Darling & Foster

Seven

We have Physical Education classes on Tuesdays and Fridays and we all run in metallic, orange shorts and we are all an eye-sore. And as we run, I reconize people from my English classes and Clint, who is frankly lagging behind and seems to be lost in his own mind. He's been doing that more lately.

And I then I look for Foster, and he's nowhere to be seen, and I'm pretty sure that if he was here, I would catch him easily in those blastard orange clothes. So I stop for a moment before I can get ahead of the teacher and clasp my hands to my knees and that's when the burning occurs. My legs burn so badly and my sides feel like they're on fire so I cough. I cough because my throat has become as dry as a desert and I desperately need to sit down... I've been doing that more lately.

I guess everything has been changing. 

The teacher eventually stops and then everyone stops and I feel like I'm going to get a lecture for holding everyone up, but she just looks the whole group up and down and mutters something that sounds a lot like swearing under her breath. 

"Again?" She yells frustrated and clenches her fists. I give her a puzzled look and then she pulls me mercilessly to her right side and fumes, "Go find Foster, " She whispers, or atleast pretends too but everyone heard it and after I stand there in a blank stare for a few moments, she grips my arm so tightly that I think it will make a mark, "we can't have him dying again.." She says in the most sarcastic and agitated tone that it made me shiver. 

So, with furrowed eyebrows and stinging bones, I split apart from the group and watch as they all run like organized troops back into the building and I throw a hand to my forehead to block out the sun from my eyes, they water a bit and soon return to normal. I roll my eyes over the track field and over the buildings and the road and the hills as the sun beats down upon me.

 The only thing I don't roll my eyes over is Foster and as I've been told, we can't have him dying again, so I jog around the building until I'm lost and I finally have a chance to sit down. 

I curse myself for going alone and then curse Foster for being nowhere in sight and I sit in my own pity for a couple of minutes while the sun kisses the trees.

 And then I heard a sound and it was distant and quiet, but it rang into my ears and my mind told me it was the wind. But I knew it wasn't. And out of that noise, appeared a figure, chalky and still.

"Did they send you to come get me?" He was smiling and his voice cracked and I was so angry at Foster for sending me all of these mixed thoughts and emotions and pools filled with regret that I went, and I hit him, because I needed too, because that's what he did to me and then I saw his eyes widen and my eyes were drawn to his already bruised and cut body and my pool of regret was starting to pull me under. 

I was drowning in regret now.