I'll Protect You (Original Version)

Nothing good ever comes out of Advanced Chemistry

A week had gone on. No attacks to everyone else's relief. No more threatening letters or text messages. Maybe it was due to the fact that Paradise was swarming with disguised agents, who posed as ordinary people that spent way too much time at restaurants and bistros and coffee shops.

And I mean way too much time.

Just like I spent way too much time cooped up in my room. Ever since the incident between Sunglass Dude and I, my father refused to let me out of the house. He didn't send me back to Cimeria and lock me in my mother's closet--I thank the stars for that--but he locked me up in my own room.

"If you think I'm letting you get another head injury, then you must be crazier than me!" he decided.

Well, I really had no cause to complain all that much because even before the official club of I Hate Royals and We Should Burn Them All Down came into town, this is seriously all I did. I sat on my bed, ordered people around to get me food, and read.

And, I know it was pathetic of me, but I even tried to use the presence of my hate club in town to get out of school. I remember the argument as if it happened yesterday.
Which, in fact, it did. And the days before that as well.

But, since everyone seemed to think education was so imortant in this time of utter crisis, they forced me to get up every morning at the crack of dawn, dress in that totally unique uniform and trudge to school surrounded by bickering idiots.

I happen to be one of those bickering idiots, by the way. I actually started The Bickering Idiots Club.

I mean, so would you when every conversation is mainly who guards Park at what hour, and who's getting the food. My name is Park Sparrow. My conversations need to have at least one geeky reference to a book series, or dragons. If not, I am going to be very upset.

Sophia had been very upset for the past week as well. Now, I am a very understanding person (occasionally) and I tried. I swear I tried to understand her frustration. But I don't think many people would've minded if I went up to her and knocked her out so she would stop whining about Logan no longer being by her side.

Because once again, he became the overprotective bodyguard. Cross refused to leave my side, glued to my presence as often as possible. He wouldn't leave for any reason unless his parents had called him, or a professor. But even then it was difficult convincing him to go pass out papers.

I did feel bad, seeing Sophia's hurt face when Logan took his seat by me instead of her. All their coffee date plans, dinners, study hours were cancelled. She blamed it all on me, I could tell. When he showed up at school with my group instead.

So for the first day, I walked around with her hateful glare set on my back like a knife aimed at a target. Guilt and shame kept stabbing me in the mind. II didn't mean to steal him from her. It's just he was my bodyguard. Bodyguards like to follow the body that they're guarding.

After that, she started to cling to him. Even if it sucked that she couldn't have him all to herself, it was worse knowing that he was with me. Sophia even said so herself. To me. After she threatened to "ruin my life."

In which I replied with "a life ruined isn't as bad having someone pour acid all over you hair and then tied you to a pole and having Cimerian wolves surround you."

Not that I've ever done that in my life.

I don't take well to being threatened, so you, my dear readers, might be able to understand why my guilt vanished in a heartbeat and was replaced with an overwhelming surge or irritation. On and on the days went by where she followed us around, her obnoxiously high pitched calling for attention, butting into every one of my sentences.