Broken

Chapter 6: If I Ain't Got You

Wasted on the floor of his room. Bottles of whiskey and beers laid around the floor. His phone was on the bed, with numerous missed calls from Sophia. Here Eddie was, laying on the floor like a drunkard, unconscious.

Ever since the day when Eddie left Sophia without a word and only a single note, Eddie had spent his last 3 days drowning himself in bottles of beer that he brought from the liquor store and whiskey that once belonged to his dad. Locking himself from the others, he spent his days in loneliness, drowning himself in it.

On the other side, Sophia had also been a mess herself. Numerous times Eddie ignored her call, the more she felt her heart's aching. Her feelings had been a mix of sadness and confusion because on one hand, she was sad Eddie left her without explanation and on the other hand, she was confused what was going on with him.

Sitting on her bed hugging her teddy bear, she slowly wept, couldn't help but to miss her lover, who had been disappearing for 3 days and not a thing had her boyfriend said to her ever since. While tears came out of her eyes, she buried her head into the teddy bear, her weeping kept going through the night.

----------------------------------------------------------

"Miss Gardner? Miss Gardner??"

Sophia was standing facing the whiteboard, her right hand was holding the marker writing, but it seemed to the class like she was frozen, didn't even move a muscle.

"Miss Gardner!!" Billy and Lena in unison called out to her name.

Immediately Sophia was brought out from her blank out and turned around, facing her students, all of them looking concerned with their homeroom teacher.

"Miss Gardner, are you alright?" Annie asked.

Blinking a couple times and rubbing her nose, she nodded, "Yes, yes.... I am. I'm okay."

"Your answer kinda contradicts your look and state, Miss Gardner", Owen said.

"Yeah... You never blanked out during teaching us, Miss", Damian piped in, "are you really alright?"

"I said I'm fine!" she snapped in a sudden, causing the whole classroom to be shocked upon her sudden snapping. Even Lena was taken aback with her actions.

Realizing what she had done, she rubbed the spot between her eyes, sighed heavily and shook her head. Deciding that Eddie's leaving had been infuriating her, she walked towards the door.

"I'm sorry, kids... Excuse me for a bit."

As the door closed, all the kids were looking at each other in confusion, with Billy looking at Lena and vice versa, raising their shoulders in cluelessness.

"She's not usually like this", Damian said.

"She's NEVER like this", Billy emphasized on the word 'never'.

While the kids were left to their own cluelessness, Lena already figured out what seemed to be the problem. Taking the initiative as the classroom's rep, she stood up and walked from the seat to in front of the class. All of their eyes soon were on her, expecting that she was about to say something.

"I think I know why she's like this."

"Why?" Owen asked, still clueless.

"It's not exactly why. It's who", she explained, "and I think we all know who."

"Mr. Keegan", all eyes turned to Little Eddie who said it, they were all surprised that even he knew, "it must be him."

"You sure?" Owen asked, a small hint of doubt was clear in his tone, "what if it's not him?"