Not Your Average Nerd

Chapter Seven

7

            What the hell is this? I thought, tugging at a loose strip of white wrapping that covered my hand like a mummy. My left hand tugged at the strip until it began to unraveling. It wasn’t until it was half-way undone and I could see the dried blood that I remembered what it was. The wrapping that was keeping my gashed hand covered.

            Shit.

            The wrapping kept falling off. “No, no, no…” I muttered quickly and quietly, trying to keep the bandage from coming off any more. I quickly grabbed my glasses from the headboard and slipped them on my face. There was no blood, scratches, or marks anywhere on my right hand. The bandages were a deep rust color yet, no matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find the gash. What is this sorcery?

            I walked down stairs with my backpack on my back while dragging my luggage behind me. My hand was re-wrapped so if my parents were to check (which I knew they would) they wouldn’t question me on what was going on. I had absolutely no clue how to explain what happened to my own brain. What was I supposed to say to my parents? ‘Well you see… we all shared the same nightmare last night that I was dripping blood from this gash in my hand. In the middle of the night, we sleep-wrapped my hand and TA-DA, here we are now.’ As far as they were concerned, my hand was still cut open and bloody.

            My spot at the table was already set with a glass of orange juice, toast, and a bowl of cereal. I sat down and grabbed my spoon in my left hand. Anica, who appeared out of no where, sat at the spot to my left. Her face was long.

            “Are you sure you have to go back so soon?” She asked, holding her cup of juice up.

I chuckled as I chewed. “Yes,” I said before taking a bite of my toast, “I have to go home and get ready for school. You know how that is.” She crossed her arms and gave me some sort of look as if she wanted to say something but didn’t know how to.

“You could transfer to go to school up here?” She offered.

I stayed quiet. There was no nice way of telling her that I had absolutely no desire what-so-ever to ever enroll into a campus in the state of Oregon, so I kept my mouth shut. I couldn’t tell her the truth about myself, that I was a total loner-dweeb when I was here because, somehow Anica thought that I was quite popular. I guess my pride was too hard to swallow.

“I can’t,” I said, wrapping my left hand around her shoulders. “I’m top of my class at St. Mary’s and I love how everything is in San Antonio.” Plus, I absolutely despise Oregon.

“You can transfer and still probably be top student?”

“I can’t drop everything I have and own in Texas overnight.” And I hate Oregon.

The final goodbye’s seemed to be harder this time than when I first left for San Antonio. My mom and sister decided to stay at home and leave my father to be the one to run me to the airport, like they made him pick me up. According to Anica, it would have been a non-stop tear fest if they would have gone. That made me kind of glad that they did stay. Tears were not my thing.

“Try to not get into too much trouble.” My dad said as we approached the security point. He gave me a wink and then pulled me in for a hug. My father was not one for hugs, whether it was giving or receiving them. It actually meant a lot to me.

“Stop it, please,” I said with a smile, “you’re going to make me cry and lord knows if I cry I’ll probably start to melt or something.” He gave me a pat on the shoulder and then his last goodbye.