Please Understand

Chapter 17: Once Upon A Time

"Mason, can I talk to you for a minute?" Mr. W asked, but his eyes never left his computer screen. He kept stroking his beard, pretending like I wasn't even there.

"Sure," I mumbled with a roll of my eyes, but I still shuffled over to his desk. Maybe I should've pretended I didn't hear him.

He finally looked up with his intimidatingly dark eyes. Immediately, I wondered if he could've abducted Amelia. There was the rumor that he had to move here from Seattle, so he could get away from the police. He was supposedly a serial killer, so maybe he murdered a student who really trusted him."I know Amelia's disappearance has been hard for you. It's-"

"I'm fine," I lied as the scenarios played through my head. Each one tortured me, but I tried to hide that from him.

He knitted his eyebrows together, and started looking through his papers. I hoped this was the end of our little chat. "Your work is sloppier than normal," he muttered as he grabbed my worksheet from today. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you did a lot of erasing on number five. If you look close, you can see the indentation the pencil left. All I can read beneath your answer is Amelia written over and over again." He looked back up at me with his sullen face, but it was hard to take him seriously with that enormous beard and overly long hair.

When did everyone in this town decide to become a detective? "Am I in trouble, or did you only want to point out how dumb I am?" I asked as I crossed my arms over my chest.

His eyes widened, and he gave me a weak, awkward smile. He seemed slightly amused by my response, but then his attention wandered to the new wave of students who flooded into his classroom. "No, I'm simply worried that you aren't able to focus," he replied when his small eyes landed on me. "You can talk to me whenever you need to."

The conversation played on repeat as I walked down the hall. Mr. W was right, I couldn't focus on anything, but I definitely wasn't going to come to him for advise. I found myself writing her name over and over again as my answer just like he said. The lead was thick, and my writing looked harsh, angry even. Trying to erase it took a few minutes, and even after the grey was gone, I could still faintly see what I had written. I wrote my answer over the eraser marks, but I didn't even know the answer to the question. All I could do was restate the question, and pretend like that was good enough. I expected a bad grade, not a conversation.

No one talked to me as I forced one foot in front of the other, every step took an enormous amount of mental focus. Normally, people would be shouting at me from across the hall. There would be conversations about the football game, Homecoming, the brutal quiz in Calculus, or an upcoming party. Now, I was too depressing to talk to. Every conversation would be turned back to Amelia because I would start asking questions, and no one would understand how to talk to me. There wasn't anyone else I wanted to talk about. I didn't even know how to live in my own body, so how could anyone handle me?

I was on my own, but only for a brief moment of clarity.

"Hey man, why have you been avoiding me?" Luke questioned as he wrapped his arm around my shoulders. He squeezed me close to his side with a smile plastered on his face. Always pretending.

I gritted my teeth, and forced the corner of my lips to curl up, but my smile seemed like more of a snarl. "Well, I don't really want to talk about it, especially not here," I grunted as I tried to walk away from him.

He held me closer, acting like we were best friends again. "Is this about me and Amelia?" he asked in a happy tone, so no one would care about us. We were having a normal, perfectly casual conversation. The content didn't matter.

"I don't understand why you two would ever even have the chance to hook up, or why you wouldn't tell me," I grumbled as my throat tightened. I wasn't going to be able to have this conversation with him. Amelia was the girl I should've protected, and I shouldn't have even let Luke have the chance to be with her. I should've been with her all these years. "When did it even happen?"

He let his arm fall to his side as we walked into the roaring computer lab, voices echoing off the walls as everyone fought for the good chairs. "The night of your party, she was at your house looking for you. I took her up to your room because she was upset, and it just kind of happened. I didn't know you would actually care. I thought you were into Carlie," he explained with his eyes cast down and the smile wiped from his face. Seriousness overcame Luke for once in his life. "I'm sorry, Mason. I wish it never happened." He actually sounded sincere this time.

Carlie said she was up in my room. Dakota said Amelia went home. Luke did disappear at the party. "What did she say after? Why was she upset?" I questioned as I knitted my eyebrows together as I tried to force all of the stories to line up.

His eyes darted to the left. He looked to the left, I swear. "She was upset about you and Carlie, I think. I told her you two were together. Weren't you hooking up with her that night anyways?" he redirected as he looked away from me, and then he started walking towards an empty seat. There's something he's hiding.

"According to Carlie's story, I was in my room with her, but I don't remember seeing you and Amelia up there," I bluntly stated as I jerked out the seat next to him. My backpack hit the floor with a thud, and a few people glanced my way. Tensions were beginning to fill the small room.

He ignored me as he typed away on the computer, and I did the same as I awaited his answer. His jaw was tight for a second as he thought about our conversation, but then he smiled as he talked with Jason who sat next to him. There he goes, pretending everything is alright, like nothing in this world could bring him down. Nothing would be able to change him, not even the disappearance of a girl, who he hooked up with the night she vanished.

I stared at him with jealousy blazing in my eyes, and my hands shaking against the keyboard as I struggled to log in. Once upon a time, I thought nothing could bring the world crashing on top of me, nothing bad could ever happen to someone like me.

And then Amelia disappeared.

Then, he smiled at me again. No one would expect us to be in the middle of an argument. "Mason, you need to stop getting into other people's business. If you don't want anyone to find out about the party, then you need to stop looking for Amelia," he threatened, but he kept his voice light and airy.

I smiled back at him because I didn't care anymore.

The police can find out about the party because I'm going to find Amelia.