Chapter 4: Chris ~

Chapter 4: Chris ~

 

As soon as I woke up, I walked to the kitchen and there she was, getting some orange juice out the fridge. “Good morning” I greeted, and she ignored me. But when she thought I wasn’t looking she glared at me. That’s cool too. Least you could have said was morning. But that’s cool; let me know when you remove that stick that’s shoved up your…

A loud bark erupted in the air and I flew up. I see this huge animal growling at me, looks like a miniature bear. “Why is there a bear in the kitchen” I sneered and yelped when he took a step further. I climbed on the counter out of the bears reach.

“This is my dog. He's a great Dane” she paused and turned towards the dog. “He's a good guy” she said and the dog relaxed but didn’t stop watching me. That is not a dog. That is a bear! Clearly she doesn’t know her animals, dogs aren’t made that big. Certainly if they were, girls don’t own them. She tried to hide a smirk as she looked at me sitting on the counter holding my feet up. She looked at me and narrowed her eyes. “Could you put on a shirt?” She's insane.

“What's wrong with me not wearing a shirt?” I grinned and she rolled her eyes.

“I don’t want to see you half naked.” Like I said, she’s insane. Had to be. I mean really, who couldn’t love me? Eight pack, muscles everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, and a skin tone that has a tan… I'm flawless baby.

“Nah, I’ll pass. But hey, if you’re lucky enough, I’ll go to sleep naked.” She coughed on her orange juice when I said that.

“Please don’t.” She continued to drink her orange juice. This is the perfect opportunity to strike.

“Why afraid to see something you’ve never seen before? Afraid I will put your ex to shame? Afraid you’ll see the real deal?” I grinned and she spit out all her orange juice. Luckily she was at the sink and it went in there.

“Can we not talk about this?” she asked and began to wash her cup. I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall, preparing to push her buttons.

“Why?” I knew my nosiness annoyed her.

“Because I said so.”

“Why?” I just repeated myself. That doesn’t work on me, it never did.

“Because… I don’t feel comfortable talking about this with you” Ah-ha! The truth comes out!

“Virgin!” I exclaimed, oh how I wanted to hang this over her head so bad. She had begun to walk back to her room but when I called her by that she stopped.

“I-I am not a virgin.”

“Bull.”

“It’s true.” Its lies.

“Whatever you say” she rolled her eyes in response and as I walked past her I felt it necessary to whisper in her ear… “Virgin” I felt air move quickly behind me and I knew she had tried to hit me. “You missed!” I called out and I walked to my room grinning. Torturing Zoey was going to be easier than I thought, much easier.

 

~-~

 

The lady clapped her hands and smiled around, instead I just yawned and rolled my eyes. This was some session that our Grant set up where we get to know who our Grant partner is. Which is basically the person we live with; spend all of our time with, etc. etc. They use our tests, results, personality surveys, etc., basically, everything that reveals information about who we are, find our complete opposite, and paired us with them. There were only five pairs of male and female teams, Zoey and I being one; the other four pairs, each had a gay person and a straight person as the teams. Zoey is the girl I get to spend the next year or more with; she will be my partner in the classes we have together, which I believe is all of them, she will be my volunteer work partner, my everything partner… needless to say it was awesome. I get to basically spend nearly 24/7 with her. I think getting hit by a car, then getting shot multiple, multiple, times and then getting hit by lightning, all within an hour would be more pleasant than having to deal with Zoey for 24/7.

“Alright, let’s start with Terry and Myron.” Everyone turned their heads to a gothic girl and a guy who was around 300 pounds. She had thick black eyeliner with long black hair. She was wearing a tight black dress with fish net stockings. Then her black boots were beyond ridiculous, looks like she robbed Frankenstein. She had a black choker and black nail polish. She looked like someone who could be the grim reapers wife. The guy was wearing a plain blue sweater and tan cargo pants. “Everyone will have a round, and will get their peace. No interrupting and everyone will participate.”

“Myron, why don’t you go first” and she looked at the girl. She has a guy’s name, wow. I shook my head and put my face in my hands, rubbing my eyes slowly and wearily. I heard a finger snap and I looked up and she motioned with her hands that I had to watch and pay attention. Oh, it just gets better.

“He eats all my food” Myron said and didn’t even look up. “He likes to talk and share about each other’s day. I'm not his family, or his friend. And when I say this he says that’s how he knows I don’t care, which I don’t, and says it’s my fault for him having a bad day, calls me a witch… Then accuses me of putting a spell on whatever went wrong with his day” I wanted to laugh so bad. This is ridiculous. I simply stared at the ceiling.

