Fallen

Chapter 2

When I came into school that next day, I was still shaking. Even after a hot bath and an early bedtime, which usually helped with the anxiety that accompanied seeing someone I knew before my fall, I was a wreck. Claudia asked me if I was alright with a gentle tone she never used, and Theodore even draped his jacket around my shoulders when he saw me shivering. My panic was not at all helped by the chaotic environment I dreaded at lunchtime.

I left geometry with Theodore to go to the cafeteria. I couldn't do it. I stopped dead in the door frame when the table of the popular jerks came into view. They saw me and sniggered behind their hands. They were planning something.

Theo saw me come up short out of the corner of his eye and walked back to the threshold where I stood. My ears were roaring and I couldn't hear whatever reassuring words he was saying. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. Theo put his hand between my shoulder blades and walked me away from the cafeteria. As soon as we reached the lockers across the hall, I carefully shrugged his hand away. I liked Theodore, but I didn't like to be touched a lot. He opened the door to his locker and I sat down behind it, so that passing kids wouldn't see me. I was ashamed of panicking, and hung my head as he told me he was going to run back to the cafeteria to tell Claudia where we were. I crossed my legs and looked at my hands in my lap, moving my fingers like I was trying to reassure myself that they were still there.

Theo returned with two trays. The one he held towards me had two slices of bacon and chicken pizza, which I had tried once and sworn never to eat again because it was so damn good. I could eat twelve slices of that kind of pizza and not really know what happened. I shook my head silently, so he offered the second tray. On it was a water bottle, a piece of chicken, and two rolls.

I cried then. I cried into Theodore's shoulder, hidden behind his locker door, holding his offering and breaking one of my top rules: I will not cry.

~~~~~~

Theodore and I walked Claudia to her bus, where she sat in the farthest seat back and blared alternative music into her head with gigantic headphones. She threw us a thumbs up as the bus drove away, and I sat on the bench for a change, to wait with Theodore for his grandma to come pick him up in her old tank of a Cadillac. We didn't talk much, just sat there on the cold metal bench and watched the cars come and go, come and go. It was cold enough to warrant jackets, which I had forgone. I was never cold.

Theodore had been staring at the same text on his phone for a solid minute, trying to decipher what it said. His grandmother tried very hard to be cool, so she texted, but she didn't quite understand that texts are just short sentences, so she tended to write her messages like Yoda using smiley faces. Once Theo had gotten it straightened out, he grumbled unhappily.

"One of tires on the Cadillac went flat. My grandmother's not coming to get me."

"How are you gonna get home?"

"I don't know, walk, I guess."

"Theo," I chided, "that's clear across town. It'd take you an hour."

"Ah, I'll be fine."

I looked around the parking lot. It was entirely empty. We'd been on the bench for close to an hour on a Friday. Even the janitors had gone home.

It was then that I made the most reckless decision of my life. It was time Theo knew what he was getting himself into. I trusted him enough now to tell him, but he had to know before he dove in headfirst and regretted his decision.

"Well... I guess I could give you a ride."

"You can drive?"

"No." I smiled slightly.