Loving the Campus Monster

Chapter 29 (Going back Home)

Laura

I clutch the steering wheel as my stomach feels like its twisting into knots. Then those knots coalesce in a cold, dense ball of dread, so heavy its threatening to drag me down, down, down, and I knew I'd fall forever and ever into darkness, and no one would hear my screams, no one would come to save me.

Not anymore.

How could I have been so naïve? So stupid to not see the oh so clearly obvious signs of who he was? It was all there; I was just too blind or too stupid to see it then.

They both had a sketchy past; they both wore the same dark hoodie every day and they both had a bad temper that made everyone fear them for it. It was all right there I just didn't see it until now. It's like I was wearing blinders on the whole time I was with Ross.

I close my eyes. Young and dumb- that's what I was. Too young and too trusting, with my head in the clouds and my heart on my sleeve. I didn't listen to reason, hadn't listen to the people I should have trusted, like my family and friends when they warned me about him and tried to warn me away from him. Instead, I trusted him, someone who I thought was someone else, someone who I could love and who could love me, someone I gave up everything for, only to find out he wasn't my savor like I thought him to be. Instead, he was my monster.

When I open my eyes, the whole two-hour drive to my parents' house seemed to have flown by already as we are now on the long, narrow driveway leading to our parents' house. My eyes travel to the well-maintained wide green lawns on each side of us and the big pine trees leading up the winding driveway ahead of us. Our childhood home is located in a gated community-that now that I think about it- Ross might have lived here with his family at the same time I was too. But then again, I highly doubted it since I would have noticed him around here. He would have stuck out like the devil in a sea of angels around here, which is a very accurate description, for him at least. The people around here are far from angels, no matter how much they try to pretend and act like they are. But to be honest though I might not have noticed him here since I tried to stay away from the kids in this community as much as possible while I was living here. Most of the kids here were really mean and preppy type that I just couldn't stand to be around for long periods of time. A lot of them tried to stay away from me too since they thought I was weird for many reasons, one of them being because I didn't act like them.

Ross must have lived in a different gated community or-more than likely-his whole area of land, considering what Ross said about his father needing his own privacy. But I don't know if I can trust anything he ever told me before since he lied to me about something so important about himself. 

A swell of hurt starts to rise up from thinking about Ross before I push it down again and look over at Holly to see how she's doing and to distract myself from thinking about Ross again. She looks nervous and fearful but at the same time completely heartbroken too, the same way I'm feeling inside, only I think I feel worse, way worse.

There is a darkness inside of me that's been gathering ever since I left our-no, Ross's-house yesterday that I've been trying to fight from consuming me completely but it's getting harder and harder to do as the minutes tick by. A lot of things have happened in the past forty-eight hours and it's all starting to boil over in me. The fragile wall I have built over the last hour of first hearing about the news of my father's condition is starting to crumble but I desperately hold onto whatever strength I have left in me as I try to keep it together as best as I can. I can't give into the fear and grief that's trying to consume me. I need to be strong, not for myself but for Holly. Holly has always been very fragile when it comes to things like this. For God sakes, she cried when her goldfish died when she was thirteen. She's always had a soft heart, so it was understandable for her to break down into sobbing tears when I first told her about our father's health this morning. Strangely for me I didn't cry, not even after first hearing about it a few hours ago. I just laid there in the bed for hours, staring up at the ceiling, not really feeling anything after messaging Shella back and telling her we were coming. Even when I got up this morning, I still didn't feel anything. I don't know if it was because I was trying to be strong for her and pushing down my emotions, or because I just didn't have any tears left to shed, or maybe I was just too numb inside to feel anything anymore. Regardless of the reason I knew I needed to be there for Holly. She needed me to lean on for strength for when or if the worst happened to our father.