Leslie sat at a table in her school�s overcrowded cafeteria, staring at an unopened notebook with unseeing eyes. Around her, boys argued about the best strategy to destroy little plastic army men in their weekly battle RPG. Her heart pounded as she felt the medications she was supposed to swallow four times a day flow through her veins once again.
Tears filled her eyes as choice words of the conversation flowing around her head brought imagines of destruction behind her eyes. The vertigo she�d hoped would cease with her return to the waking world consumed her, forcing her eyes shut to fight the nauseated feeling that accompanied it.
�so close, yet so far away�
Her eyes popped open. She�d caught herself falling asleep earlier in her history class, but she was wide-awake now. How did his voice get in her head?
Lifting her eyes to scan the room, Leslie felt a chill run down her spine as the feeling she was being watched amplified.
Turning to face Zach, who�d taken the responsibility of protecting her from any other accidents, she saw his concentration lay in the increasingly heated RPG conversation.
She swallowed the bile that burned the back of her throat. Everything seemed normal as far as she could tell.
Leslie felt herself blanch as a hand lightly landed on her shoulder.
~*~
Mechanically Nick walked through the emptied halls, glancing into windows and holding his breath whenever footsteps sounded against the tile floor. He had blindly followed unknown instincts and now found himself more confused than before he�d left his home.
Following the sound of crowd noise, he pulled open a large wooden door. A wall of noise hit him in the face, knocking him from the daze that had consumed him since he�d found Angel�s phone number.
Nick surveyed the room, tired by the sheer population of its inhabitants. Blinking he took a cautious step into the brightly lit room, hoping his black attire would allow him to blend into the crowd.
He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, scanning the room as he slowly rounded the boundaries of the ruckus. Unaware of his immediate surroundings, he had to keep himself from yelling in surprise as a girl brushed against him, smiling when he looked her way.
Groaning, he went back to his search, stopping mid-step, his breath catching in his throat at the sight of a pale girl staring at the table as an animated conversation went on around her. He turned, walking across the far side of the cafeteria along a glass wall that overlooked a gym where scantily clad girls played volleyball.
Stopping by a pillar, allowing him, for the most part, to be hidden, he watched as Angel lifted her head, eyes shut amongst the fading bruises and scars. The boy seated next to her reached across to adamantly point at something in a book another boy held.
Tears pooled in his eyes as her brown ones shot open, fear evident on her pale face. She began to study the room as he�d done moments before, hesitantly searching for something that seemed to be adding to her discomfort.
Nick began to move towards her, needing to touch her and make sure she really sat in the same room, no longer severely broken, but seeming more delicate than before.
Slow down. Don�t make a scene.
He closed his eyes tightly, noticing for the first time the tears that had spilled down his face against his will. He would make a scene, crying and begging her not to leave him again. And what if someone recognized him?
Turning around, he headed away from Angel as quickly as his vertigo-ridden head would allow. Pushing the door he�d entered just a few minutes before, Nick allowed the silence to envelop him as he fought to tame his speeding heart.
�She�s okay,� he whispered, trying to convince himself of what he�d just seen.
Taking a deep breath, he headed to the front door of the school, exiting and heading to his brand new car that would take him to his brand new apartment.
~*~
�You okay? You�re really pale.�
Leslie let her breath out slowly before turning to Albert, who crouched by her chair.
�I thought you were someone else,� she whispered.
�And that makes you as white as a ghost?�
Tears slipped from her eyes against any choice of hers as a surprising wave of disappointment caused her stomach to pretzel. The loud conversation ceased as Leslie stared across the room towards the glass windows that looked into the gym, trying to catch her breath.
�Les�?� Zach asked softly.
�Take me home.�
Albert nodded as he stood up, lying his hand softly on hers. Mechanically, she stood up, allowing him to lead her out of the school.
~*~
The house remained empty when Albert took her home and Leslie instantly fell into a fitful sleep with disconcerting images of falling and destruction consuming her body.
She didn�t notice when either of her parents came home, immediately checking the status of their unconscious daughter. She didn�t notice the phone ringing and the ensuing conversation between her mom and some mysterious stranger that seemed to adamantly want to talk to her. She didn�t notice the message left in a hushed, raspy voice with the cryptic �he�s left� information. She especially didn�t notice the pile of mail that her father left on her desk or the express mail package that sat on top.
Sixteen hours later, Leslie woke from her comatose state, groaning at the semi-hung over feeling that washed over her body. In the darkness of early morning, she stood up, hesitating at the sickness that threatened to land her back in bed.
Turning on the light, she took the first good glance of her room since she�d come home some three weeks before. The mail from Jazz and Ryan still lay in the floor where she�d left it; the package from Brian spilled over her desk chair, the envelope tear-streaked from earlier break downs.
Picking up her mess, she gingerly sat down in her chair, allowing the numbness to consume her as she glanced at the posters that lined her wall; tears that she believed couldn�t have come from her dehydrated body pooled in her eyes yet again at the two dimensional images of Brian and Nick burned in her mind.