Paramnesia

Something in the Vomit

•Chapter Three•
•Something in the Vomit•

I hadn't been back to the library in a week and a half. Thea had been distant and I hadn't felt comfortable abandoning her during lunch. She wasn't her normal chatty self. At lunch we sat by ourselves. No Lena or the other popular underclassmen we sat around with had been present at our table. I tried not to pay it any mind as I attempted to finish up my psych homework. I was also trying to coax Thea into giving her psych homework to me, but she was ignoring me for the most part. This just wasn't like Thea. I knew something must be bothering her, but she wouldn't tell me and Thea always told me everything. She told me things I never wished to know. Like the fact that her periods gave her serious cramps. Info I could have gone without.

"You know your whole somber act is getting old?" I informed her.

"I've been thinking." She mumbled almost unnoticeably.

"Really? I didn't realize." I sarcastically quipped.

"Now is not the time for your mouth to rear its ugly head." She glared at me.

"Okay, sorry about my mouth. What have you been thinking about?" I asked taking a more diplomatic approach.

"Greyson." She breathed, his name almost disappearing into the air before I could catch it.

"Greyson?" I repeated.

"Greyson." She said back, more confidently.

"What about Greyson?" I elaborated this time.

"He tried to kill himself, didn't he?" I felt the air still around us as if everyone knew what we were talking about, but that wasn't possible.

"I don't know." My chest ached at thought. "What brought this about?"

"He's so quiet in class. He's so detached. He seems so alone." She rambled on.

"Where did this come from?" I propped my head up in my hand and leaned closer to her.

"When he was on TV or when his songs played on the radio he didn't seem real. Its so easy to forget that celebrities are real people. Even though I've known him forever I managed to slip into the fan mindset. I made him bigger than life, I put him up on a pedestal like everybody else. But he didn't want to be up there, did he? That's why he tried to kill himself." Her voice was so quiet, so sad. I was almost speechless.

"We don't know that he tried to kill himself. It could have been an accident. He said so himself." I tried to convince her.

"Don't bullshit me. We've known Greyson since elementary school. The kid we grew up with wouldn't ever fuck around with pills like that, not after his dad." She turned her harsh glare onto me once more.

"He's not the kid we grew up with anymore." I tried.

"No! He's not, but don't fucking play with me. I know you feel it too." She set accusing eyes on me.

"I don't what you're talking about now. You sound crazy." I turned away from her and back to my psych homework.

"Keep pretending, but he needs us. Real friends. He doesn't have any."

"And who's fault is it that that he doesn't have any now? His. So I'm not going down that road again. I'm going to college and moving on with my life. I'm tried of being sucked back into Greyson's problems. I have my own problems to deal with. You've been so self involved lately that I couldn't even tell you that my mother has invited me to stay with her this weekend. That I didn't know how to say no and now my dad can't even look at me without hurt in his eyes. What about my life that's falling to pieces?" I took a deep calming breath not expecting any of that to suddenly coming spewing out. Thea just looked at me with wide shocked eyes. "You know the worst part? I snapped at my dad last night and told him I couldn't wait to go to college and get away from this family. He hasn't said a single word to me since. So no, I don't want to be friends with Greyson." I packed up my stuff quickly and left as fast as I could.