Vulneratis: The Stories of Christian Vanover

side b

Peyton goddamn Beckham. Wow. To talk about her now is like saying Bloody Mary three times in the mirror as a kid. You're so fucking curious as to what will happen but right when you're about to say the third sentence you stop. Her sniffles clogged my ears like cotton swabs. "I just don't know why I'm not good enough" she cried. The thing about Peyton is she was more than good enough. Despite her own judgments, Peyton was pretty and maybe even prettier than Skylar or "She who must not be named". No matter what Skylar or anyone else said. But why was she crying? Evan Cortez was the physical embodiment of douche. The kind that was born and raised in "810" or Flint. More like Burton more like shitty, broken home life taken too far. Therapy would've helped but being a "gangsta" Yes I'm aware of the "A" helped more. As he claimed the drugs numbed his pain, hurting Peyton must've done the same. Evan played Peyton like a violin? Trumpet? Kazoo? There's a thousand musical instruments I could name but the harp seems most fitting. One dark and stormy nig- no. No more like a very normal day at school. Unbeknownst to me Peyton met Evan or Evan met Peyton. Some events most definitely happen for a reason. Like what if Juliet being the Capulet priss she was decided to blow that popsicle stand of a party and never met Romeo. Or what if the princess never kissed the frog. What if Evan never gave Peyton his snapchat. What if I never encouraged her.

"Pey do it!!!"
"Chris I don't know, it's Sky's ex" she said somberly.
"And when has she EVER cared about that for you" I said
When in doubt Peyton was my go to and I wanted to believe I was hers but Evan slowly started to consume her like a demon consuming its conduit. It turned obsessive faster than it turned into love. Soon she was "accidentally" calling me Evan. Than I got the call.
"Chris" she said
"Yes?"
"So Ev and I are gonna date"
"That's- That's soon P" I replied
"But-"
"Awh shit" I said putting my head in my arms
Evan was every other eighth grade boy. Horny. Sex was so relevant so new so normalized. And Evan knew how much Peyton wanted him. So he took that as in, in. He promised her if she sent him nudes he would finally date her. Evan Cortez. Evan goddamn Cortez.
These next few sentences are going to either portray me as Good or Evil. I love how that oh so thin line of what is good and what is evil.
After what seemed like hours of her crying and putting herself down. I did something that could reall- that did really. Funny how that works too. The simple change in transitional speech shed a whole new light on a sentence. I did is different from I am. I was is different from I am as well. The crazy thing is it's not what I did, it's what she did that's the real kicker. After my elongated rant on how much of a giraffe necked, piece of shit Evan was I got a text. From Evan himself. Usually I'd scream "Deja Vu" but not even my life is that coincidental. The paragraph he sent to me is a little foggy now but definitely along the lines of "I'm going to kill you faggot! Don't ever talk about me. See you Monday!" And suddenly my impending doom clock started ticking.
"Peyton what the-"
She cuts me off
"You said it I didn't"
Whilst on my rant about how Evan was so terrible. Peytons true colors shone brighter than ever. So bright I guess it blinded me from ever seeing her in a bad light. Any normal person would've dropped her instantaneously. But I stayed. Peyton had sent Evan a video of me going completely ballistic about him. And gave him my username of course. She swore up and down he would never actually do anything to me because of her. I had this quirked sense of reality that everything was going to be okay. Because anyone who ever tried to fight me. Didn't. But no one knew what would come Monday morning before the first bell rang.

