Human (Discontinued)

Chapter 3

After I ran upstairs to get my jacket, and reluctantly let Meredith bandage my wrist, we headed out to walk to her parent's house.
It was a quiet enough day, everyone was either at school or work. The weather was getting colder too, Meri was shivering in her holey, old hoodie. I glanced at her and shoved my hands further down into my jacket pockets, shrugging my shoulders up to protect my ears from the cold.
Meredith exhaled through her mouth, her breath billowing out in crystallised clouds around her face.
"Remember when we were kids and we used to pretend we were smoking by doing this?" She blew out in my direction. I scrunched up my face and lightly shoved her away from me, so she fell from the footpath onto the road.
"Yeah, I do. Remember that time Randy Johnson was actually smoking behind the bike shed and got caught, so we all had to sit through a lecture on smoking being bad?" I asked, offering her my arm to help her back onto the pavement.
"Yes...wait, weren't you behind the shed when he got caught that day?" She pulled herself up by grabbing onto my wrist, and raised her eyebrows at me skeptically. In response, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a cigarette, twirling it around in my fingers.
"How school has influenced me." I said, rolling my eyes and throwing the foul thing into a bin as we walked past.
"I never did believe it when they said you were with them, but what do you have them for?"
We turned a corner, and started walking in the direction of her house.
"They piss off my mother." I shrugged, as she gave me a withering look.
"Of course you'd have them for that..." she sighed, shaking her head and shutting her eyes briefly in disdain. I smiled at her like I always did when she had that look.
In that second, it dawned on me how I'd never been able to do this for the past two years. No one was as easy to talk to as her, and since her "death" I'd shut myself off even more. I had hated everyone, and I'd thought about what would happen if she'd come back for so many nights when I couldn't sleep. And now she was back...everything was normal again.
Well, almost normal. We were both school drop-outs, and she was legally dead, but we were still us. Still us.
I took a deep breath of cold air, letting the refreshing chill fill up my lungs.
As long as we could keep being ourselves, I couldn't care less about anything else.
Including how her parents would react, though now that we were on their doorstep, I felt a shiver run down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
"Ready?" I asked, raising my hand up to the doorknocker.
"...Ready..." she breathed, nodding at me to knock. I lifted the handle and let it fall back. The sound resonated through the air of the silent morning, making birds on the tree nearby flutter away.
We waited for a few seconds before footsteps sounded in the hall, and the door was opened by a tall man with greying hair and dull, green eyes.
Meri's father.
When he saw me his eyes narrowed, before he looked at Meredith, and they widened again. I had to bite my lip to prevent myself from laughing at him; he looked like a surprised fish.
"Why are you here..?" He stared at Meredith and took a shaky step back. I felt her take hold of my hand and squeeze it tightly, some habit she'd picked up when we were kids, she always did it when she was nervous.
I didn't react, deciding not to draw his eyes to the movement of my hand.
"I...I got released today...so I-"
"No...no...we told them not to let you out. You're dead." He cut her off, his hand fumbling to shut the door. I leapt forward and jammed my hand into the space before he could, leaving a little space enough for us to partially see his face. His eyes were wild, he literally looked like he'd seen a ghost. And I guess to him, he had.
"Wait, wait, you can't just shut the door on her!" I gasped, biting down on my lip as he tried to force the door closed on my hand. It was the same one that I'd been stabbing with a screwdriver all morning, and I had to clench my teeth to stop myself crying out when he tried wrenching the door shut again.
"She's not there! She's dead! She's dead alright?! She's dead..!" He was screaming by this time, and opened the door wider so he could slam it shut with full force, regardless of my fingers blocking it.
"She's right here! She standing right there! Open the goddamn door and look at her!" I flung my other arm out in Meredith's direction, while my fingers scrabbled against the wooden door. I prayed they wouldn't get crushed.
"No...No! Once the clock stops, life ends. We buried her, we cried for her...she's dead!"
Tears had sprung up in his mad eyes, and he tried his hardest to close the door, grinding the frame against my hand. My palm had gone all pale, with an angry red mark running diagonally across it, and my fingers were numb. But I refused to let go.
How could he be such an idiot? She was alive and perfectly fine, he should've been overjoyed.
Not slamming the door in her face.
"She's...right here!" I repeated, having to force it open with both hands.
"She's dead! Now leave me alone, leave us alone, we don't want anything to do with you anymore, you useless failure, keep away from us!" His spit was flying everywhere. I ducked to avoid it, just as Meredith laid a hand on my arm.
"Cal...it's ok, let go." she said quietly, staring down at the ground.
"It's not ok, why should you-"
"Let go, can't you see he's gone mad?" she cut me off, before looking up at me pleadingly, "Let go Cal...please let go."
The look on her face finally persuaded me to release my hold on the door. It swung shut with a loud bang, that echoed down the street and made a flock of birds fly away from the trees.
Meredith was silent for a few seconds, the wind tousling her hair over her face, her eyes downcast. She took a deep breath, and finally said "Your hand is hurt."
I glanced down at it, hardly able to feel the pain of the pulsing, red weal on my palm. I guess I wasn't really focusing on the door, just knew that I had to keep it open.
But half a second later, I felt the throbbing ache all over my hand, and I swore quietly as I tried to close it into a fist.
"It's fine, I'm fine. I don't know what's wrong with that prick, I'm sorry Meri-"
"It's ok. I should've known this would happen...you don't mind if I stay at your house, do you?"
Her face was closed off, and her hands clenched into fists, like she didn't want to ask. There was a subtle undertone in her voice that warned me not to say what I was thinking; she didn't want me to go and knock on her parent's door again.
I walked over till I was close enough to loop the arm of my injured hand over her shoulders.
"Looks like we're having a sleepover."