Love in Hell

Chapter 2

     "Okay class, settle down, settle down," Mr.Robinson says in attempts to grasp the classes attention, "Today I will be pairing you up for your projects. When your name is called come up and grab a packet and then sit with your partner." He gestured at the stack of papers sitting on his desk. "Marisa and David, Kelly and Ben, Sam and Lauren, Emma and Zayn..."

     What? Who in the hell is Zayn?

     Hesitantly, I walk up to the front of the class. I reach out to grab a packet of paper when my hand brushed another.

     "Sorry about that." A deep, foreign voice quietly says to me. I quickly pull my hand away and look up at my partner. Holy shit! It's him! It was the dark mysterious guy. I had never noticed that we had a class together and hell, now we are partners.

     I follow him back to two desks where we sit and wait for further instructions, neither of us saying another word. Flash backs of yesterday flood my mind. Oh how he just stared at me... Why didn't he help? Was he a jock too? Will the science project turn into an abuse project? I hope not.

     "Hello? Can you hear me?" A hand being waved I front of my face distracts me from my day dream, Zayn actually talking to me.

     "Yeah sorry, I kinda zoned out for a second... Uhm, what did you say?" I ask, overwhelmingly embarrassed to be talking to him for some reason.

     "I said do you wanna go to your place after school to work on this?" He says, trying to make eye contact, but I do not have the guts to maintain contact.

     "I mean I could just do this and put your name on it or something." Does he really want to work on this with me? Give me a break...

     "Well I want to help to, it is a partner project you know." He says, the corners of his lips slightly pulling up into a light smirk.

     "Hum, today uh, today isn't really a good day to go to my house actually." I say,  fiddling with the hem of my hoodie anxiously.

     "Okay well do you want to come to my house then?"

     "Yeah sure, I guess."

••••••

     "Do you have a computer?" I ask, looking around his living room. It was a small simple house. Not much decoration other than a picture or two on the wall of some water lake scenery. Being here with him... Just makes me so uncomfortable.

     "Yeah there's one in my room." He says

     "Lead the way then." We walk down a small narrow hall way and turn into the second door on the left. His room matched the rest of his house; small, a full sized bed in the corner, few shelves with sparse books lining them. The walls were a dark blue and his duvet and pillows a dark black. Fitting.

     "You can just Toss your stuff on my bed," Zayn says, tilting his head at the bead, "So, what should we do first?"

     "Well, we need to do some research, uhm, plan out what we want the poster to look like, get a works cited going and stuff like that." Zayn sits on the edge of his bed and pats his hand next to him, motioning me to sit next to him. I opt to sit in the computer chair in front of him.

     "Alrighty, let's get started then"

     We worked on the research and ideas for the poster for about an hour. It was majorly silent for the work time other than questions strictly related to the work.

     "So what should we do now?" Zayn asks, putting his notebook and pen down.

     "Well it depends on what we want the poster to look like, a tri fold, a plain poster, a stand up..."

     "We could do I tri fold, I think that would look the best, and we would have the most room to put information on it. "

     "Okay, I can go to the shoppe and grab it tomorrow then."

     "I can go too." Zayn says. Of course he wants to go.

     "No you really don't-"
    
     "Emma, I'm going."

••••••

     "Where were you at?" My sister practically shrieks at me as I walk through the front door.

     "I was at a friends house working on a school project." I quietly say, trying to make my way around her and to get into my room.

     "Oh so you have friends now?"

     "No, yes, ugh- he's not my friend, we were just partnered together for this stupid project." I spit out utterly frustrated with this whole day, the whole situation itself.

     "So it was a guy!" She yells, bewildered

     "Just drop it okay?"

     "Is he your boyfriend!"

     "No!"

     "Do you like him?!"

     "Leave me alone!" I shout as I slam my bed room door and lock it.

     I rush to my bathroom and lock that door behind me too. This week has been too much to handle, the stress is overwhelming. I can't stop crying. Tears down my cheeks, my hair sticking to my face, all I do is cry.

     I reach into the drawer behind me and pull out a shaver. Hurriedly, I pick it apart until I am left with the four small blades that composed the shaver. Throwing the other three and the broken shaver bits back in the drawer, I yank my shirt sleeve up and drag the cold metal across my wrist. It burns. A good burn. My damaged wrist not fully recovered from last time, I cover it in 5 more. I feel numb. The blood being the only indicator that I am still alive.

     I grab a wad of toilet paper and wipe up the blood that had ran down the side of my arm, then press the wad as a whole against the wounds, trying to stop the blood flow. My tears calm and I lay on my floor numb, empty. Not wanting to leave the dangerous comfort of my bathroom floor.