The Chemistry Test

7. charades and trainwrecks

Day Four

"Zoe, I'm so sorry."  Mark blurted as I approached him on my walk up to Theater.  Large, dark bags hung underneath his blood-shot brown eyes as if he hadn't gotten any sleep all night and his hair was left an unruly, shaggy mess atop his head. To say the least, he looked like a complete train-wreck.

"What happened to you?"  I furrowed my brow.  He smelled almost worse than he looked.  The unpleasant stench of tobacco infiltrated my nostrils and I had to suppress the urge to gag.

"Didn't sleep."  He responded shortly, grabbing my forearm and pulling me into the Lawn of Misplaced Flowers.  

"Zoe, listen,"  He gingerly took my hands into his.  "I shouldn't have acted how I did yesterday.  It was a complete dick move and I'm so sorry."

I smiled down at his hands. "It's okay, Mark." 

"You mean so much to me, you don't even know. I feel so bad when I take out my anger on you-"

"Mark."  I blinked up at him. "It's okay, really."

He pulled me into his chest, burrowing his face into my hair. "Thank you."  He gave me a crooked smile and slung an arm over my shoulder as we made our way up to the Theater building.  The stench of tobacco emanating from him burned my lungs, and after a couple minutes of mindless chatter I pulled him into one of the darker corners of the building to talk about what really happened.

"Can you be honest with me for a second?"  

He frowned.  "Sure."

"Did you have another relapse?"

He was quiet for a moment, eyes trained on a point in the distance before he nodded shamefully.

I didn't judge him, but that didn't mean it wasn't difficult for me to understand his drug habits. Mark's home situation couldn't have been more different from mine. His parents were recently divorced, forcing him into the full custody of his alcoholic piece of crap father, who was completely indifferent toward him and even more so toward his drug use.  It didn't help that he was an only child and his mother was even more off her rocker than his dad.  It made sense why he was so dependent upon me.

"The whole thing with Zak yesterday and detention and you not responding to my texts...I don't know."  He paused, eyes falling.  "I just didn't know what else to do.  And then my dad was being a complete asshole-"

"Am I interrupting something?"

I spun on my heels to lock eyes with the lively, bright pools of blue belonging to Zak.  He allowed them to linger on mine for a moment before hesitantly bringing them to Mark's.

"Hi, Zoe."  

"Hi, Zak."

"Bye, Zak."  Mark mimicked the two of us in a sickly-sweet fake chirp.

"I'll be there in a sec."  I promised. A half-smirk wormed its way through his lips before he headed over to his seat, a slight flush coming to my cheeks when he glanced back once more.

"You're blushing."  

I faced him and shook my head fast enough to make me dizzy.  "What?  No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"Either way, it doesn't matter."  I shooed away the nonsense with a flick of my wrist and tried to refocus on my previous conversation with Mark.  "Are you okay now, though? Do you need anything?  I mean, you can always stay at my house-"

"No, no.  I'm fine.  Really."  He tried for an unconvincing close-lipped smile. 

"Okay."  I ignored the fact that he was lying and smiled at him instead.  "I'm here for you."