Purple Hearts

Chapter 7

"Keith, we need to talk." I wrote again. By now my entire arm was just filled with his name. "Keith come on! You can't ignore me forever!"

If you're wondering if I tried texting him already, I did. Many times. Since he never answered me, writing on our wrists is the next best thing. Hopefully at some point he gets tired of me writing all over his arm and actually replies. Sure, he might still think I'm annoying again, but at least I get to talk to him. After what happened at the library, I feel like I need to talk to him more than ever.

I sat on my bed and waited for what seemed like hours. Finally, after begging and begging, Keith replied. "Lance you're messing up my arm." He wrote. "Stop!"

"We NEED to talk. Pick up your phone!" I replied.

It took a couple minutes, but he finally texted me back. I quickly picked up the phone and opened up our conversation. "What do you want?" He asked.

"Don't act like nothing happened yesterday. I saw what you wrote on your arm."

"I didn't write it." He said. "Someone else did."

I groaned and stared at my phone screen in confusion. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Who would write something like that on your arm?"

"These dumbasses that I know think I talk to myself on my wrist. Of course I'm not going to tell them I'm talking to you, so they wrote that shit on my arm." He said, then quickly added "Sorry" before I could reply.

So he's getting bullied? I thought that by college the douchebags would stop doing things like that and actually grow up. I guess there are still a couple out there who enjoy hurting people. I got an image in my head of Keith being beaten up behind his school, kind of like in the movies. I shivered and quickly texted back. "Why don't you tell someone about those idiots?"

"I did. I just told you."

"I mean like a teacher or something."

"This isn't high school anymore, Lance. You don't just tell teachers." He replied. "I can deal with these people myself."

"Well clearly you can't, because you let them write that stuff all over your arm. Do you know how worried I was about you? I thought you hated me!"

There was a long moment of silence. I sat and stared at my screen, waiting for him to reply. He didn't for a while, and I was just left thinking about Keith and the people he told me about. It bothered me. I was tired of thinking about that, and I'm sure Keith was too. I groaned to myself and diverted the conversation to something else. "I had a weird feeling yesterday. I started crying because I felt... suddenly sad. But there wasn't anything to be sad about."

"I've had that same feeling." Keith replied.

"Really?!"

"Yeah. I tried to tell you about it, but you told me not to worry, so I just forgot about it."

"Well, what do you think it is?"

I was surprised when I saw a huge text come in from Keith. I've never seen him talk that much before (Even over text). He must have put a lot of thought into this. "I think it's a force of some sort." He wrote. "It sounds weird I know, but hear me out. What if, when I'm sad, you get sad too? What if, we can feel each other's pain?"

"That's stupid, Keith. How the heck would that be possible?"

"Well how is talking to each other on our wrists possible? Nothing makes sense anymore."

He has a point. I groaned in confusion. Everything has got so complicated lately, and I don't understand how any of this is logical. Hopefully Pidge can figure out what's going on, because I'm just as lost as Keith is.

"Well if we can feel each other's pain... then you must have been in alot of pain yesterday." I said.

"Not really." He replied.

"Stop lying."

"I'm not."

"Then why was I crying so much?" I asked, seemingly annoyed at how obvious it was that he was lying.

"I don't know, okay? Now can we drop this conversation already?"

I didn't really want to drop it. I wanted to find out more about Keith's situation, because I was really worried about him. If he felt the same way I felt at the library, then he must have felt terrible. I wanted to find a way to help him.

But instead of pushing it any further I decided to let it go and find out another day. So I replied "Sure. Do you want to hang out tomorrow or something?" Then I waited for his response.

"Yeah. Shiro really wants to hang out with you again."

I smiled that Shiro wanted to hang out more. I guess that means I'm doing the right thing for him. But Keith didn't show any personal interest in hanging out, so I still don't know where our relationship stands.

"How about that BBQ place... Pork Hub." I wrote. "I can invite my friends, Pidge and Hunk too."

"Yeah sure. We'll meet tomorrow." He replied.

I smiled to myself. "Cool. Cya then."

"See ya."

I turned off my phone screen and rolled on the side of my bed and stared at the wall. I was getting butterflies in my stomach thinking about hanging out with Keith again. I don't know why I was feeling that way, but I didn't want it to stop.