• dynasty • | gnr | kiss | bon jovi |

•15•

I hate myself.

The tears stream down my cheeks, hot at first until the cold air chills them. They're practically frozen by the time they trickle down to my chin, falling downward into the puddle beneath my feet. Then they slip through the cracks in the gravel, almost the way my life is slipping through my fingers.

I shouldn't care, because God knows I wasn't paying much attention to him. Maybe if I'd spent some of the time I 'wasted' obsessing over Stan with him, I wouldn't be feeling this stabbing pain in my chest. Maybe if I'd appreciated his gifts, or... stopped nagging about wanting to be someone...

I nearly slap myself in the face for even thinking this. I didn't bring this on myself... I didn't.

The abandoned train tracks loom before me, a row of at least ten of them stretching from left to right. The station is nothing but a dilapidated old shack, having been empty since the 1930's. The tracks are old and rusted, there are large cracks in the ground and hills- I now understand why Stan rides his bike here.

The sky is cloudy and grey, the October wind is bone-chilling. I tried to come to school today, but my car drove me here instead. I couldn't bear to see him in the hallways... pretend everything's okay.

I sit there in the middle of the train tracks with my knees hugged to my chest with tears streaming down my face, thinking of the white-hot humiliation that he caused me. Something tells me if a train were to suddenly appear now, I wouldn't be in a huge hurry to get out of the way.

I hear something rattling not too far away, I hear the crunch of tires on top of gravel. I don't move, I don't stop crying, even when I hear something crash to the ground and the footsteps that follow.

"Kid?"

I don't move, even knowing who it is. I can't show him my face, much less tell him what's wrong.

"Uh... Gene saw you here on his way to school this mornin'. Said you didn't look so good, said he tried to talk to you but you just sat there. Like a statue."

I don't respond.

"Kinda like now... didn't think you'd still be hangin' around, 'cause that was hours ago."

I shudder in the cold a little as Stan comes around and gets on his knees in front of me. He tries to hide his surprise, but his sharp intake of breath is impossible to mask. What I don't excpect his his reaction.

"Oh God, Callie," he whispers into the wind, his eyes grow dark with worry.

When he touches my cheek to wipe away my tears, when he looks into my eyes and asks me what the matter is, I lose it. Don't people know that being genuine only makes it harder?

I break down into uncontrollable fits of sobbing, so hard that I can't draw breath.

"Kid, come on now. Whatever it is, it can't be that bad."

I look at at him. "Jon cheated on me."

His face pales a little. "Uh... oh."

"With whores. We asked me to have sex with him, but... I really didn't want to. I came to his party last night, and when I found him he was about to have sex with some burleqsue girls instead. And then he tried to blame it on me."

He sighs and looks at his hands. "You didn't deserve that."

"He was my boyfriend for two years."

"Was...?"

"I broke up with him, obviously. He was no good, but why does it hurt?"

He sits beside me on the train tracks and sighs.