Sudden Bite

Chapter 8:

Dropping my backpack down in front of my locker, which I hadunlocked moments ago, I begin to exchange my books. The assembly about bullyinghad just ended as well as the end of third period since the assembly had takenthat long. I had sat with Alexander at the back of the bleachers and just likehe said – he really was a quick healer; I swear the cut that once opened hisbottom lip was now sealed.

After I finishedzipping my bag back up I look up to close my locker only for it to be abruptlyslammed shut. A small hand with long and polished nails was laid flat againstmy locker from having forcefully closed it. Looking next to me I found theowner of said hand; it was a pretty girl that wore heeled boots – giving hermore height than she already had – and was mostly definitely someone Irecognized. I’d see her dozens upon dozens of times around the school, Macy waspretty popular after all, but I didn’t really know her or anything about her.

“Um hi?” I try to smile at Macy even though I’m confused bythe presence of her and a couple other girls I recognize as her friends – or atleast I assume that they’re friends since they’re always together and laughing.

“Oh don’t act nice now, you ruined everything.” Macy’s harshtone throws me off guard.

“I’m sorry… what?” I ask politely, still trying to figureout why she seemed so angry, my eyebrows pulling together.

“You were the one that told the teachers about yesterday,you were the one that stopped our fun and got Mason in trouble,” she said accusingly,pressing a sharp nail against my chest just below my neck where the skin wasvulnerable.

“Everyone was mocking the access kids though, I couldn’t letthem-” My defense was suddenly cut off when Macy digs her nail into my skincausing a sharp pain in my throat that makes me flinch away and trip over myown shoelaces that had had come undone without me noticing. Falling onto the hardground caused pain to spread through my behind and up my spine which was lessthan pleasant if you can imagine. Macy and her friends were standing high aboveme, laughing at my clumsiness and how I’d obviously made a fool of myself.

“Just stay there where you belong,” Macy spat before her andher friends began to march off, of course not before dumping the contents of mybackpack around me – a textbook falling directly down on my head – and walkingover my hand. I let out a yelp of pain as I quickly retracted my hand andcradled it against my chest with my other hand. That was definitely going toneed some ice.

Quickly I began to clean up my things and sort the mess ofpapers before sliding everything back into my bag when the bell suddenly rang.That’s my cue to go to English… despite the throbbing in my butt and crushedhand. As always I was one of the first to arrive (because of the assembly thebell had been slightly delayed so students could visit their locker as I haddone) but soon everyone else was joining as well. Just as the late bell rangAlexander slipped in and Mr. McMillian wasted no time starting the lesson, noteven waiting until our late comer (aka Alec) had sat down.

I quietly teased Alexander about being late when he slidinto his seat next to mine and he playfully rolled his eyes in reply beforesuddenly freezing.

“What the hell happened to your hand?” Alexander harshlywhispered with complete and utter seriousness, still trying to keep his voicelow to keep from disrupting the teacher.

“Shh,” I shushed nonetheless, “it’s nothing it just gotstepped on accidentally.”

“It’s swollen and already turning an assortment of colors,”he bluntly comments before suddenly standing up and grabbing my wrist to pullme up as well. “I’m sorry Mr. McMillian, but Catalina has hurt her hand I’mgoing to take her to the nurse’s office.” My eyes widen and cheeks burn inembarrassment because of all the eyes on me. McMillian clearly having noticedthe shape of my hand after a moment of looking me over to see if Alexander wasbeing honest, told us to go to the nurse’s.

“You should treat something like this to keep it fromgetting worse,” Alexander scolds as we make out way down the hallways.

“I was going to,” I defend, “It’s just the bell rang and Ididn’t want to be late.”

Alexander tutted before telling me, “You come first Kit, notschool.”

By now we had arrived at the nurse’s office only to find itempty; she was gone half the time anyways. Alexander went into the freezer andgrabbed filled a plastic bag with ice before tying it off and handing it to me.

“It’s cold,” I complain pulling the ice away from my handright after having barely touched it.

“Here you go princess,” Alexander says with a slight (major)teasing tone while holding out a bandana in my direction. I glared at him forteasing me but thanked him before taking the bandana and unfolding it so Icould wrap it around the ice, creating a bit of a barrier between the ice andmy skin. It was still really cold but bearable now at least. Satisfied that myhand was now being iced and properly treated for Alexander nodded as if to say‘perfect’ and we headed back to class. It took me a moment to realize what Mr.McMillian was talking about but when I did I had to suppress a groan.

I loved poetry, I truly did, but I only loved reading it –writing it was a whole other story. If I wrote poetry it came out a completemess and was honestly a disgrace to the whole genre. Looking over at Alexanderwith minor panic I found that he was sitting back with complete ease. I mean ofcourse he was – he was a writing genius, something he proved when we wereassigned to write a short story.

“It’s Tuesday now,” McMillian was saying, “So I will giveyou today’s class and then until Friday to work on your poems; you’ll presentit on Friday. I am only giving you so much time because I expect you all to putthe upmost effort into these poems.” And with that he gave us the rest of classto work.

I turned to Alexander to express my stress and panic aboutthis project but something stopped me.

“Alexander… are you excited?” I gasp, surprised to see theboy eagerly getting to work.

“No,” he replies automatically halting his actions.

“Awn, that’s adorable,” I tease as I reach over to poke himonly for him to wrap his large hand around my pointer finger, completelyengulfing it.

“I’m not adorable,” he states bluntly with little to noexpression.

“You really are. You kind of remind me of the stray kittensaround my neighborhood,” I admit.

