Trapped by my choices

Chapter 16

Jake: Remember tonight!

Me: sure

"Who are you texting?" Molly leaned over my shoulder and looked down at my phone.

I quickly moved so that she couldn't see it. I closed my messages and went onto a different app and began pretending I had been playing it all along.

"Come on, Axel! I'm not stupid!" She grabbed my phone out of my hands and began searching.

I could feel my heart pounding, my face tingling with worry. If she found the texts she would know about everything I had done, she would hate me.

"Molly! Give me my phone!" I watched as she moved her finger towards the messages. Once she tapped it, she would know and there would be nothing I could do. There's only one more task I need to finish, then everything will be okay.

As her eyes scanned the phone and her fingers scrolled the screen up, I could tell that she had found the messages that I had done so well hiding until now, "Axel, what is all of this?"

"Nothing! now give me my phone!" I reached out to grabbed my phone but fell over when she moved her hand quickly.

She looked down at me with those eyes that pitied me and thought I was a freak, "Why are you texting Jake so much... and what are you guys talking about?"

I clenched my hands, I was furious now, how could I have let all that slip right through my fingertips? It was something big but not too big to keep secret, and somehow I had let it out!

"Axel!!" She stepped in front of me, her eyes didn't have any light in them, her arms were crossed across her stomach.

I looked up so I could see her face, waiting for the question that seemed almost impossible to answer.

"What is all this?" She turned the phone so I could see the messages that were sent back and forth between Jake and I.

"Those are messages." I pushed myself off the floor, her eyes followed me. I was thinking of anything to get out of this mess but nothing was coming to me, I couldn't think of anything.

"Yeah, with Jake! Are you guys like friends now?"

"I guess you could say that." I looked down at my feet and shuffled my weight.

The tiles on the floor were gray and black, they matched the school's walls too. Tons of tables were lined up and students sat at them, laughing and joking around. The lunch room was loud but all the noise was blocked out, all I was focused on was Molly.

"I thought you wanted to beat him up!" Molly was almost yelling now.

I grabbed her hand but she pulled away, making strict eye contact with me. I then grabbed her wrist and pulled her out of the lunch room.

Once we were out, in a corner of the school that no one went to, I began explaining in the most vague way I could, "Jake and I aren't really friends. I did everything to protect you, you had to watch me get beat to the ground. I couldn't let that happen again. There was only one way to ensure that he would leave you alone."

"What are you talking about?"

I took a deep breath, getting prepared for the awful thing I was about to say, "I....I did a lot of bad things, to protect you from him." I felt chills run through my body but I ignored them, "He told me that if I did it, he would leave you alone. So I did all of it."

She waited for me to say something else but I didn't say anything, "What did you do?!"

"I sold...sold drugs and I bought cigars for his gang, and... and tonight, tonight he's gonna make me do the worst of all." My heart was pounding harder than it ever had before, my mouth was dry, my body was shaking.

Molly was shocked and she was angry, she was angry at me, at Jake, and at herself for letting anything like this happen.

I held the side of my face and watched Molly run off after she had slapped me. I knew that I had made a huge mistake but I didn't know what else to do. I was trapped. I had to tell at least one person what had happened or I would go completely insane.