Love Sick

Chapter 1: I Scream

By: Quinn Healy

I don't know when it happened. Maybe it started when he drove over my glasses in the Degrassi parking lot; or maybe it started when he said 'You have beautiful eyes,' giving my his soon-to-be infamous smirk, and then hopping in his hearse and driving away. Maybe it was even now as I look into his deep emerald green eyes, with a smirk still lingering on his face.

"Write about something that pisses you off." Eli says, breaking me out of my own little haze.

I look at him with a small smile on my face; "Besides my English partner?" I retort; raising my brow.

"Ouch," He says; feigning mock hurt, but he continues to talk with all seriousness in his voice. "If there was one thing in the world you could change; what would it be?"

"My parents," I say. I continue to tell him about how they aren't getting along, and continue to have shouting matched; even when she, herself were in the same room. As I spoke about my family and our skeletons to Eli, I didn't understand why I was telling him such personal matters to him. I just met him for crying out loud! Everything was just coming out as word vomit – I just couldn't stop telling him. But deep down in my gut, I could feel like I could trust him with such emotions. But there were many things I didn't understand, like: why did I just ditch school with Eli to sit on this bench and do school work with him. Doing school work isn't the unusual part; it was the fact that I ditched school – that was highly, unlike me.

"Write about that." He states.

That's when I knew the answer to my internal question. I skipped school because he challenged me; and the thing was, I wanted him to challenge me. I wanted it; needed it. But something this deep about my family – the saints, I just can't.

"I can't," I say mimicking my thoughts. "It's just too personal."

"You care too much about what people think." I could hear the challenge seeping through in his voice. I would rebut the same statement he threw at me, but it obvious that he really didn't care; he wore black, always; had black nails, and for Christ sakes, he drove a hearse!

"That is not true." I say lamely, knowing where this was heading. He will have me do something, totally embarrassing like KC did to me, just to prove that I did care. But it was always true that I did care, a lot. The harassment was just one of the many reasons why I got laser eye surgery; chopped off my long locks, and changing my wardrobe.

"Prove it," Eli says, looking at me. "Scream. At the top of your lungs."

"Ah," I yell, but my yell dies down at the end. I can feel a little pink tint rising to my cheeks, because people started to look at me.

"That's the best you can do?" Eli scoffs at me.

Why am I so afraid of screaming, I ask myself. Is it because I grew up being taught to represent our family as a whole, and not just myself? This slightly angered me. When do I get to be me, a normal teenager, and not some bible thumping goody-two-shoes?

That's it. I'm going to scream a real scream. I smile at Eli as I stand up and straightened out the wrinkles out of my dress. I inhale and let it all out. I scream for KC for cheating on me; I scream for Jenna using me; I scream for my parents fighting all the time; I scream for perfection. I scream.

I let out a sigh and smiled. It really did feel to everything, but nothing out in the air. I cross my arms and turn to Eli with a smirk of my own, and raise an eye brow at him. "Your turn," I say, still exhilarated from screaming.

"Yeah… not really my style."

That's when I started to laugh; I walked towards him, pointing my finger at him. "You have to; I had to," I giggled irratically.

"Not my style." He smiles and laughs all the same.

"You have to; I had-" I stopped breathlessly; Eli's hands were around my wrist. That's when I realized that I had backed him up against a pole. I looked him in the eyes. It was sort of like seeing Eli for the first time all over again. He was pale-ish; he had the darkest hair that fell in his emerald eyes. He was so different than anyone I have ever known. He was unique, so distinctly himself. He was just Eli.

I looked from his mouth to his eyes. Do I like Eli? Why is my heart beating so fast? Does Eli like me? WHY won't my heart stop beating out of my chest? So many questions eluded me at once, that I had to pull away. I walked over to the bench, with a shy smile on my face. I looked over at Eli – he was leaning against the pole, looking at me with a smile on his face.

"Eli, I…"

"Yeah, we should get back to school now." He began to walk away, and I trailed behind him.

I held my head low, and shook my head. Eli is going to be the death of me.