By Chance

ch 20

Raven

Sandy cooked some sort of chicken. I forgot what it was called. It's really good. We eat dinner in silence, the only sound is forks hitting the plaster plates.

Gabriel's staring of into space. Thinking about who knows what and Sandy is looking at me. I smile gently and look back down at my food shyly. "So how old are you?" She asks shattering the silence and bringing Gabriel back to earth. "I'm 16." I say. She nods. "You two make the perfect couple." She says. I almost choke on my food. Gabriel turns red. "Oh, um, we're just friends." I say. "Sure you are. Give it a couple days sweety and that answer will change." She says. My cheeks burn. "Mom." Gabriel says glaring. Sandy just shrugs. "What? It's true you, would look so perfect together." She continues. We're both a bright shade of red now. "I mean you get along so well. How did you meet?" She asks. "I heard from a friend that her sister had a sister and I wanted to talk about some things." He says leaving out the details. "How did you know about her sister?" Sandy asks. "Her sister was my best friend." He says. Sandy nods. "What did you want to talk to her about?" She asks. Gabriel's knuckles are white. I grab his hand and try to calm him down. I don't know why he's angry but he is. My effort doesn't work. "Can you stop with the questions? If you were actually here some of the time you would know all this stuff!" He semi yells and storms off upstairs.

I bite my lip. I don't know why he got so angry all the sudden he's normally cool tempered. Sandy looks pale. "Please excuse my son. I don't know what's wrong with him today." She says. I shrug. "It's fine." I say.

We finish dinner and I help her with dishes. She dries them and I wash them.

I stick my hand into the murky, soapy water. I touch something and grab. It's a knife handle, but as I pull it out it slips out of my finger tips. The jagged edges slicing right down my palm. I press my palm to my stomach, while silently screaming. "Oh my gosh, honey are you okay?" She asks trying to look at my palm. I shake my head and mumble no through gritted teeth. I look at my hand. There's so much blood on my hand I can't even see where the cut is, but I can feel it. Straight down the middle. "Gabriel! Get your but down here now!" Sandy shouts. I hear footsteps running down the stairs. Gabriel appears in the doorway. "What happened?" He asks when he sees me. "Come on sweety let's get you to the hospital." She says. I just nod and follow her out the door, Gabriel right behind me. We get into a really expensive looking sports car. I sit in the back with Gabriel as his mom drives.

I still haven't said anything as we walk through the ER doors. It takes 2 hours for them to inject a numbing needle directly into the cut (which hurts like heck), stitch it up, wrap it in bandages, and fill out all the stupid paper work. Great! Just great!

Sandy has to fill out the paper work since my mom obviously doesn't answer the phone and I was a guest on her property.

As soon as we pull into the driveway and Sandy opens the door I trudge upstairs and collapse on Gabriel's bed.

I hear footsteps as someone else also comes up the stairs. All I see is the shadow of a person, but judging on the height it's Gabriel. "Hey." He says softly. "Hey." I say turning my head to look at the shadow. "I'm sorry about earlier. I was already upset with all that happened and I took it out on my mom." He admits. I smile slightly. "I think it's your mom you owe the apology to. Not me." I say. He nods and lays down on the floor where a pillow and some sheets have been placed. I sigh. "Goodnight." He says. "Goodnight." I say back before finally letting my eyes close.