“She is a witch. She killed my pet, Raphael.” Terry sputtered the words and my eyes shot into his direction.

“Raphael died from starvation, maybe you ate his food” she snapped and the lady in charge clapped her hands stopping the argument.

“That’s enough. Myron, create a friendship with him. It’ll make life easier since you will spend 90% of your time together and all he's asking for is friendship, and also, stop being mean. Terry, stop eating her food, or all the food, slow down, and stop accusing her of being a witch, that’s prejudice, basing it off her outfit.” The lady began but Myron interrupted.

“I'm Wiccan” Myron calmly interjected.

“Well, never mind then Terry. Next.” She looked at Zoey and I, but I said nothing. She moved her hand motioning me to hurry up. I still said nothing. So Zoey took this as her opportunity to shine.

“He is so nosy, has to ask me about everything, has to annoy me about everything, and likes to be perverted about everything. No, not perverted… its more like vulgar, absolutely trashy. I would appreciate if there was a line, one for personal business, which he doesn’t cross. He's such a slob, doesn’t clean after himself, he sprays too much cologne, do you even take a shower, or brush that mess you call hair, and do you” she tried to continue but the lady interrupted

“Alright Goodie-Goodie, we get the picture.” I smiled at this sight. Zoey, her mouth open in shock, and made a face, I knew too well… her stuck up one.

“Well, if you must know… I'm tired of the stuck up attitude, like your better than everyone else, if you look around, you have to realize you’re in the same place as everyone else; you get as great as an opportunity as everyone else, so you can step off your high horse now. So what if your parents have a little more money than others; you’re here with the rest of us, so stop acting like your better in the rest of us. You're with us for the long run so you can get over yourself. And yeah, your life might be a little better than the rest of us, but guess what, not everyone gets the Malibu Barbie lifestyle. So get your pacifier out of your mouth and I’d like to personally welcome you to the real world. Sorry we common people don’t have someone waiting on us hand and foot. This whole, I'm better than you, even though I'm in the same place as you, thing… attitude you have might be the reason you got dumped like you meant nothing. In fact, you might want to check yourself, and reevaluate your situation. You don’t have daddy paying for everything anymore, you don’t have servants, your boyfriend dumped you and not only that but he was dating your best friend for a while, and you didn’t even know it. But everyone else apparently did, and they smiled in your face. Clearly they didn’t care for you as a friend, which leads me to think they care more about your money. So I have to ask, where are your friends now? With your ex-boyfriend and his, much better looking, much better personality, best friend of yours. So how is your life now? You have basically no friends, probably no money, and no boyfriend. You can get off your high horse now, because look where it got you. Now we can look down to you. You're now a loser, a nobody. Ever heard of Karma? Well Karma just got you, bad, screwed up your life hard core and you deserve every bit of it. If you weren’t the way you are, you might actually have friends, or a boyfriend, but you don’t. Like I said, you’re worse than everyone else.” I smiled as I finally got everything off my chest. But my ecstasy only lasted until I looked around at all the gawking faces. Then I heard a scraping noise as Zoey stood up making her chair go backwards slowly.

“I'm sorry, I have to… excuse me” she choked on her words. I can see she was holding back her tears but she ran out the room looking down the entire time. Everyone turned their attention back to me, with full hate glares. Well, on the bright side, they no longer hate each other. On the not so bright side, they all hate me.

 

~-~

 

I excused myself as we changed to another pair but still everyone continued to glare at me. I didn’t look for Zoey, I didn’t care, she got what she deserved, but part of me felt like something about this situation was wrong. It felt like my stomach weighed several thousand pounds and I was going to get sick at any second. I didn’t feel up to driving home, for some reason seeing Zoey, or at least the thought of seeing Zoey, made my stomach seem to weigh more and I felt even more nauseous. I drove to Lexi’s house, the second I pulled up, a curtain moved to the side and her face appeared in the window. She had amazing hearing; she could have the T.V. on and would still hear when a car drove by.

She had a confused look on her face, but wasn’t surprised. I walked up to her door and before I had a chance to knock, the door opened. “Why are you here?” I walked past her and plopped on the old, worn out, brown couch. “You look sick, are you okay? The last time you looked like this, you had food poisoning, you remember that right” how could I forget, it was the worst week of my life. “Do you have food poisoning, should I get the trash can, do you need…” she would continue forever if I hadn’t interrupted.

