Beating For Two

Chapter 23

Wednesday, March 30th

Thirty-two weeks and two days

Lunch time was loud in school. That was more or less the only thought that ran through my head as I was walking through the hallways on my way to my locker. My bag weighed just about two hundred pounds and put a large strain on my already sore back, but otherwise I was in a relatively good mood that day. Mum hadn't said another word about our fight, neither yesterday or this morning, and I was pretty pleased with it. Okay, fine, so she hadn't actually talked to me at all, or even looked at me for that matter, but at least there hadn't been any more yelling and it didn't seem like she'd told Ian anything either seeing as he was acting the same way as usual during dinner last night.

I was pretty relieved when I could unload my bag of all the books that I had in it, only leaving the one I needed for the class I had after lunch, sociology. The hallways were crowded, as always, but as usual, no one paid any attention to me as I started walking again, heading for the cafeteria to eat a quick lunch.

“Hi.”

A sudden voice right next to my left air made me jump with surprise and I let out an embarrassing little squeal.

“Sorry, didn't mean to freak you out,” Zayn said with a wry smile.

“It's okay,” I said once my heart rate had slowed down to its normal level again.

I threw him a curious look.

“What's up?” I questioned when a couple of seconds had passed and he did nothing but walk right next to me as if this was something we did every day.

“Just wanted to ask if everything's okay,” he said lightly.

“I tried finding you yesterday as well, but it seemed like you'd fallen off the face of the earth.”

“Oh... sorry,” was all I could think to say.

“No problem. But anyway, Harry's been a right proper jerk since Monday afternoon and I wondered if you could possibly have something to do with that.”

“Quite possibly,” I muttered.

“But it's partly your and Liam's fault as well,” I added, scowling slightly at him as I spoke.

He looked surprised.

“What? How is it our fault?”

“You told him what I'd said about him,” I said.

“And that was after Liam told me that you wouldn't go to Harry and tell him anything I told you two.”

“Oh... that, right, sorry,” he said, looking a little sheepish.

“But it was just because we thought he ought to know; I mean, you'd completely misunderstood everything and we figured he could might make you, you know, understand that he's not just... pitying you.”

“It didn't work very well,” I said tiredly.

“We started fighting and it all ended with him running off.”

He shook his head in obvious exasperation.

“You two are completely and utterly dysfunctional human beings, do you know that?” he said.

“Neither of you are willing to talk properly to each other without lying about certain matters and you both have horrible timing with everything and just... Jesus, I get exhausted just watching you on a distance; I don't think I wanna know what it would be like to see it all up close.”

“We're not dysfunctional human beings,” I replied.

“We just don't... communicate very well, that's all.”