Natalie

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

“Friend”… Fuck, did that word hurt… She’d grown on me so much that I was starting to think that I was in love, but to her, I was just a “great friend”? It was a huge slap in the face and kick in the ass.

“And I’m sorry about your shirt and for being so clingy. I had to convince myself that I won’t be alone for the rest of my life because you’re here. If you’re still here and putting up with me after I’ve done so much to piss you off, even if you don’t like me, there’s bound to be someone else somewhere in the world that will see the real me, too,” she beamed in confidence and it made my stomach tighten up.

All of this talk of her being alone and not thinking that I liked her but still considering me a friend made it so much harder for me to tell her the truth of how I felt about her. It was like she’d reached into my gut, grabbed my stomach in her fist, and twisted. She’d have been better off cutting through my chest to my heart while I was still awake and stabbing it over and over again while it was still in me with whatever sharp object was around. At least I’d have been dead so the pain wouldn’t have been so fucking humiliating.

My mind kept saying that my feelings for her were too good to be true; I’d been through it so many times before with the assholes that I’d called my boyfriends at some point, especially Kano, and then they either left me for one of the preppy skanks that I’d learn to hate, or they left me for drugs or jail. There was no fucking way that it could have ended happily with a god damned international superstar. There was always a little voice in the back of my mind that was hopeful, though. The little voice was gone after she’d said that I was just a great fucking friend. It was destroyed by the voice that kept saying, “I told you so. I told you it wouldn’t work out between you and her. I told you that she’d hurt you. I told you so.”

“Whatever… just don’t cry anymore. I don’t have that many spare shirts…” I replied, standing up, not caring if I sounded upset or not. I sighed. “It’s getting late and the baths are probably full by now. Damn it. Now I have to take a late one…”

We walked back to school in silence and I didn’t say anything to her as I got ready for my bath or when I got back from it. She looked like she wanted to talk some more or ask me what was wrong, but I turned off my light and fell asleep with my back to her before she could. I was so badly hurt and felt so rejected that I wanted to hate her, and I wanted her to know that I hated her… but no matter how much it hurt to be around her, stupid, masochistic, love-struck fool that I was, I stayed with her. It hurt too much to be away from her, even more than it hurt to be with her. God, was I an idiot for falling so hard for her.

Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I started avoiding her after about a week of awkward silences and tensions between us. I sat with the gang again at meals and even asked the headmaster if I could get my own room again. I’d moved out of Natalie’s room and into my own while she was at her voice lessons one day. I could see how much it hurt her to be ignored after she’d told me such a deep confession, but I didn’t care. I wanted to hate her so it’d be easier for me to pretend that she’d never existed so I could move on with my life and forget about her, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t bring myself to hate her. She was too fucking perfect.

At a gang meeting one day was the day that the new girl, Machi was getting beaten into the gang. She’d already singlehandedly fought one of the preps that had been mentioned in one of the bitching sessions and one of the otouto from the Jigoku Ryouken, cut and dyed her hair so it was now black with blonde streaks and in a spiked pixie cut instead of her original mid-back length brown, and she’d gotten her first piercings from Akane, the gang’s tattoo artist and piercing specialist in her nose and lip. The next step was to fight some of the gang’s toughest chicks, and if she lived through it and still wanted to join us, we’d move on to the next step—getting her inked up and a trench.