The Wallflower of Parkview High

Chapter Twenty Three

The conversation I had with Damien through text almost made me scared to go to school today. Who knows if he was really mad at me like I thought or if he was just annoyed at me? Either way, I'm pretty sure he would track me down in person and get an answer out of me on why the hell I was defending Zander.

I was so scared in fact, that this morning, I had gone to Dad and told him that I was sick and couldn't go to school. Taking one glance at me, he instantly whipped out the thermometer, and ran it over my forehead. When the small screen turned green, he had given me his classic "how-dare-you-lie-to-me" look and sent me off to go get ready. So here I was, standing in front of the school and struggling to keep my umbrella in my hand. It wasn't my fault that Charlotte had lost her umbrella last month and therefore had to use mine, making me stuck using Dad's umbrella. His umbrella was clearly made for adults, seeing that I had a lot of trouble wrapping my fingers around the bottom part of it and clutching it in my tiny hands. It didn't help either that it was also very windy out and the sweater I was wearing was very thin and had no hood attached to it.

Suddenly, I felt a great tug on my right hand, in which I was holding Dad's umbrella. I let out a cry of alarm as I got pulled forward more and more, the wind whipping in my face. I tried to plant my feet on the ground to prevent from being pulled further, but it was no use and I fell face first into a puddle on the ground, a pain spreading across my hip and Dad's umbrella flying away to god knows where.

Great, I thought as I layed there, my face in the puddle. Now I have to go through the school day all wet and dirty...

I should've tried harder to convince Dad that I was sick this morning.

"Are you okay?"

I felt someone nudge my helpless form with the tip of their shoe.

"Yes." I replied, though it sounded like "nghff" because my nose and mouth were full of water.

"Well, if you're okay, then get up." the voice said.

"I don't feel good."

"Do you want me to help you up?"

I whined softly; the person must have taken that as a yes because I then felt a hand much larger than mine take hold of my hand and start to pull me upwards. Once I was back on my feet, I turned to look at the person. To my dismay, it was Zander, who was staring at me like I was slime on the bottom of his shoe.

"You look like crap." he finally said after a minute of staring at each other. I bit my lip.

"I'm sorry, it's just - our clothing styles are very different-" I began, searching my brain for some stuff Charlotte had one time told me to say in order to respond to people who I might find being mean to me.

"No, I'm talking about the fact that you're all muddy and dripping wet." Zander told me.

"Amazing..." I muttered.

"Here, why don't we go get you situated so you look at least somewhat decent throughout the day." Zander suggested, grabbing my hand and pulling me to the bench next to the office where it wasn't raining anymore. The instant his hand made contact with mine, I was sure my face had turned beet red.

Once we had sat down, Zander rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a small pack of tissues.

"This is all I have, sorry." he muttered, seeing my questioning look. He yanked a tissue out of the pack and folded it in half. His eyes scanned my muddy and wet form for a minute before handing me a tissue. I gladly took it and began to wipe the mud off my knees.

We sat there for a minute, him handing me tissues, and me using them to wipe off the mud and water. We basically had gone through the whole pack of tissues when I had managed to wipe most of the mud and water off of me.

"I think we should get you some new clothes." Zander told me. I shook my head.

"I don't want my dad to find out I lost his umbrella and got all wet."

"You don't have to call him. We can get some from the office or you can wear your PE clothes."

"No!" I gasped. The last thing I wanted to do was wear my PE clothes around school and risk having everyone laugh at me. If there was one thing to say about the PE uniform, it certainly wasn't pretty.

"Fine, if you want to walk around soaking wet..." he trailed off and glanced slightly behind me for a minute causing me to raise an eyebrow in question.

"Your backpack is wet." he said.

My eyes widened and I instantly shrugged off my backpack and unzipped it. When I reached in to grab the first thing I touched, my fingers felt the familiar texture of my sketchbook, which sure enough felt wet to the touch. At that very second, it felt like my heart had dropped to my feet and my stomach felt like it was in knots.

"M-My sketchbook!" I gasped, yanking it out of my backpack. Tears started to form in my eyes as I turned the wet pages and saw that all of my drawings were ruined in some way or another.

"Are you okay?" Zander asked as I stared at my sketchbook, more tears forming with each page I turned.

"N-No I'm n-not!" I shrieked. He held his hands up like he was surrendering to something.

"Okay, um, do you want to go to the nurse and get some towels to dry it off?"

"I-It won't be the same!" I screamed, my face turning red and tears streaming down my face now.

"I-"

"Do you realize how special this sketchbook is to me and how some of these drawings took weeks to finish? It can't be fixed by simply wiping the water off of it and letting it dry!"

"Noah-"

"Shut up!" I screeched, standing up , about to go into the school and away from Zander.

"Can you at least give it to me so I can dry it off?"

I was about to respond when a different voice spoke.

"What the hell is going on here?"

I turned around to see Damien standing there, a look of fury on his face.

"It's not what it looks like!" I exclaimed. However, Damien was glaring at Zander.

"You made Noah cry!" he shouted.

"I did not!" Zander protested, "The fact that it was raining and his sketchbook got wet made him cry!"

"Well you should've done something if you're such a good person you claim to be!"

"Well I offered to help but he wouldn't listen to me!"

"That's probably because you made it worse."

"All I did was offer to dry his sketchbook off but he kept shouting at me!"

"That's because even if you dried it off, it wouldn't be the same! How many times do I have to tell you?!" I screamed at them. They both fell silent and stared at me.

Good, let them realize how stupid they're being I thought as I pushed pass them and walked through the school gates

At this point, I didn't care about anything. I didn't care that I was soaking wet and looked like I had a mud bath. I didn't care that those two idiots were arguing for absolutely no reason. All I cared about was that I had just lost an important piece of myself that I probably never would get back or be able to replicate.