The Badass

Chapter 6-Something Worth Fighting for

The football season began, without me, and without Avery.  To be blunt-we sucked.  I couldn't bear to go to the games, and school was boring, and Avery was avoiding me.  I would look for her everywhere, scouring the school from the ground floor to the roof, and would never find her.  I didn't know why I was looking for her, and all the pain she brought me with her constant rejection, but she was the only thing keeping me sane. 

Without her, and without football, I could feel the dregs of my depression creeping back into my system, so I ended up in the misery more commonly known as Group.  My mom worried endlessly, and people on the team were calling me a pussy for quitting. 

Everything was absolute shit until homecoming rolled around.  I helped build the float, and started checking out the campaign.  I didn't care so much until I found myself in the weight room, trying to get some endorphins going.  I flicked on the light, and my jaw dropped. 

Completely coating the floor of the weight room as well as the equipment were posters all different sizes promoting Avery for Homecoming Queen.  We were juniors, and juniors never won the crown, but underclassmen still ended up on court.  I sat on the nearest weight bench, brushing a few posters to the floor, and started laughing.  Considering Avery's position in this town, with everything she had done, she was either a shoo-in or completely SOL. 

I picked a poster up and examined it.  Avery was wearing the sweetest smile I had ever seen her wear, and she seemed happy in the pictures. 

Hell, I'd vote for her.  That was because I was starting to think I legitimately liked her, rather than a minor little crush, but still.  If she got on court, maybe that would prove to this sleepy town that different was a good thing. 

"So I have your vote?" Avery's voice floated into my ears, causing me to jump out of my skin.  She was sitting...more like hovering near me, up on top of some of the equipment. 

I realized I had been grinning at her picture.  "Y'know, I think I do." 

She smiled, but it disappeared quickly, as always.  As she jumped down and landed in front of me, she was studying me again.  I would have said something-anything-to break the tension, but I was lost in her gold-brown eyes.  Despite her usually steely gaze, I always found her eyes easy to meet.  Right now, the eyeliner doing nothing to harden the unfathomable gaze she was giving me, I was at a loss for words. 

I lost any train of coherent thought when her eyes softened, and reached out and touched my cheek with cool, smooth fingertips.  "Thank you, Blaine."

"No problem, we're friends, I always vote for friends," I managed.

Her face fell slightly at the word friends.  "I don't just mean for the vote.  I mean for everything."  Her hand cupped my jaw as she stepped closer.  Then, just as her other hand grazed my fingertips, she blinked and stepped away from me.  She turned and ran, without another word. 

I stood absolutely still until the clomping noise of her combat boots had faded away completely.  I was in shock, because I had caught a glimpse of her eyes just before she had bolted. 

There were tears in her eyes.

***

I didn't stop running until I had made it to the thicket of bushes at the side of my house, and dove underneath them, and into the nest-like area I had built there when dad and I had moved in over the summer, after getting him to agree to send me to public school.  Once there, I fell back and stared at the green, almost-lace like pattern of the bushes prickly branches.  I remembered being here in the summer, looking forward to finally going to public school and having some semblance of a normal life, but now I wanted to rewind time and take it all back, agree to go to the private school my dad had suggested that was on the other side of town, the all-girls school.  I had my reasons.  I was in the spotlight at school, and that was the last thing I wanted.  This whole football scandal was making me stand out, when all I had ever wanted was to fit in.