Messed Up Kids

d u e

I CAN SEE hands flailing as the ball hurtles right over the net, I can hear the rapid rhythm of my heartbeat echoing in my ears and I can feel myself trapped in this rectangle formed by white rectilinear lines.

I should do something, I should make a move but before I even flinch, someone else's hands reach the ball and hit it above the net. Unfortunately, the ball ends up out of the court.

Volleyball is definitely not my favourite sport. However, I value it as a simile. It beholds a certain complexity, mainly with the attack. There is something, rather a feeling, after the release, sort of a premonition. As if knowing in advance whether the play will work out or not. The same thing can apply to what I feel about Harvey and Nathan, yet I can't tell how it will end. There is just something puzzling about them.

For instance, earlier this week I was taking off my books from my locker when I saw Harvey walking towards me behind Nathan. They wanted to return me the money they had borrowed.

Harvey looked like death. From the way he looked like someone whose carried the whole world's burden, to the way he acted like he had his cells towed and blood drained, until the way his bones seemed like broken dreams stuck together by powder and brawn.

"Why are you giving her money?" Harvey had asked Nathan and turned his confused and wary gaze at me. I couldn't help but notice the way he focused his vision on one point but wasn't really looking. Almost as if he wasn't really awake but wasn't asleep either, as the world for him was just an illusion.

"Excuse Harvey here, he is kind of off so he probably doesn't remember what he's been asking around," Nathan had stated with a hint of concern in his tone.

"Sleeplessness," I had said, well whispered, the last syllables where mere whispers intertwined with hope that they had not listen to my judgement.

"Yeah," Nathan had given me a quick response and slapped Harvey's shoulder to walk with him through the hallway.

And I had cursed myself in that instant because there was an unsettling feeling creeping inside me. The whole situation had left me apprehensive and I wanted to know why he looked like death; why he couldn't sleep.

Did someone haunt him?

Was he looking for some star to sweep away his void?

Harvey looked like a mess and for some damn reason I wanted to know how it all started tangling.

I hear voices shouting my name that echoes around the gym, and suddenly I feel a brutal force hit my forehead.

I look at the people rushing towards me and gathering around in a waning-waxing lunar phase shape. Therefore, I take a step back to get away from their minding gazes but I bump into something - well, someone I realise as I look behind. My gaze flickers from the slightly tall girl with black hair and gentle smile, who I bumped into, to the rest of the people assembled. Perhaps it isn't a lunar waning-waxing shape, but more of a full moon shape.

"I'm alright."

Words leave my tongue before it begins, when there isn't even questions to have answers to. But they still insist with the "Are you sure?", "Does it hurt?" kind of enquiries which I just nod to because there is pain instigating up my head and it feels like someone is trembling it until my brain gets completely sore.

I walk towards a bench and sit while Nina or Lina, I'm not sure, tells me something about ice. I burry my face on my hands. I had forgotten about the ache that a volley ball can cause.