“I'm not sick; I'm fine.” She worried too easily and way too much.

“Then what's wrong?” She sat down next to me and rubbed my back.

“I don’t know; I just don’t feel good” I spoke looking at the peach walls covered with photo frames with pictures of the four of us. She scooted away slowly when I said this; she always got like this every time she thought I was sick… I can’t blame her, when I had food poisoning, I threw up all over her, and I do mean all over her. I still remember her shriek, and then her running to the bathroom to shower. “I'm not sick, geez. I just feel… weird.” I shrugged, trying to avoid thinking about the weight of my stomach, which continued to feel as though it was sinking.

“Well what happened today, that led up to you being, well, feeling weird?” She asked and propped an elbow on the couch turned towards me.

“Nothing major really. I mean other than making Zoey cry, my day has been pretty calm.”

She furrowed her eyebrows at me, with a hard look on her face and I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t a big deal but my stomach sank when I remembered the results I got after I expressed how I felt. “What did you do?” Her voice became shrill, similar to a teacher discovering when a child messed up something important. I rarely ever heard her shrill voice, but it was as painful as hearing nails on a chalkboard or someone sobbing.

“Nothing really.” I shrugged, they were just words, and she’s just a girl who deserved to hear the truth.

“She couldn’t have cried over nothing. What did you do that made her cry?” There goes that shrill voice again. Next, she’ll send me to detention.

“It wasn’t what I did, it was what I said” I saw her mouth open to yell in that shrill voice but I cut her off before she had a chance to make my ears bleed. “Look all I did was that I told her the truth.” Her mouth opened again but I had to stop her. I don’t think I could handle that voice again. “I told her how she deserved everything that happened lately, that no one cared about her, if they did, they would have told her about her boyfriend cheating. How she has no friends, and obviously they only liked her for her money, and some other stuff here and there. Oh don’t give me that look; she can’t be in diapers or sucking on a pacifier forever. It’s called growing up, being mature.” I crossed my arms hoping she would drop it. She didn’t.

“You really think what you did today was mature?”

“Regardless of whether or not if what I did was mature, she needed to know the truth, if her friends cant, who will? She needed a reality check, she can’t honestly expect everyone to hold her hand forever, that everyone will be quiet, and will sweep it under the rug? Give me a break. I told you that I was going to teach her a lesson, and I think I did a good job today. It’s an accomplishment and I guess it was a part of the plan. It’s a shame a stranger had to tell her the truth and open her eyes, but I'm glad I did it.” She rolled her eyes at me.

“You think you could have been a little nicer?” She asked as if this was an obvious answer but I only laughed and rolled my eyes.

“No, I'm not going to sugarcoat it for her. Besides, it was one of the meetings for our grant where we share our feelings about our grant partner. That’s what I did, reality is harsh, and so, technically, I gave her a dose of reality. And no I'm not going to apologize, I don’t have a reason to. I said the truth, sorry if I didn’t lie to her like everyone’s been doing her entire life. Life isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. There’s a little cloud and rain. Sometimes it’ll pour. Welcome to the real world.” I yawned and moved a pillow to the armrest and readjusted my body to where I was laying down with my head on the pillow. Now this is comfortable.

“If you are so proud of what you’ve done today, then why are you here? Why aren’t you rubbing it in her face, of what you’ve ‘accomplished’?” She looked at me and I furrowed my eyebrows at the thought. That’s a good question.

“I don’t know. I feel weird when I think about seeing her again. I get the same feeling when I think about her running out of the room crying. It’s this weird feeling I don’t know how to describe. I haven’t felt this way before.” My stomach sank again, if that was even possible.

“I think that’s called guilt. I think you're feeling guilty about making her cry.” I laughed at her words and rolled my eyes.

“Definitely not” I paused, “gosh with such great advice like this, you should be a psychiatrist.” She only punched my arm in response.

“I'm serious Chris.” I rolled my eyes, but I said nothing. I yawned again and closed my eyes, preparing for sleep. “Chris I think you should apologize, seriously, you don’t know how much you’ve hurt her feelings” here comes the rant.

“Goodnight Lexi.” She sighed and after a moment of silence she got up anyways. She headed to her room and then I heard her sigh.

“Chris…”

“I said goodnight Lexi.” I muttered but I knew she heard me clear as day. She groaned and closed the door. Sleep took over, but the last thing I thought about, was the memory of Zoey running out crying. Bad part was, it was like it was on repeat; it played over and over, even when I fell asleep. The sinking feeling never left.

God… Zoey, I hate you.