Look My Way

Chapter 5: Walking In The Dark

But I'm only human, And I bleed when I fall down, I'm only human, And I crash and I break down

-Human, Christina Perri

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Chapter 5

Cassie's P.O.V

It had been two days, since I had seen Josh and Maria's make out session. I ditched school after that, and didn't go the next day, destroying my perfect attendance record. Lucy called me 14 times in those two days, and I knew she must have been having a heart attack by now, but I couldn't bring myself to answer the phone. What I saw that day, burned a hole through my heart and nearly destroyed it, but when I lost that part of my heart, something clicked in my mind.

They were together. And they were happy.

It was something so simple, and I had always known it, but somehow I had been looking at it in grey. When I saw them in the hallway, I saw that they loved each other or at least they thought they did, and all of a sudden I saw the truth with bright, blinding, HD quality color. If Josh was satisfied, then why would he be interested in me? There was no reason for me to feel terrible every time they were together.

There was a part of me that yelled at myself for being so stupid. Josh was the perfect, All-American guy,so it made sense for him to have the perfect, pageant-queen girl as his girlfriend. Never would he ever be interested in a plain, boring, and childish school-girl nerd like me. I never would've been good enough for him. With that I made I conclusion...

I had to let him go.

Even though I never held him...

Josh's P.O.V

I had the dream again.

But this time Maria comforted me as I cried, but it made me cry even more. I cried and cried, until I was sure I was going to drown in my own tears. There was more pain and tears in this dream than the last, yet it seemed like there were no end to it.

Maria held me, but her touch burned me, and the pain only brought more tears into my eyes. The sight of her coffee brown hair blinded me. All these new feeling of disgust were aimed at her, confusing me and welcoming new tears.

Just when I thought my suffering would never end, I felt a hand on my shoulder, and it didn't burn. Automatically, I remembered her touch. It was my angel's.

I looked up, and there she was. Her face was covered by a curtain of hair, but her whole being presented beauty. I didn't have to see her face to know it. Everything about her said she was different from anyone else I ever met. Seeing her, almost made me forget the scorch of Maria's touch.

My angel held her hand out for me to take just like Maria had in my past dream. I stared at her hand, and without another thought I reached for her, hoping to escape the pain. But before I reached it, my angel removed her hand, almost as if she was playing a joke on me, and would at any time say "Sike!"

She didn't, but she did let out a small laugh, and I began to cry harder. Feeling pity, she knelt down, and pecked me on my forehead, and I felt an instant relief there, but my heart still pained me. Then, just as easily as she appeared, she disappeared.

That dream confused me even more than the first, and it worried me. To dream of the mystery girl once was one thing, but to dream of her again was pure, unhealthy obsessive. Then there was the silly part of me, that worried that by dreaming of this girl, I was being unfaithful to Maria.

To make things worse, Maria had been acting weird around me these past two days, ever since that hallway make-out. She avoids me now, though she tries to not to make it obvious, and when we're together it seems like her mind is somewhere else. I worried if I somehow I crossed the line somewhere. Or was I just paranoid because of the dreams?

Now because Maria's behavior, I haven't exactly been able to carry on my plan of befriending Cassie. Not that I've seen her these past two days. She wasn't in her Mr. Drummond's class, when I had to give him copies on Wednesday and she wasn't in Orchestra in Thursday, when I had pull out a friend from class. Cassie had just disappeared.

What had happened to her? She hasn't missed a single day of school, since first grade. I knew that, since her name was always announced in the list of people with perfect attendance. So why had she missed school? Was she sick? Had she moved and hadn't told anyone?

This last question shook me up for a reason I didn't know. Why was I even this worried about her? I hadn't been this worried even when my best friend Tommy missed a week from school, and the office couldn't get a hold of his parents. Then again, I knew he had been planning to run off to Vegas with a girl he met two months ago.

I was so confused these days and nothing made sense. I wasn't sure where Maria and I stood. I wasn't sure what my fascination with Cassandra was. Or even what my grade was in History. I just had this feeling that it was going to start making sense, but right now I was walking in the dark, feeling myself out of this hole blind.