In Love With A Warbler

Chapter 10 : Observing Jeff

Chapter 10

Alex POV

"What!?" Nick asked, annoyed that I dragged him into the hall.

"We need to watch him, ok? Closely. I don't want him to cut. That's obviously a problem for him."

"Yeah, well duh!"

I gave Nick a glare from his sass.

"Sorry!" Nick said, throwing his hands up in defense.

"Anyways... If he's like... in the bathroom too long, someone needs to check on him. I don't want him to be able to get away with it. He's obviously scared of the consequences of doing something wrong. We could possibly threaten him."

"How? I don't want to be mean to him."

"We could threaten to tell on him."

"Alright, that's fair. I just don't want to upset him."

"Well he's already upset."

"Ok, can we go back in now? I'm tired."

I pushed Nick's shoulder a little, and we both went back into our room. Jeff was fast asleep already, and he actually looked pretty peaceful for once.

Nick and I went to bed too.

Later...

Jeff POV

I woke up, feeling really scared at first. I was all sweaty.

I haven't been sleeping very well the past few nights. I keep waking up scared. Sometimes I have bad dreams, but other times, I just feel scared and I don't know why.

I just felt so scared that my dad found out that I told, and that he'd hurt me. I was scared he'd show up any minute, and come through that door. I'm already hurt so much, and I've barely had any time to heal.

I turned over, wincing in pain. My back is really bothering me. It's sort of hard to fall asleep.

I kept moving around, trying to find a different position for my back that might feel better. But I wasn't really having any luck. It hurt no matter what I did.

I got out of bed, and went into the bathroom. I pulled my shirt off, and looked at my back in the mirror.

There were bruises covering my back almost completely. Some were worse than others.

All of a sudden, there were knocks on the door. I opened it. It was Alex. She came in, and shut the door.

"What are you doing?" Alex asked.

"Uh... Nothing."

"Were you cutting?"

"No. Um... I was just looking at my bruises."

"Why?"

"I can't sleep. They hurt."

"We could go down to the nurse-"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"She can't see! Alex, please! No one can find out! You promised me!"

I started trembling inside.

"Ok, ok... Well we could just go down and say you have a headache. You could get some pain medicine to feel better."

"Well... I guess..."

"Come on. I'll go with you."

"Ok..."

I put my shirt back on, and then Alex took my hand in hers. She took me down to the nurse. Thank god they have a nurse there at night. Otherwise I don't know if I would've gotten to sleep.

We went into the nurse's office, and Alex told her that I had a headache. She gave me 2 pills, and I swallowed them. Alex took me back up to our room, and then helped me get settled into bed. I laid on my stomach, and somehow, fell back asleep.

The next day...

Alex POV

Jeff seemed a little better than yesterday. I was going to keep my eye on him all day long. I was determined to try to figure out more about him without having to ask him stuff.

So all day, I kept a list going in my notebook of things he did, whether he did them consciously or unconsciously.

I borrowed Nick's laptop while we were eating dinner, and I started googling different things. But I couldn't really figure out what he had because he was showing signs of like 15 different things.

So I'd have to observe him more...

Later...

Alex POV

I don't know how after last night, Jeff trusted us. I mean, Nick practically ripped all his clothes off, and forced him to let us see his back. But somehow, he trusted us. Or me, at least.

Nick was across the hall, helping his friends with some project. So I was alone with Jeff.

I offered to let him sit next to me on my bed, and he took me up on that offer. We were doing our homework. I was working on geometry. Jeff was doing test corrections for geometry. There was a 63 in red ink on the top of his paper. He kept scribbling stuff out, and it was clear he didn't really have any idea what he was doing. And he was becoming more and more frustrated the longer he worked on it.

"Jeff?"

"What?"

"Do you need help with that?"

"Um... Yes, please..."

I started showing him how to do the problems he got wrong. The only reason I knew how to do them was because Nick had showed me how.

We finished Jeff's test corrections.

"Jeff?"

"What?"

"How's your back feeling?"

"It's ok..."

"Can I look at it?"

"Why?"

"I just want to make sure it's healing, ok? I won't hurt you."

"Promise me?"

"I promise, Jeff. I won't hurt you, ok?"

"Ok..."

Jeff took off his tie and jacket. And then he took off his white button up shirt. He laid down on my bed, facing down.

The bruises didn't look much better. They still looked really bad, but they did look a little bit better since yesterday.

I ran my fingers down Jeff's back very gently. He started shivering.

"You're making me freezing cold!" Jeff said, shaking a little.

"Sorry," I said, laughing a little bit.

"How does it look?" Jeff asked, quietly.

"Your back?"

"Yeah."

"Bad... But it'll take some time to heal."

"Yeah, I know..."

Jeff went to go take a shower and warm up a little.