Up, Up and Away

2 // the a team

chapter 2: the a team (edsheeran)

            Holly can't think straight. Her head hurts from all the crying, but thankfully no one saw her. She can feel the wind blowing through her too short hair, making her feel even colder. She regrets leaving her sweater at Matt's house, but at the time, she didn't remember to grab it.

            The image of him kissing Keela is stuck in her brain. The way he grabbed her face and pulled her closer to him, just like he did with Holly, makes Holly sick to her bones. Once again, Holly is wrong. She thought Matt really cared about her, while all along he had been cheating on her with his ex. (Who was, according to him, nothing to worry about.)

            She runs a hand through her hair and sniffles. Why does she have to be so naïve? This isn't the first time her boyfriend cheats on her, but every time it happens, it stings more than before. Her heart aches uncontrollably and she just wants to shut everything off. Her feelings, her thoughts—gone. She can't help but blame herself for this. If she was curvier, prettier, simpler to love, maybe life wouldn't take pleasure out of her pain.

            The thing is—loving Holly will never be easy. With her smile comes along a hundred things to love, to tolerate, to accept. She is set in stone, but no one has the tools to take her out. She is Atlas, cursed to the weight of the world on her shoulders, and no one wants to help her—or at least sit with her for a while.

           She thinks of her brother, Edward, waiting for her at school. De facto, he never waits for her. More than once, he asked her to leave him alone and let him come home to the pity of an apartment they can afford on his own, without his older sister. But there is this nagging feeling at the back of her head; a fear that one day, he will never come home. His new-found friends, no matter how much of assholes to everyone they are, never scared her. To her, they are nothing but blood-sucking mosquitoes with friable hormones; because when one of them dared try to insult her, all she had to do was bat her eyelashes and shove them back in their place.

            When she sees Dave, her brother and the other jocks kicking a figure behind school, she gasps. These boys can kill him in less than minutes. She runs towards them and tries to push them off the boy.

"Get off him! You bastards! Get off him!" screams Holly, standing in front of the boy with her arms extended as if to protect him.

            Dave smiles and it reminds her of Matt telling her that Keela is just a friend. "Holly, get out of here. I don't feel like hitting a girl today."

"Neither do I, Dave." she feels her nostrils flare and her temper rise. Edward recognizes her and disappears to the back of the group, his head down. "Leave him alone and go somewhere else. Go away."

            They give him a spiteful glance. Dave shrugs and lets his fist go loose , "we're done with him, anyway. This isn't over, jackass."

             The boys walk away. Holly knows that the only reason Dave left is because she knows secrets about him that could make him want to crawl into a hole and never come out. She knows everything about each one of these boys, from their favorite color to their deepest fear. If it came down to it, she can blackmail them until they sob.

            "Edward, get your ass back here!" she shouts, when her brother follows the jocks. She feels disappointment; her brother is slowly losing himself in a midst of idiots.

            I lost my brother, she thinks, what else will I lose today?

            She instead looks at the battered boy. His leg is bent in a position that makes her cringe. There is blood all over his face. His clothes are smeared with blood. Through it all, she manages to recognize him as the smartest kid in her class, Walter Jones. His body is limp and she feels panic spread all over her body.

            "Shit, shit. Please don't die," she mumbles. Putting her head on his chest, she can hear a faint heartbeat. His breathing is faint, but all she needs to know is that there's a pulse.

            She rummages sees the outline of a phone and carefully takes it out of his pocket. She punches three numbers in the "emergency call" section and holds it up to her ear. She takes the boy's limp hand and holds it. Holly knows that at the moment, he needs all the help and support he can get.

            "911, what's your emergency?" says a lady on the phone.

            Holly takes deep breaths to not faint, "a boy got beat up and I don't think he's okay."

            Please, she mentally begs over and over, don't die.