Playing with Fire

Chapter 6

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she like hers,”  - The Fault In Our Stars, now in theaters.  

Chapter 6 

“Sara?” 

Marcus was never one to look comfortable. His go-to expression was a smirk and a nod, and then he would let the other party make all the assumptions. Right now, however, he was shifting in his seat inside the car.

“I really don’t like talking about it.”

“I told you everything about my craziness towards my Noelle and Kevin. I am single now because of you. You owe me this.”

He sighed really loud. “Alea,” he tried to touch my cheek, but I was still smarting from Matthew’s insults and also the breakup. Now that everything had been settled, I saw it for what it really was: I was making one mistake after another.

“Just tell me.”

“It’s really not what you think,” Marcus sighed. “It’s just a cluster of misunderstandings.”

“So let me know before we have another misunderstanding!”

“Fine. Sara was our childhood friend. You saw my photos from when I was a kid right? Not exactly the best looking version of me, right? Well, imagine having an older brother who’s much more social, much more interesting, and somehow much more attractive even though people keep commenting that both of us look the same. That’s how it is to be ten year old me.”

I leant against the car seat, but I kept my gaze hard. “Go on.”

“But then I was smart. God, I’ve always been smart. Sara was in the accelerated class with me and we clicked instantly. She was a year older than me, Matthew’s age, and she seemed like she genuinely liked me. The other kids only pretended to be friends with me so that they could win Matthew’s favors, not that my brother really liked me, though. I was like his burden because our parents kept asking him to bring me around whenever he played outside. Apparently, I was too much of a loser to find my own friends.

“But not Sara, not her. She really wanted to be my friend, and her indifference towards Matthew intrigued him. Up until that day, nobody really ever rejected Matt. He was sweet and he smiled a lot. He was everyone’s golden boy.”

“Sounds like a nice guy to live with,” I commented.

“You have no idea,” Marcus started. “How hard it was to be a shadow all the time. Which is why I was protective of Sara. I didn’t want her to suddenly abandon me for a better option.”

I nodded, I never had a rough childhood, most probably because I was the bully in the playground, but now that I tasted my own medicine, I could offer him my sincere sympathy.

“But then Matthew was smart, you know. Not book smart, but he always knew how to make people like him. He liked Sara. He thought that she was cute and she was the most popular girl in our grade. He always had a thing for popular girls. I didn’t know if he felt like he deserved to be with a girl who had the most friends or something, but he had always been drawn to them.”

There was an imaginary rock inside my throat as I heard that statement.

“So the courting began. Matthew gave everything away, and Sara was of course happy that a guy like Matthew decided that she was the one worthy of his attention. They did the middle school dating thing very religiously, you know, they sat together at lunch and always met up in between classes and all.

And then a few weeks later, at Matthew’s 13 birthday, he invited everyone, including Sara. And it was bad, okay. It was horrible. He wanted Sara to not be friends with me anymore and she refused. There were parents around and everything. Sara said that she only liked Matthew as a friend. She also said that she liked me better than him.”