“Ironic,” he comments with the roll of his eyes.

“How so?” I begin to ask when McMillian suddenly speaks up,

“Alec, Catalina, I think you two are getting a little offtopic.” I blush as I realize that Alexander and I hadn’t been conversing allthe subtly and quickly duck my head to get to work… the only problem: I have noidea what to write for my poem.

I spent the entire period uselessly spinning my pencilbetween my fingers as I stared at the blank page in front of me. The sound ofAlexander and many other students scribbling down in their notebooks was all Iheard making it hard to focus, increasing frustrating me at the same time.Everyone knew what they were doing and here I sat completely lost. When thebell rang I glanced over yet again at my only friend to see a complete poemscrawled across his paper.

“Hey Alexander,” I began with a sweet smile as we left theclass together.

“What do you want?” He asked and even though his eyes werenarrowed at me I knew he was just joking.

“Wanna visit a coffee shop like now and help me with thepoem thingy?” Alexander sighs dramatically, a side to him that only I ever gotto witness, making me giggle before replying,

“I mean I guess.”

“You’re the best,” I tell him quickly reaching up on my toesto peck his cheek. “You know that little place, at the end of Second Street, it’slike five minutes from here?” When he nodded in confirmation I told him thatI’d meet him there since we both had cars that we couldn’t exactly leave here.

When I got to the café a quickly sent a text to my dad so hewouldn’t worry when I didn’t come home right away like usually. Alexander and Itook up a table by the windows after I ordered an iced coffee and he got asimple bottle of water. I think he must not like caffeine and that’s why heoften sleeps during lunch; I don’t know how I’d survive high school withoutcaffeine.

“So, um like how do you write a poem?”

“You’ve never written a poem before?” Alexander asks inshock.

“I have, for school obviously, but they’ve always been like really bad. I’m not the most whimsicalperson when it comes to words” I explain with an awkward smile as I recallprevious poetry projects that I’d majorly failed at in the past. The fact thatMcMillian wants us to read these poems in front of the class made me all themore nervous about this project. It was alright it I sucked and he knew that,it wasn’t okay if I sucked and the whole class knew.

“Alright let’s start with a topic, what do you wanna writeabout?” He says, such a simple question sending me into deep thought. Asubject? What did I want to write about?

“Um…” I hum to try and fill the silence as I attempt tothink of a topic. “The sky?”

“Alright what about the sky?”

“I don’t know, that’s what you’re here for,” I complain,bottom lip jutting out in frustration. How come reading poetry was so easy andyet writing it was like as difficult as rocket science.

“I’m not writing it for you, c’mon just focus a little,” heencouraged. Taking a deep breath I nod my head in agreement. I could do this, Ijust needed to stop overthinking it so much, overthinking is the reason I endedup wasting all the class time we had been given.

“Alright okay,” I start again leading to an actuallyproductive couple hours. A giddy smile stretched across my face and I bouncedslightly with every step as I took when we left the café, happy to havecompleted my very own poem – with aid from Alexander of course. He let me makethe decisions, and say what I wanted to say, but sometimes when I didn’t knowhow to say what I wanted to he would help me by suggesting different ideas andmethods of presenting what I wanted to say.

“You my friend are a life saver,” I inform Alexander who inreturn playfully rolls his eyes before suddenly grabbing my hand.

“It’s getting dark so careful when you’re driving home,” hetells me making me grin soften from giddy to a different kind of excitement.

“Yes dad,” I teaseeven though his concern made my heart do a weird thing. We said our goodbyesafter that so we could get into our respective vehicles and return home for thenight.

My head nods alongever so slightly to the music playing from the playlist I had createdspecifically for night driving. To me there was a certain type of song forcertain types of moments and I loved creating playlists for those differentmoments as if creating a little soundtrack to my life. Music just madeeverything better.

“I’m home,” I call as I close the front door behind me andlock it.

“In here,” the familiar voice of my father calls from thekitchen table. Coming around the corner I find him and Sam in the midst of whatlooked to be an intense game of UNO. I watched in amusement for a moment asthey competitively played the card game before taking a seat at the table,simply watching as they played until my father won and Sam cried out that he wascheating.

Dad chuckled before asking me how my studying went.

“It was good,” I tell him honestly, happy that I hadcompletely my poem and wouldn’t have to spend the week focusing on it.

“That’s good to hear. I actually need to tell you thatyou’ll be home alone Friday and Saturday in three weeks, is that okay?” He asksas Sam sorts the cards for yet another round, muttering something about how thegame wasn’t over until he had won.

“I don’t mind, but where are you guys going to be?” I ask,lying on partly when I said I didn’t mind. It wasn’t that I couldn’t survive onmy own, because I totally could, and I actually liked being alone, it’s justthat I’ve never actually stayed home alone overnight since dad was always home.

“Sam’s gym class has an overnight camping trip that Ivolunteered for,” he explains and I nod along in understand.

“Sounds like fun,” I admit before going in the kitchen toget some leftovers and fill my empty stomach. While eating I watched themcontinue to play round after round of Uno, even partaking after I finisheating.

It was a good day even if it was a little bumpy. Sure myhand was sore but it wasn’t bruised thanks to the ice and I’m sure that in acouple days I would back to normal. Besides it didn’t disable me from doing anythingI normally would and the rest of the day had been pretty great. If I letsomething like Macy get to me I’d only fall down the rabbit hole and I mostcertainly could not afford that. Besides… it wasn’t worth it when I was sohappy.