Silence is Golden

Chapter 34

Monday morning rolled around and I stumbled about getting ready for another day with sleep still clouding my mind as all my body wanted to do was climb back into my nice comfortable bed and find oblivion for a few hours  but my head knows better than that. One I have to go to school or they will report my absence to my mother and the last thing I need is her getting involved in my life and secondly I know it won’t be oblivion I find it will be torture. Plus I have another weeks’ worth of after school detentions yet and I can’t afford the trouble that will come if I miss them. So with a belly full of nerves instead of breakfast and a light drizzle about me I set off for school scolding myself for once again forgetting a proper jacket. Each raindrop that hit my face felt like a little drop of ice against my pale cold skin and my jeans slowly became darker as they grew damp from the rain.

With my head tucked down, my arms folded and a scowl on my face I didn’t notice the big body until I walked straight into it causing me to stumble and almost hit the ground if it wasn’t for the two big strong hands that grabbed the tops of my arms but in that first few seconds I wished to hit the ground instead of having someone touch me. I looked up to meet a muscular chest encased in black leather emitting the faint smell of diesel and male, Eli. After taking a few seconds to calm my rapidly pounding heart I looked up to see him watching me intently with his messy black hair slightly damp from the rain. I stepped out of his reach knowing he would have the sense to let me. I suppose that’s what I like about Eli; he knows how far to push me but he knows when to back off. I think it’s what makes me just that little bit comfortable with him.

I felt a weight fall lightly onto my shoulders and came back to the present to find Eli’s leather jacket now wrapped about me to keep the rain off. Accepting it I slide my arms into it properly and pulled it tighter about myself secretly inhaling his scent that clung to it. Its miles too big for me, my hands not even coming out of the ends of the sleeves but I don’t care.

“Looks good on you”, he said in his deep gravelly voice with a hint of a smile behind it.

I gave a wiry smile of my own in response and followed behind him as he lead the way into the school yard looking so out of place there. His big shoulders and long strides making him look like a foreign object amongst all the school kids. He looks like a man amongst boys; I wonder how old he is? He can’t be the same age as everyone else here.

“Nice jacket!” Emma exclaimed as she bounded toward me through the crowds supporting a big dotty umbrella and grinning.

I don’t understand how that girl can be so merry, she’s at school and it’s raining.

Emma bid farewell to us outside English as I followed Eli through the door keeping my gaze locked on the muscles of his back through the white school shirt he’s wearing, I find that by doing this I don’t notice the staring or whispering going on around me so much. English passed in a blur which led into maths then geography, science and ICT and before I knew it I was standing outside the now familiar detention room with Eli at my side.

*

Exactly one week passed and I found myself in the exact same place with Eli beside me once again. The same white door in front of me leading into the same room with twenty four single separate desks in, in three rows of eight with the same stony faced teacher standing at the front waiting to check off everyone’s name. But today it won’t have the same people in it; today Eli, Jax and Trey will be missing. I’ve gotten used to their presence over the last week; I can bear it now, to have people around me well strictly that’s not true I can bear to have them around me. But now I have one last detention to do by myself after missing one the first week, Eli’s missed some too but he doesn’t have to redo them, he was gone again on Wednesday.