DEAD INSIDE

(16)

I tried to take a deep breath to calm down the conflicting emotions that were assaulting me but hiccupped loudly, which frustrated me even more.

"Wh-what do you have in mind?" I stuttered because of yet another hiccup.

"Aren't you going to ask him why you should help him when he just admitted to laughing at your brother in the same circumstances?!" A girl exclaimed from behind us. I turned around and gasped at how thin she looked. Dark circles surrounded her eyes and when her skin used to be as tanned as her brother's the last time I'd seen her at the fourth of July parade, it now looked sickly pale.

"Go inside, Vanessa!" Gregory instructed.

"Don't tell me you're doing this to yourself because of such an asshole as Victor!?" I couldn't help but exclaiming.

"Aren't you happy to see that your friends' scheme has worked..." She interjected bitterly.

"Happy?!" I cried out, half crying and half incredulous. "How could I be happy to know that you're slowly disappearing because a jerk decided to play you?!" I went on. "I'm furious! That's what I am." I stood up again. "Furious to see that this freaking war is hurting too many people, furious to see that you're actually playing their game by letting yourself down the way you are. You're a beautiful girl, Vanessa! And you deserve much better than a lying asshole!" My hands were shaking, that was how angry I was.

"Do you really mean that?" She asked in a small voice.

"Of course, I do... Haven't your friends told you exactly the same thing?!" My tone was a bit curt and I hoped she understood it wasn't against her.

She huffed.

"I'm the school laughingstock!" She interjected, her bitterness almost palpable.

"Who cares about people who don't matter?" I shot back. "What did your friends say?"

Her eyebrows furrowed.

"Well, when they saw how people reacted at school they stayed away from me..." She admitted sadly.

Gregory was silently fuming next to me and I had no idea whether it was because I was putting my nose in his family's business or for something else.

"Some friends they were..." I commented with a grimace.

"That's what I thought, too..." She murmured.

"Why don't you hang out with my friends and I at weekends?" I suggested and I meant it. The girl seemed genuinely nice and she needed some solid friends right then.

My question left her speechless.

"I swear to God if you're taking the piss or planning some sick revenge, I'll kill you myself!" Gregory's voice boomed and his chair stumbled back as he jumped to his feet.

It was my turn to gape like a fish out of water.

I blinked several times while my heart slowed back down and sent him a blank face.

"And here I was thinking you were as gentle as a lamb..."

Vanessa tried to stop herself but finally burst into a fit of laughter that was so contagious that a few seconds later the three of us were laughing like baboons.

"So you actually mean it?" She asked tentatively after we'd all recovered and I nodded.

"I wouldn't joke about something like that..." I said. "But girl, you need to put some food in that beautiful body of yours or you'll never reach this weekend..."