Amelia was devastated. She actually cried in front of me. "What if you get really sick and die?"
"At least it will be my choice."
Her eyes filled with tears again.
"Oh, look. I'm not going to get sick and die, Amelia. How would the curse work if it let all the soul mates die before they got a chance to, you know? Listen, I'm not going to live half a life because your brother doesn't have the balls to tell me the truth. If he wants to hide away from himself then let him. I'm not going to follow him around like a puppy. His problem is with himself, I don't have a problem with it."
She didn't know how to handle me when I got stubborn like that. I wasn't spiting myself. Not at all, at least, I didn't think I was. But I had lived 16 years in a shadow of a life; I wasn't going to live the next 16 years in the same way.
"But what if . . . ?" she began, tearfully.
"Yeah and what if he never tells me the truth, Amelia? What then?"
"You could just tell him you know!"
"Why should I? If he doesn't trust me enough to look past that then it's his loss. Anyway, what if I don't want to be with him forever? What if I don't want a kid some day? It's my choice. I don't care about curses, Amelia, I'm not going to live my life in fear of one."
Nothing she said could persuade me otherwise. For a month, I avoided him in school. It hurt. I stopped going to Amelia's house. If I knew he was going to be somewhere then that was exactly where I wouldn't be. He kept trying to talk to me but if he wasn't going to really talk to me then there was no point so I tried to avoid any conversations with him. Everyone picked up on it. Dawn made a huge fuss over him and went back to publicly mocking me but he shot her down so quickly that it shocked her into silence. At least in front of everyone.
She caught me in the bathroom one day and did her very best to make me feel like crap. As if I wasn't already, I was missing Nathan badly.
"You don't actually think you ever had a chance with him, do you?" she said as I washed my hands.
"And you do?"
She scowled. The faces she made convinced me she was going to end up with horrendous wrinkles by the time she was 30.
"He's not interested in you, ginger. Obviously. Maybe now, you'll stop making a fool of yourself over him."
I laughed humourlessly. "Right. I'm making a fool of myself, sure Dawn, whatever you say."
Abbi came in just as Dawn told me I was a pathetic loser who had thrown myself at Nathan and Aaron. Before I could tell her how deluded she was, Abbi butted in.
"Dawn, give her a break. Nathan told you out straight he likes her so shut the hell up for a change, will you?"
Dawn stormed out of the bathroom. I eyed Abbi warily. I still wasn't sure if she was friend or foe. She sat on the counter next to me.
"Look. I know we're not exactly friends or anything but I wanted to say that I think it's time you and Nathan sorted things out. Avoiding each other isn't going to solve anything. He's cool, he can't have done anything that bad. Give him a chance to explain." She hopped back down off the counter and left me standing there, completely baffled.
I had given him a chance but he hadn't taken it. It was all up to him now.
Aaron tried to start fights with Nathan by getting at me. Stupid stuff like bumping into me purposely in the hall ways but it was more than a little annoying. Nathan kept getting riled up by it, he was losing his temper so easily but I never stayed to watch what happened. I acted like neither of them existed when they squared up to each other. Of course, Aaron felt like this was something else he could taunt Nathan with. The atmosphere at school was really bad; I couldn't wait for the summer holidays to begin.
