The Pain That Grows Us

Chapter Five

It isn't that I want people to cower every time I walk into the room, no, I don't want that. What I want is to be on the top of the food chain. I want people to fear me enough to stay out of my way, to look the other way when I break the rules. I want to make people here so miserable, so on edge, that they kick me out. That they see what I have seen all along. That I am not worth the effort. Not worth the time. Not worth saving.

Why was I?

If only I could get her voice out of my head.

Ruby is dead.

Or their words out of my head.

I can't think about her. Not when I have to be someone that she wouldn't recognize. Or maybe she would. Maybe she would look at me and recognize me right away. I never tried to hide who I am from her, I never put on a show to be something different when she was around, and I am sure she has heard stories about me. So why the hell do I care now?

"You didn't have to do that." I tear my eyes away from the dark ceiling, until I am glancing in the direction of the bed covered in darkness. "At lunch, you didn't have to step in like that."

I turn back to look at the ceiling. He is wrong. I did have to step in at lunch. If I didn't step in today, then the next time something happened they would have pushed back, would have fought me, and I don't want to do that. Not right now. Not when I am stuck in this wheelchair.

"Ethan isn't that bad. Normally he leaves Talia alone, but you are here now so... So he wanted to claim her as his."

Not that I am interested in her, but they don't know that. They don't know about Ruby and the relationship we have. The fucked up relationship we have. I haven't even taken her out on a date. I have never called her my girlfriend. I haven't done a lot of things one does with their girlfriend... Fuck. No. I can't keep thinking about her.

"You don't say much, do you?" he asks, and I let out a sigh. Maybe he is the one who talks too much. Why does my silence have to be a bad thing? "But that might be good, you can fly under the radar for the most part."

"I think you worry too much." I wish I could flip over and smother my face in my pillow. This is why I don't room with anyone, they all want to talk and sing songs until we are all getting along.

"You might be right." he whispers.

Silence finally filling the room, thank fuck. I thought I was going to lose my mind. There has been too much meet and greet, and just obnoxious noise today. I haven't had one single moment of silence all day.

Even when everyone fled the room earlier I didn't have a moment of silence. I could still hear them from the living room. All the bickering, all the loud conversations, even the quiet ones no one wanted a stranger to hear. I heard it all.

He is quiet.

He is cute.

He won't last. Did you see him, he was practically begging for a drink.

How much you want to bet he will end up killing himself while he is here.

Poor Jason.

They shouldn't have given him the new guy... not after the last time.

I had to listen to all of it, because I couldn't wheel my chair to another room, or leave the house. I had to sit there until Miss Greenwald came back to the living room and saw me sitting there. But they aren't wrong. I do want a drink. I was practically begging for a drink with my eyes while I was sitting there. But it's not my fault. I feel naked without my jacket, without my family by my side, without everything I have had up until now. And I couldn't even hide that pain or that realization with a drink. No. I had to face it head on.