After an elongated sense of cockiness, "this is my world you're just living in it" feelings some screaming voice told me in my carefree head that come Monday morning my feelings of ease would vanish just like my trust in anyone in this world. Trust is such a heavy weight when you think about it. Let's say you trust someone with this huge ass secret whether it be you buried a dead body in your backyard or you have a crush on the girl next door. Naturally like all people in this world you tell someone. That someone most presumptuously being a friend. That friend break the trust than wants to come back. You let them in? What if they do the same thing again? Or what if you're just being crazy and irrational and giving up on a real friend? People say love is the worst way to be screwed but I think it is both love and trust. But trusting someone whom you love. Now that my friends is the real bitch. Walking into school was always a drag. The different cliche cliques ate your sense of auditory with laughs and fights. Usually everyone went to go way in the designated hallway for seventh graders but I guess it made me feel rebellious to walk around first, of many mistakes in this book this was my biggest. Now everyone in this story or journal or overall list of my enemies and or- and or. Knows that I have never been one to back down from a fight. Being in one and backing out of one are polar freaking opposites. That's why I didn't apologize to Evan like Peyton repeatedly advised me to. My first step into the elective classes hallway my heart jumped almost like a pressure. My breathing dropped and I felt like something was warning me. I turned up my music and continued to walk. Second step. Head down like always just to keep away from the normal stares which would probably lead to a joking comment that would damage my self esteem like "Oh I can see your tits" or "Hey when I first met you I thought you were gay". It was better to ignore. Third step. Like a torrential earthquake. Two of the boniest hands known to man pushed me to the ground with the force and anger of hellfire released on Earth. Evan Cortez. See everyone's cockiness catches up to them at some point. I mean it's almost physically impossible for someone to forever be so cocky and so goddamn full of themselves in their own small,selfish idealized world that they are so safe and so secure and then BOOM a hurricane of hate swirls around and it's suffocating. And that's what I felt in that exact moment. Suffocation. No literally I was suffocating in my own fear. My panic and undeniable fear of the unknown. Before the moppy haired mexican eighth grade could lay another hand. The cause of my hell my own personal hell. Charged in and saved the day for once. Granted her little screams of rebellion and small force against this stalky, angry man had no affect on him. But something in her screams to save me clicked in his brain. And he stopped he said miscellaneous words of anger probably something I've heard about myself over a million times but he stopped and walked off. Now out of my drama for a second. You're sitting on the ground, red with sweat and terror in front of a hallway of people you know. What do you do? You laugh. Well maybe if you're Christian Vanover you laugh. I loved Peyton. I did. But forgiving someone for being so awful to you so soon? Well actually that was my speciality. I was a pushover and I didn't know it for the longest time. But there was something to grovel in when you could be mad at someone instead of them being mad at you. But with Peyton. You cant. She knows how fights work and she knows when she messes up. Later that day she walked to my locker. I tried ignoring her but through me putting my combination in I could hear her say "look I know I messed up like badly but I'm not gonna beg for you to be my friend if you want to be friends, that's your choice" And so I did. I took her back. Like nothing ever happened. And trust me this is the least of my problems of my seventh grade year.

So thus far you've heard about many of my "friends" now friends is in quotations because the word "friend" is hard to define in itself. Does someone you've known since kindergarten even qualify as a friend? Does someone who's stuck around qualify as one either? I sometimes played this mind game with myself' where I would pick someone in my life and see if they had done something to me. The game eventually got sad when I realized that I couldn't count on anyone in my life from those who I've known since I was in diapers to a person I had met last week. Everyone has- I mean had done me wrong. But to get into this story I have to open another chapter book of hell. Now how do I start this off? How can you start this off? Let's see. Roll-haven.

Roll-haven was the equivalent to Hannah Baker's movie theater or the diner in Happy Days. Roll-haven was a shitty D- List local skating arena where the students of West Middle School made the Friday Night Lights hangout. Everyone went. Literally everyone including highschoolers. Which at the time were damn near God's or higher ups to us. And to the sixth graders it might as well have been the reincarnation of Jesus Christ coming back to Earth. Lilly Essenburg especially. Now Lilly had been around for basically the last few years of my life. And she was a sixth grader and a popular one at that. So what happened that night at Rollhaven could not have been great for her to talk about nor for everyone to know about it. But I didn't think about that when I told people. I didn't think about anything but what he was doing.