Monsters

Chapter Thirteen

It's been a week since what happened at the school. A week since that close call where I had been shot and Luz did what she did to the ones who'd caused it. Now Luz had started acting distant. For the past week, she chose to barely speak to me. All we ever got done doing is traveling and resting only to start traveling again. It was all rinse and repeat. It hurt that she had been acting this way and she avoided speaking to me every chance she got. It was as if we had gone back to the beginning of everything.

I grew tired of trying so I just gave in to her avoidance and started to do the same in return. Because of this, we had been walking in silence for a few hours now. I no longer attempted to speak to her and she remained silent the same way she had been all week. This act I had grown numb to. I'd find my mind wandering in this time; sometimes toward thoughts of her, other times toward something else.

Either way, it didn't matter because it was in silence all the same. A few times I wondered why she'd been acting this way. Though none of my attempts to get that information out of her seemed to work out for me. It all made me sad yet I was helpless to make it better otherwise. If she can choose to act this way, then I can choose to act how I please as well. So I'd stay silent and everything would remain as it was now.

Something shifted in my gut and I paused any further movements while letting my eyes look around. I was searching for something I couldn't find, but that hadn't meant it wasn't there. It was because of this that I decided to speak up for the first time since the day had started. "Luz, something is wrong," I mumbled, my voice scratchy from its lack of use so I cleared it before looking at her.

She froze and turned to look me in the eyes for the first time since we set off on our journey this morning. I watched her look off to the side before closing her eyes. She seemed to be struggling to focus yet I remained quiet to not distract her from whatever it was she did when she got like this. Shaking her head she looked back at me. "You're imagining things Blight. Let's get moving."

The way she said it so bluntly, with no emotion in her tone, hurt me. She had been acting so brutally towards me, leaving me each time more broken than the last. What hurt was how she knew she had been doing this to me and she didn't care. I have had enough of it. "Okay Luz, that is it!" I screamed, walking towards her angrily.

I gripped her shoulder and turned her around. Purposely disregarding her personal space because of how she'd been disregarding my feelings and she looked angry. "I am so sick of how you've been acting lately! Can't you see how you're hurting me?" I shoved her back and watched as she grit her teeth. "And now you won't even take me seriously when my gut is telling me that something is wrong?" I shoved her again and she rushed forward, gripping my wrists a bit too tight.

"Well, maybe you should have listened to me when I said that traveling with me never goes well! Maybe, if you stopped thinking about yourself for one second, we wouldn't be in half the messes we're in! Did you ever think of that?" She shouted in my face and I flinched backward to give myself space again.

"Are you kidding me right now?" I ripped my wrists from her strong grasp, rubbing at them. "If you weren't being hunted down all the time maybe we wouldn't be in half the messes we're in. Did you ever think that maybe you're the reason we keep almost getting killed?" I shouted as tears welled up in my eyes but I wouldn't let them fall. I wouldn't let her see how her actions had been affecting me.

"Of course, I see that! I'm the reason you almost died Amity!" She was breathing heavily while forcing her fingers through her hair. "At the building when we first met, in the woods, in The Sanctuary, just a week ago in the school, and so many more! You keep almost dying because of me! Because of my actions! Because of my decisions almost costing you your life!" She took a few steps back from me and my face fell at her words.