Savior [Completed]

Savior: [Twelve]

Twelve- Nick

“Ryan, I’m sorry!” I called out desperately to the retreating figure.

He paused momentarily, sending a beacon of hope flaring through me, but instead of turning around, or just stopping, as I so dearly hoped he would, he gave me a fleeting glance then broke into a sprint.

I groaned, making no attempt to move and continue the chase. What had I done? Over the years we’d had our disagreements, arguments, fights, even, but never before had he pushed me to the ground to break away, and certainly, never before had he run from me like this.

But then again, I’d never been in such a situation before…

It wasn’t the time to be making excuses though. It was the time to fix the damage I’d done, be a man and face the consequences of my actions…yet I couldn’t get myself to stand up and find my friend.

What would I say to him, anyway? Why had I said all those hurtful things, when all he’d been doing was a little harmless speculation? I knew what had inspired the outburst, so these weren’t really the important questions. The real question was: did I have the guts to tell him the truth?

It had started off simply enough. The four of us were in the midst of an animated discussion on what we’d thought of the new substitute teacher, when, as a highlight of the lesson, Ryan had raised a point on how it was somewhat impressive that Max had known the correct answer to some question that hadn’t even been remotely relevant to the lesson.

“How’d you know the answer to his question? The one about if cats are feline, sheep are ovine?” Ryan had asked curiously, in response to which Max had blushed slightly and tried to shrug it off, before finally caving into the pressure of giving a straightforward response.

“It’s really a huge coincidence, actually,” he’d answered, “there was this one time I was talking to Dylan,” he paused briefly to gauge what our reactions would be like, probably, “and he asked me the same question.” When we’d all just looked at him blankly, Max had gone on to elaborate. “He’s really into animals and stuff, and one time, I said I felt very knowledgeable about animals ‘cause I’d been helping Lucy out with her project on animals, so he challenged me.”

“And he asked you that question?”

Max nodded. “Well, he also asked stuff like what the other name for a wildebeest was, but yeah, that was one of them. The answer to this one is ‘gnu’, by the way. And there was-” he stopped, embarrassed. “Right, not the point.”

I had been determined not to display any reaction to this, the second I’d heard Dylan, I mean, and nor had Rodney expressed any comments he may have had regarding this, but Ryan had seemed delighted.

“And you remember ever detail of every conversation with him, huh?”

Max just half-heartedly told Ryan to zip it – he had somewhat become used to this ribbing now, and Rodney had been in the process of changing the topic, I think, but what the latter wanted to say, I didn’t have a chance to find out, because just then, Max’s phone rang. A reminder sounded through.

“And,” he announced, stretching out the word, “it’s time.”

“What for?”Rodney asked.

“I’m meant to go meet this girl Leo told me about. She’s got these textbooks and stuff that I could use, so we talked, and she said that she’d bring them over for me to check out and decide if I wanted to buy.”

My forehead creased at his mention of Leo, but I kept mum, allowing Rodney to ask the questions. I knew that they interacted now, but I’d just assumed this was because our Bio partners from the day he’d had his fainting episode had been declared as our permanent partners.