Shutter Me

Chapter Four

A/N:

I know I don't usually put these stuff first but this is important. Chapter Four and the next succeeding chapters would be short stories of what happens during Kit and Marco's seven day deal.  That's all. Have a nice day! :)

Day One

“Where are we headed today?”  I asked loudly, hoping that the volume of my voice would crack through Marco’s eardrums to make him turn to face me. 

As expected, his head didn’t even move an inch. It was a stupid question though—“Where are we headed today?” when I knew exactly where we were going because he left a note last Friday on my mini-office. I was sporting tennis shorts and shoes.  

Heck, maybe we were going to fish on some lake, please note the sarcasm.

Even if I knew we were going to play tennis, I asked that dumb-butt query to get a response. I obviously failed. However, I knew I shouldn't be disheartened if I wanted to execute my plan.  Just as what Kendall and I have schemed, my phone’s voice recorder was on and I didn’t want it to record an hour of awkward silence. 

My feet shuffled quietly on the tennis court as I caught up with Marco’s faster pace. “Okay, I get that we’re going to play tennis but why do you have to drag me into this whole darn thing? Why can’t I just interview you and destroy all evidence of us talking to each other? I can always use a pseudonym for my article so they wouldn’t have to know about me.” 

“Haven’t we tackled that question before? It’s simply because I don’t want any stranger barging inside my house. Besides, it’ll be easier for you to interview me if we were friends.” Marco replied. “Haven’t you read books these days? Where guy meets girl and they just go into guy’s house without even knowing each other? Don’t you find that a bit unrealistic?”

Well, he does have a point but I didn't dare tell him that. “But in that guy meets girl situation, the girl isn’t asking for simple interview...unlike me.”

“I don’t see how that changes anything.” He answered back. I could feel him smirking in his own up-to-no-good way. 

“It makes all the difference.” I retorted but then again, all I received was a shrug.

Marco stopped walking to bend down and plop his huge sports bag on the riser. It made his shirt revealed a tiny portion of his back.  In a flash, my hair on the arms rose.

He had scars.

Not star shaped ones or a crescent.

In fact, just like other marks, they weren't beautiful at all.

The scars began at his lower back near the waist and even if I couldn’t see his whole back, I could deduce that they stretched to his neck like a map of an island.  They were like dark shadows brooding over his back, hidden ghosts  of Marco's past.  They didn’t belong to Marco’s almost perfect light skin.

My body shivered.

“I think you should get your own tennis racket.” Marco blurted and he spun around to face me, shoving the image of his back away but the scars still haunted me. “Rackets are there inside the basement.”

For once I didn’t complain about Marco’s lack of gentlemanliness. I just strode towards the basement to get a racket, still not getting over the fact that I just saw his scars They weren't all alike except in color, dark shade of brown. There were patches and some looked like cracks.

Did he get them in a fight? Did he fall off a flight of stairs? Did he get a cliffdiving accident? I didn’t know. It made me even more curious and greedier to know the answer.