. If you were in a cartoon everyone would know it too, because you'd have a little text box floating above your head filled with a stormy cloud of scribbles or a penciled in tornado.

You looked at Stan and thought you might be sick. The look on his face made you physically ill, either that or the whole situation all together, but something was sending a spew of hot steamy liquid up your throat and you had to get out of there fast.

You shot up out of your seat like someone had lit fire to it, practically sprinting towards the door. The teacher shot you a quizzical look and began to question you but you barely managed to cut him off with, "B,bathroom!"

Trying hard not to peek over your shoulder as the door swung closed behind you, your head turned anyways. Meeting eyes with you was a certain dark haired boy, his elbows propped on his desk innocently. The fire in his eyes was certainly there, evil enough to give you a chill too. The last thing you saw before booking it down the hallway and into the bathroom was Stan's boyish smile, and it played back in your head like a broken record that you just wished would fucking stop you'd do anything to just make it stop even for one single moment you just wanted it OVER.