Luke

4

Luke

 

I can’t see Cassie’s face anymore, but I imagine she’s probably skyping one of her Internet friends, or doing homework, but I doubt it.

I look down at my watch and decide that it’s probably best to go back home, considering it’s already two in the morning.

I hate leaving, I really do. But I calm myself down because I know I’ll see her tomorrow. Off course it’ll be different because I’ll have to act like an idiot around her in front of my friends, but still, I’ll get to see her face without it being reflected as stalking.

So I slowly pack my things back up and swerve my way around the tree to the side facing the yard, I see the start of the stone path and flowers and crawl my way towards it.

A few minutes later I’m climbing the side of my house and very patiently make my way to the cracked window. I squeeze my way through and trip into the dark room. I stand up on my feet and stumble to turn my bedroom light switch on. As soon as I hit it the entire room became alive. I drop my bag to the ground and turn to face my bed.

“Mom?” my own voice surprised me, the raspy croak that could be played in the back ground of a Halloween soundtrack.

“I know you refuse to tell me where you were, but if you could at the very least just tell me if you were safe.” I do feel bad. But at the same time I don’t. My mother is very contradicting, she really does try to get along with me, I can tell. But when I find myself even slightly considering giving her a piece of my gratitude, or even sympathy, I reflect on how horrible she used to treat me when I was young.

But I don’t want to think about that.

“Get out of my room.” I tried to say as bluntly as possible.

She looked at me for a second with an icy glare in her eyes, the kind of glare that only the devil himself could shoot at someone as innocent as me. Then she slowly planted her feet on the ground and with a deep sigh, paced herself through my doorway and into the hall. I heard the creaks of the stairs as she marched down them and then then the jingles of the car keys followed by the slamming of the front door. Without a surprise I then heard the car start and the snaps of the gravel as she pulled out of the driveway.

Probably to the bar. She’s probably not coming back until tomorrow night. And she’s probably going to come home just as drunk as usual. Not that shocking.

I rip off my hoodie and throw it to the ground. I catch a glimpse of myself from a mirror across the room and run over to it as soon as I see the marks of poison ivy, starting to show signs of irritation. S**t. S**t!

No this isn’t possible.

She’s going to know. She’s going to know I was in her yard. What the hell am I going to do?

I can’t go to urgent care now thanks to the fact that my mom took the car out. I don’t have any antibiotics in the cabinet.

I run to my mom’s room and whip out her makeup bag. I find some of that skin colored goop stuff that girls put on their faces. I never thought I would swoop down this low. I open up the cap and try to imitate how I’ve seen the women in the commercials do it. I put as much of the makeup I could possibly squeeze out of the bottle without completely empting the bottle itself onto my hands. I then took the flesh toned goo that was oozing off of my fingertips and attempted to rub it onto my rash as if I were rubbing in lotion. I kept rubbing it in and just kept trying to make my skin look like I was back to being a human once again. But as much as I kept rubbing it in, I still looked like a wolf just clawed at my face and instead of bleeding actual blood, more skin just oozed out of my wound. And on top of that, the makeup wasn’t even my skin tone, my mom was much paler than me and having that, soft toned color on my tan complexion made me look like I was a psychotic idiot.

So I washed it all off with some wipes I found under the sink’s counter and went back to my room with a sigh of regret.

I glared at myself one more time in the mirror and decided that it didn’t look as bad as I had anticipated it did and I went to sleep.

I dreamed of her again. I always dream of her. Her fair skin and elf looking ears. Last night I dreamt that we were homeless together, just trudging through the city with our bags full of emptiness and our heart full of just absolute adoration for one another.

Tonight was different. I mean usually every dream is generally different, but tonight was a weird type of different, the kind of different that you usually don’t expect.

In the dream I saw Cassie just lying in her bed, sobbing, just absolutely dreadfully sobbing. Then I watched her sit up dramatically and turn her face towards a framed picture surrounded with different assorted candles. I glared at the picture trying to make a face out of it. I kept trying to figure out who it was in the wooden frame. Whoever it was really had an effect on her. Anyways, aside from sobbing over some unknown person in the frame, it sounded like she was muttering some sort of chant or something, I couldn’t hear the entire sentence but I could hear her grunt out specific fragments, “I didn’t mean to fall in love with you.” And, “Please don’t leave me.” or sometimes I heard variations of cussing but except of sounding mad, I could hear the essence of regret. Like whoever it was she fell in love with, she didn’t want to be in love with. Like everything was an accident.

As soon as I heard my alarm I was suddenly relating to the sensation of regret.

I got up as slowly as I could manage, finally pushing the covers off of me and putting my feet on the worn out hardwood flooring, I made my way (running into every passing wall and object that stood in my way) to the bathroom. I looked at my refection in the mirror and sighed in disgust. My rash had only grown. Freaking great. Just what I needed, this is worse than a pimple! And out of all places it had to appear on my face. I hopped in the shower and washed all of last night’s filth down the drain. And as soon as I got out of the shower I had about ten minutes until I was about to leave the house, so I brushed my teeth and threw on some tight jeans and my red Vans. I sat and read for the remainder of the time and then on my way out I took one last peek at myself in the mirror, I tossed my hair to the side with a brush and some hairspray, then ran out of the front door.

I noticed the car still wasn’t in the driveway just as I figured. She’s such an a*s, what kind of a mother would do that to their child? Who cares how old I am! I deserve a loving and caring family. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so messed up.

I left quite a few minutes early, I decided I would take Cassie’s path once again. I think I’m going to talk to her today.

As I got closer to her house, the palms of my hands begun to get extremely sweaty. And closer and closer I walked, the more and more nervous I got. Would she notice the interfering rash on my cheek? Could she tell that I got the poison ivy from her yard? I knew there was no way she would know that I got at there but still, the possibilities were racing through my mind over and over again. And thoughts of the dream, and who was the person in the frame?

And while my thoughts were so preoccupied, I barely had time to comprehend that I was standing directly in front of Cassie’s house. I heard the creak of the front door and I swear my heart had never raced as much as it did in that very moment when I saw her sad blue eyes meet mine.