Two Truths and a Liar

XIII • Clique culture

Leon

_______________________________________

"You'll be alright,"

I found myself averting any gaze, left staring distractedly out the nurse's small half-closed window, my thoughts a hundred miles away in the fading form of an exchanged name and a silent agreement.

She took my temperature and reminded me to take it easy. The dark spots and dizziness that had led me to nearly collapsing halfway through chem had been easily brushed away with a glass of water and a pain reliever, and those last words lingering on the air before I was allowed to leave and told to take it easy. 

My thoughts never went with me into the office, and never came out. They were somewhere else I couldn't track down, bringing me back to the incident and the sweat and the fear. The confusion. The fact that something was happening to me. And meeting Harley too, who seemed like the type of person with a locked vault of secrets hidden deep inside. He had to have something to do with it, anything.

'Abuse… attacks… afraid'

'You'll be alright'

“Halloway, pay attention please,”

I woke up carrying a clammy, sticky sweat trickling down the back of my neck and into my shirt. My head was filled with a cloud, set heavily on the surface of my desk. My heart pounded, my head throbbed and ached. The cool air of the classroom, moderate and impersonal, flooded my senses along with dim sunlight piercing me through. 

Familiarity. 

 I sat up, quickly whisking my hair out of my eyes and flashing a smile. “Yep, sorry about that,” 

    The teacher shot a curt not and a raised eyebrow, rising almost as high as his quickly receding hairline. “Alright,” He turned to pass out a few papers to the students on the other side of class. “Don’t let it happen again,”

    The rest of his words, directed to the whole class, quickly blurred away into the background as I held my chin in my hands, elbows propped on the desk, and stared ahead at the opposite wall vacantly. The gentle buzz of a lawn mower outside, the quiet ticking of the classroom clock brushed against the walls of my head and the insides of my ears, not quite blocking it all out, not quite dimming away like the droning sounds of the teacher. I closed my eyes, and breathed. 

   

***

    “How was it?”

    I rubbed the back of my head, slam dunked into the locker just a little too hard at Kyles’s playful shove. A hallway passing, a call out. They remembered me when I asked them to. 

    “Great,” His face split into a broad smile. Jordan tapped away at his nokia a little ways behind. “There were girls there too, like, really hot ones. You shoulda-”

    “Kyle,” Jordan’s hand fell heavily on his shoulder, phone now stuffed into his jeans pocket. He didn’t look at me. 

    “What?”

    I laughed, feeling the unconvincing afterthought of discomfort in my own tone. “I wasn’t invited,” 

    My words met a silence that let them echo again and again. 

    Jordan shrugged. Kyle opened his drooping mouth wider.

    “Ohh,”

    “Yeah,”