Set Free

Set Free Chapter Three

Chapter Three

   Never in my life had I had such a vivid dream. Or such a conflicting one. It had been both a good dream and an awful nightmare. But,  in more than one way, I actually envied my dream. At least in my dream i was able to die with Justin, instead of being left completely alone in this cruel world.

  As I drove to school the next morning, I absent-mindedly wondered if Nick would bother me again.

If he's smart, he won't mess with me, I determined.

And then it dawned on me that I had just been thinking about some other guy and my eyes widened at the realization. I shook my head quickly, trying to clear the unwanted thoughts away as I scolded myself.

  As it turned out, lucky ol' me had every one of my classes with Nick. I don't know why I hadn't noticed him until lunch on my first day. Now it seemed he seemed almost impossible to miss to me. And I loathed that. Unintentionally, I glanced over at him every once in a while, but he was never looking at me. He seemed to be engrossed in whatever class it was at the time, which annoyed me even more. Why would he just go to all the trouble of apologizing so many times and sitting down to talk to me at lunch yesterday then just give up like that after one day? And that smiling bit?  It made absolutely no sense to my brain. It could have been that he didn't understand the insult because he really was  mentally challenged, but I doubted it. So that would mean that, apparently, I had misjudged him. And I really hated being wrong about people.

As class ended and I left the classroom to head to the cafeteria for lunch, I looked at him once more. And to my complete surprise, he flashed me a huge smile! My heart fluttered as a result, and I placed my hand over my heart in surprise. Now I was really confused.

  After that, I began expecting him to approach me and talk to me again, but he did nothing. I was thoroughly baffled as the first week of school ended without another encounter or even another look or smile from him. I was pretty much dumbfounded. Was he trying to play some kind of mind game with me? I still couldn't even wrap my head around why was I even thinking and worrying about this at all. I shook myself out of my pondering thoughts, and tried to pay attention to what my homeroom teacher, who was consequently also Nick's homeroom teacher, was saying.

  "Alright, for the decorating....hmm...Nick Carter and Amber Davidson." the teacher said, looking down at her clipboard. "You two can start tomorrow after school."

I snapped my head up from it's resting place on my propped-up hand, unsure of what I thought I'd just heard. Maybe I'd heard her wrong? Yeah, that must have been it. Bad hearing strikes again!

"Um, excuse me?" I said to get the teacher's attention.

But no one heard me and the teacher had moved on to talk about the Homecoming dance, which was in a couple weeks. I wondered again if I'd heard right. Me and Nick decorating for Homecoming together? Well, maybe now I would be able to find out what his freaking problem was. I risked a glance over at Nick to see what his reaction was, but he was looking in the other direction once again. It seemed to me that it was almost like he knew when I was about to look at him and he was avoiding my glances. I sighed deeply in annoyance. What had I done to deserve that kind of treatment? Oh, right. I'd told him off when he was just trying to talk to me. I wouldn't want to look at me either if that had happened to me. But my question was, if it had bothered him so much, then why had he acted like it was nothing? Was he just another good actor? Another stupid player? I didn't think so, he didn't give off that vibe and I'd never seen him flirting with girls endlessly like players do.

I rubbed my temples soothingly. This is giving me a freaking headache, I thought.

                                                                                       ..........

  "Amber?" My mother said. "You've barely touched your food. Are you feeling alright?"

  "Yeah. I'm fine, but I'm not really hungry. Can I be excused?" I asked my parents.

  "Go ahead." My dad answered.

  I sighed as I rose from the table and walked up the stairs to her room. It seemed like I sighed about a hundred times a day nowaways. That was a depressing fact in and of itself. I opened the doubledoors leading outside and walked out onto the balcony. I stared out at the night sky, once again thinking. But it wasn't about Justin.

  "I have to get to the bottom of this." I determined. "Tomorrow I've gotta figure out what's up with his attitude." I nodded in emphasis even though no one could see me, and then I decided I'd go to bed, even though it was still early.