Run

Part One | 8

Chapter 8

"Things got out of hand the day I met Marie's older sister on her birthday. It was probably one of the worst encounters I've ever experienced in my entire life. Just like her parents, she didn't like me after the first ten minutes of meeting me. 

When Marie and I were on our own, I secretly wished I had made a better impression. Maybe things would've happened differently. Maybe I wouldn't be here right now if I had gotten them to somehow like me...

Melissa, though... She didn't like anything about me - not my intentions, what I had to say, how I viewed my future... She hated it all. Even now, I don't think... I don't think she'll ever change her idea of me. She probably blames me for everything that's happened.

I guess, in a way, I don't really blame her."

...

Before I knew it, more than half a year had gone by.

With Marie, days in Middleborough, Massachusetts went like seconds. At first, it was just messing around. I'd see her a few times a week during school and she'd stay over on Thursday or Friday nights. Sometimes both. She wouldn't stay long. She somehow claimed her spot on the right side of my bed after a month of us being whatever we were. And if Gale knew, she didn't acknowledge it. 

Eventually, we just started to have fun together, even if it wasn't about the sex. Some days, usually when she's pissed or tired, we'd skip classes and smoke. Usually it was just cigarettes. Other times it was pot. Occasionally, I'd get a case of beer and we'd sit around and drink until we didn't feel like it anymore. 

Rarely did I ever go to Marie's place. When Marie came over, (after we'd had sex) she'd vent to me. We'd lay on my bed and stare at the ceiling and she'd go on and on and on, and for the most part I actually listened.

It sucked hearing about her home life. Marie's parents were assholes. They put her down and constantly made her feel inferior in comparison to her older sister. They said she wasn't smart and that she'll never be able to do anything with her life. They told her she was annoying, a pest, overly dramatic and painfully frustrating to live with. They often threatened to kick her out, too. I felt bad for Marie, and the more I pitied her, the more I began to think that I actually cared for her, that I might even want to be with her. 

Shockingly, I ended up telling Marie a lot about my life in Maine, too, in the months we've been together because a lot of it felt strangely similar even if it really wasn't. There wasn't much to say about my mom, but she knew all about the situation. I told her how she left when I was ten and never looked back. I told her about all the fights my dad and I had. I told her about how he was arrested and how Gale came to be my legal guardian.

I began to spend a lot of my time with Marie at school, too. I'd spend lunch with her and I'd walk her to class. It was never romantic, but it was different. I somehow felt as if I needed to be by her and I didn't know how to acknowledge that.

People at school were either shocked or unfazed about Marie and I being together. At first, they all thought it was a prank or that I was her cousin or some shit, but when we made out in the hallways, people figured it out pretty quickly. Some people thought we were perfect for each other, the two outcasts dating. Others thought it was weird how Marie and I, so similar that it almost didn't make sense, somehow seemed to work out. 

Jorden didn't like us together. In fact, after we had started to express our unofficial relationship in public, he pulled me aside.

"She's a mess, Bryson. You don't want to get involved with her," he told me. "She's nothing but trouble."