Sisters: Butterflies at Graduation [book two]

Chapter Twenty

Dedicated to @AnnaAkridge because of her urgency for me to write this next chapter. Honestly, your comments motivate me to write.

Chapter Twenty

We're lying on his parent's couch. Something plays on the TV but I don't know what. Instead I'm watching our hands intertwined together; my leg rests on top of his. His arm is wrapped around my shoulders and his thumb gently traces my upper arm.

Heat spreads to the rest of my body where our hips are pressed together.

Music plays and I'm about to ask where it's coming from, but I wake up and I realise I'm back in my bedroom. My hand holds the duvet instead of his and my legs sit limply in a cocoon of warmth instead of with his. The music is my alarm clock, and it's time to get up for school.

He's not really here. It's all in my head.

* *

How is it I've ended up here? I'm tired; I'm tired of studying and I'm tired of the fresh starts. I crave familiarity again. I miss walking down the halls of Garfield High School with Esmee, Bridgit and Chelsea at my side. I miss knowing what class I have without having to look at my timetable and badgering half a dozen people to show me the way. I miss the rhythm of my Monday mornings and my Friday nights. I miss waking up to Zac's good morning texts and going to sleep after we've said goodnight.

I walk down the corridors of Fillmore High School and I feel nothing. It's simply the building in which I must reside in until graduation. It's a blip in the radar, purgatory before I finally return to familiar ground. I remember being scared sick of attending Garfield High School, but that was because I had been so desperate for it to work, for it to be a success, for me to find something to hold onto. I hadn't experienced any of those things before.

And I most definitely am not feeling any of these things here. Maybe it's because I don't care how things turn out; I have no need to fit in, no need to find friends, no need to become part of it. Because I know that by the time I leave, I'll simply return to where I belong.

Then again, I thought that same feeling after Michele's accident. I thought that it was just a blip and look what happened. It's no longer a blip but something I've had to accept. I'm scared that after Garfield, I'll never feel that way again. I'll always be floating. Always. And my feet will never touch the ground.

I walk to the library at lunchtime, my stomach rumbling but my brain unable to stand another minute of that cafeteria. I've never liked cafeteria's, but with Zac sitting not fifty feet away an the ever nearing deadlines for our final grades just around the corner, I can't even grin and bear it. Not that much grinning has happened recently. Not much has happened, period. I'm counting down the days until I can crawl back to Garfield and wrap up the school year. It feels like I'm stuck in another time-zone where time is at a standstill, and it's only when I return to Garfield will time resume again and I can get on with my life.

The silence of the library empties my thoughts. I nod at the librarian and sweep passed the shelves of books and tables of silent students.

I turn the corner of the world history section and I see him.

He looks up and our eyes lock. I clutch my books tighter in my arms and I don't know whether to smile. Perhaps I should, but I don't. I shuffle across the section on the Vietnam War and stand beside him. I think that I'll just pretend I didn't see him - a completely bogus idea but one I've perfected over the year - and hope he's the one to initiate the conversation. Then i remember that he has no reason to; it's up to me.

So I look up, send a sideways glance his way and say, "Hey," and pray my voice isn't too quiet for him to hear.

There's a pause, and for a split second my cheeks are flushed with a harsh burn because he's decide to ignore me, which means he hates me, which means I've completely blown it. I'm a horrible person.