Page 6 of Apathy
This time, I couldn’t stop myself. As I opened a notebook and took a hold of a pen, the laughter I was trying to hold in erupted, echoing around the classroom.
Kane glared at me. Mr. Broody smirked. I couldn’t stop myself as my shoulders shook and my eyes misted. “I’m sorry,” I choked out. “It’s just… Oh God. I can’t.” I had to text Lauren and tell her about this shit.
“Skylar!” Kane admonished, but I couldn’t care less about his feelings or his pompous ego.
“Just go and sit somewhere else, Kane,” I uttered, still snickering. “He’s right. Your name isn’t written on the table.”
I begged him to stop this silly game he started playing a few months ago, but instead of pulling back, he kept pushing until I felt like I couldn’t breathe. He used to be an amazing friend, but after the incident, it was as if the Kane I knew completely disappeared, replaced by this person that only took but never gave. He didn’t listen to me because he didn’t want to be alone.
I wanted to help him. I wanted to be there for him, but not like this.
For a fleeting moment, his chestnut-colored eyes filled with pain, piercing through my chest. The last thing I wanted to do was to hurt him even more. But what he was doing,no, what we were doing, wasn’t healthy. This co-dependency he started developing was suffocating, and the only thing I wanted was to run away from him.
We weren’t together—we would never be together—yet he behaved like he owned me.
“Yeah, listen to Skylar, Kane.” Mr. Broody smirked. “You might as well find another place to sit because I’m most definitely not moving away from here.”
“Skylar?” Kane still kept looking at me, silently pleading, begging me for things I wasn’t willing to give. When he gets out of this weird place he found himself in, he would understand that it was better for all of us if we quit it now.
“Go and sit down, Kane,” I croaked, my throat suddenly parched. I wanted to look away, to avoid seeing the anguish flickering over his handsome face, but I couldn’t. I hated this person he’d become. I hated who I was. The last thing Kane needed was a girl with a fucked-up head, just because he thought he could fix whatever was wrong inside me.
The sound of a chair scraping over the floor pulled me back from my reverie, and when I looked to the side, Mr. Broody wasn’t sitting anymore. He stood up, towering over Kane, who was already close to six-foot-two. The devil-may-care attitude was gone, replaced with that violent surge I felt when I first saw his face.
Dark eyes, shadowed by darker eyebrows, were fixed on Kane, and it felt as if time stood still as he spoke again. “You should really, really listen to her,” he hissed. “If you don’t like me now, you’ll like me even less if I have to come around and show you to your seat.”
“Hey.” I stood up. “That’s enough.” I placed a hand on his shoulder. The last thing I would’ve expected was the zap of electricity that traveled through my arm, all the way to my chest, into my stomach, sending a frenzy through my whole body.
He jerked away as if my touch burned him, and his wild eyes zeroed in on me, caging me. For the second time in just a couple of minutes, the rest of the world ceased to exist as he held me imprisoned. What was probably just a minute felt like an eternity, until the voice of Mr. Morales broke through the fog in my mind.
“Good morning, class.”
The sound of chairs moving, students chattering, and textbooks opening filled the tense air, but my whole body burned with a need I couldn’t quite explain. Mr. Morales started talking about his summer and asked the students to share their stories. I dropped to my chair, plastering my eyes on the green board behind Mr. Morales.
I could feel the dark eyes on me. I could feel the energy buzzing between us. It felt like a living, breathing thing, and yet I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to look at him, because the last thing I needed this year was to get involved with somebody whose whole persona yelled danger.
Who the fuck was this guy?
* * *
Cold air slammed into me as soon as I stepped through the back entrance of the school, heading toward the garden area. They tried to keep most of the layout of the mansion once they turned it into Winworth High, hence the ridiculous garden area on the backside. It was absurd that they decided to turn this place into a school at all, considering its history and everything its original owner did here.
Some say that Balthazar Corvin was a wealthy merchant, but the darker stories are the ones I always paid more attention to. Some urban legends say he was part of a group that used human sacrifices to bring more wealth to themselves. Others say that he was a paid mercenary who used this place to torture those he was hunting. Over the years, some students swore that they could still see his ghost roaming the hallways of the school, hiding behind the pillars on the first floor, seeking revenge over those that betrayed him.
While I didn’t exactly believe in any of those stories, I loved listening to them. There was something interesting in dark occults that always pulled my attention, and this town was filled with stories just like that one.
Other students started filling the garden, taking their break after the third period, but I wasn’t going to stay and try to socialize with any of them. Knowing Lauren and the rest of our friends, I probably wouldn’t be coming back at all.
The fog was slowly lifting from the ground, but as I looked up, I still couldn’t see the tops of the mountains surrounding the town. I had a feeling that today wouldn’t be one of those rare sunny days. The gravel scrunched beneath my feet as I marched next to the group of cheerleaders settling on one of the tables. Hailey, one of our friends, wasn’t with them, and I hoped Lauren told her about the crypt and where we went.
It must sound weird, us hanging out at an old crypt when the rest of the population tried to avoid cemeteries as much as possible. But when you lived in a town that had more cemeteries than diners, you didn’t have much choice. Besides, at least no one would bother us there, and it wasn’t like we were disturbing the dead. Lauren found the place three years ago, while she was hooking up with one of the seniors.
That guy was as creepy as they came, loved having sex in the cemetery and Lauren, of course, went with it. I wasn’t sure who was crazier—her or him. But it did land her in the crypt when they tried to hide from the groundskeeper, and the idea was born.
I rushed toward the gate separating the garden from the football field and went left toward the broken part of the fence. Whoever cut through it was a genius, because if I had to go through the main entrance, either a security guard or one of the teachers would have caught me. We weren’t allowed to leave the school grounds while classes were still on. At least not while we were still minors.
Kane and Lauren didn’t have to worry about that shit, since both of them turned eighteen over the summer. Rowan and Danny, the twins that hung out with us, were turning eighteen in three weeks, and were no doubt planning a party. Which only left Hailey, Beatrice, and I that would have to use this way to sneak out of the school. But I guess that there was something about the adrenaline coursing through my veins when I did this. You never knew who could catch you.
It made me feel alive, no matter how fucked up it sounded. I knew that my parents wouldn’t give a shit if the school called them to report on me missing classes, so I didn’t give a fuck about missing them, either. Dylan was the only one who threw a tantrum when he found out about me skipping school, and me getting fucked up at the cemetery that was just a few minutes away from the school wasn’t his idea of fun. But Dylan wasn’t here anymore, and knowing his schedule, he won’t be here for at least three more months. I know it was ridiculous, but as soon as he left for Seattle to start university, it felt as if a part of me left with him, and I was suddenly lonely. It felt as if he abandoned me—at least the irrational part of my brain thought so—even though I knew that he didn’t have a choice.
