She Said What?

Chapter 46: I Make a Decision

A/N: I really wish I could update faster for you guys, but unfortunately, my life pretty much sucks at present. For now, I've settled into a week-long pace for each chapter – writing it little by little during the week and finishing it up on Friday and/or Saturday – and that's not likely to change. So...I'm sorry. Unless my teachers decide to have mercy on me some nights, I'm booked up.

Great mood music = Who Am I to Say, by Hope and Who'd Have Known, by Lily Allen.

Otherwise...I just hope this works. I hate confession scenes. I will be such a happy girl when we get on to the more interesting sections of the story – which, trust me, shall come abound when we get going. One thing leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another...it'll be fun. We just need to get this out of the way before we move on.

Epic thanks to my girl Niki for reading this through for me before posting. You're the biggest epic winner the world has ever known.

Sorry again for the delay. Cheers, and I hope this worked.

March 4

11:00 PM
Status: Dazed

My head is bursting. My heart is racing. My stomach is twisting, twisting, twisting, and I don't know if it'll ever regain its normal shape. I feel sick and scared and excited and horrified and wrong, but so good, that the intensity of it all is enough to keep me violently ill for days and days. It's like I'm pushing the very limits of being human. I can't even begin to describe how jittery and nervous I am – although you can kind of infer it, since my handwriting is so shaky on the page.

But, the reason for this phenomenon takes a little explaining, so here I go.

See, for the past few days – well, ever since James first told me that he fancied me, which this diary says was February twenty-third – our patrols have generally been quite mute, disconnected. We didn't make jokes or laugh or talk about how our day went. For the first few days afterward, we patrolled on separate floors, but we quickly gave that up and came back together.

Not that it was an improvement or anything, though – we still didn't really talk at all, unless it was to say good evening, good night, how are you, fine, thank you, all the stupid, empty things that I hoped we'd never reduce ourselves to.

I truly despised the purposelessness, the silence, because we were so, so much better than that; but when faced between the choices of conversing honestly or keeping my mouth shut, I couldn't help choosing the latter and saying nothing at all.

No, I'm not proud of it; but when confronted with two great evils, I chose the more convenient one and went with it. Besides, conversation can be initiated by either of the two parties involved, and my other party clearly didn't want to talk to me either.

So I went into patrol today with the same low expectations in mind – another pointless, meandering night without any of the laughter I've cherished all year – and I took my usual place at James's side without saying more than, "Good evening."

He replied, "Good evening," as well and fell quiet. I avoided his eyes and watched the wall to my right with uncommon interest, as the portraits were livelier than James and I were tonight. There was considerable physical distance between us, even, to match our emotional distance and it made me sadder than I could say. So I didn't say it. It would've made things awkward.

But I wouldn't have written about tonight in particular unless there was something particular to write about, something different – and there was.

About halfway through the patrol, while I was lost in my mental checklist of crap I still had to take care of, James softly initiated our first real conversation in (quite literally) weeks.