-Eli-
There she was, sitting on the front steps of Degrassi, back to me. It was time to tell her the "what for." She may have been Student Council president, but I couldn't let anybody hurt my friends and get away with it. Nobody, so I approached her with intent of making sure she felt as bad as they did. I was surprised to see her petty, egotistical maniac of a friend Marisol wasn't glued to her side. I was glad, though they'd be easier to confront when alone.
Still I was shocked, because I was fairly positive that girls traveled in packs.
Pushing the shock aside and letting my anger over what they did to my friends wash over me is what inclined the next words to I said to come out of my mouth. "Katie Matlin, I want to know who the hell you think you are." I stepped down two steps in front of her and faced her, crossing my arms in a confident way.
…Only to see that she was crying.
I raised my eyebrow and looked at her, "You aren't supposed to be crying, yet."
She looked at me as if she were a tiger, the only thing holding back her pounce was the tears streaming from her eyes. "What did you want?" It seemed as if it was intended to be a snappy comeback, but only came out as an apathetic mumble.
"Well I was going to, in words, tell you off because of what you and your friends did to Imogen and Fiona. I was going to sway you into feeling immensely guilty and hopefully make you cry," I said, nonchalantly and half sarcastically, that really was what I had planned. And now I can't do that because she's crying. It wouldn't be right. Well, what she did to Fi and Imo wasn't right either. "Come to think of it, I still might." I shrugged and waited for a slew of arguments where she would defend herself and plead to be the innocent girl everyone thought she was.
"Go ahead. I deserve it," She didn't look up, and her speech was still mumbled and careless.
But, I was still confident I had heard her perfectly correct. "Yeah, not the reply I expected." I uncrossed my arms and sat on the step beside her.
She wiped her eyes and looked up at me, "I'm sorry, okay. What I did to them was so utterly wrong and I'm ashamed. I only wanted to impress Drew and Marisol, and to keep my student council position. Neither of which really matter anymore," Her tone was finally beginning to develop meaning. Unfortunately, I was not to blame for the hurt in voice, for the pain in her eyes. So I had to play it.
"Oh, I'm sure none of that matters to you at all," I shook my head, "Seriously, you're not fooling me, you thrive off of that presidency, and what your airhead of a boyfriend and manipulative bitch of a friend think. Seriously though, I thought you seemed different from them, you proved me wrong."
This time, I felt the tears streaming from her eyes were partly my fault. Even though I knew I wasn't the main source of the tears, I immediately felt terrible for everything I said. She suddenly looked vulnerable and about to break, like a sad puppy after being yelled at or a five year old after you took away their candy. It was a look I became an expert on, the look of heart break. I didn't have to ask, I knew that Drew had broken up with her, and that this crushed her. And, seeing as I didn't handle break ups well, I decided I should get out of their before I did something incredibly idiotic.
"You know what? Never mind. I can see you already feel terrible. I'm going to go—" I said standing up, only to be interrupted,
"Eli, wait," She sounded like any amount of talking would just break her back down into tears, and even though I wanted so badly to just walk away, I couldn't. Something compelled me to stay so I could hear what she had to say.
I turned around to see that she had stood up, all of a sudden her arms were wrapped around me and she was embracing me in a hug. I wrapped my arms around her tiny figure and hugged her back choking out an "uh, okay.." When she pulled away she looked at me and blushed.
"Sorry," she said before she picked up her things and swiftly walked away.
"Um, yeah," I said to the air where she previously stood.
That night I couldn't sleep, I was thinking about Katie. I couldn't help it. No matter how furious I was supposed to be at her, I could only think about how upset and sad she was, and how much I wanted to help her. There was no reason behind my urge to help other than to take that heartbroken look off her face.
If I saw her, though, I wouldn't let her know that I wanted to help. I had to stand my ground and be there for my friends.
-Katie-
What you did yesterday was stupid and impulsive. Why are you trying to put yourself into the situation again? My thoughts were racing while I waited for Eli to pass by so I could pull him into the janitor's closet to talk. Not a very normal thing for the student body president to be doing, but, things didn't seem to be so normal anymore.
I sat there and waited for a little while, watching for him silently, when he finally walked through the doors. He walked confidently and as if he had a direct purpose to be heading in the direction he was. I couldn't help but notice that confidence looked good on him. I remembered last year's play and heard some things about him being unstable, but he seemed different now.
I pulled him into the closet as he walked by.
"Whoa, what the-? Katie?" He looked at me and raised an eyebrow, "Is there a reason that you're pulling me into a janitor's closet at school? You're not going to lock me in then blame me for something to get me suspended, are you?"
Although his tone was sarcastic, it still cut me to the bone, it wasn't me who locked Imogen in the auditorium, but I did feel guilty about it. Someone had to, and I knew it wouldn't be Marisol. "Look, I'm sorry about what we did to Fiona and Imogen, really I am."
"Whatever, why are we in here?" He didn't look pleased or like he wanted to be here at all, his eyes pierced my heart, green and filled with passion. Apparently he has a passion for fury.
"I also wanted to say that I was sorry for yesterday. I didn't mean to like hug you," I looked away from his eyes, feeling awkward and embarrassed. "I was kind of hurt because Drew cheated on me, and you were just kind of….there."
"So then I look like super huggable or something?" His tone was still sarcastic, but this time it didn't really sound like he was trying to hurt me, just trying to get me to smile.
And, I did smile, lightly. "I don't know, okay?"
He put his arms up in surrender. "Okay, Okay," He shook his head slightly and looked at me, "Look, Drew is a really stupid guy if he did that to you. Even though you did deserve to be hurt, you didn't deserve to be hurt like that."
At this point, I didn't exactly know if he was trying to make me feel bad or if this was his form of comfort. "Gee, thanks Eli. You're a great guy."
"Ahh, there we go, that's what I was looking for, sarcastic remarks," He smiled lightly, but when I didn't smile back, he sighed and an unidentifiable expression crossed his face as he pulled me into a hug. I was shocked, but I hugged him back. It was just like I spent half the night remembering, the warmth of his body crashing over me, the sudden rush of calm I felt, but it wasn't so quick this time. I felt tears welling up in my eyes as he held me, the held in emotions starting to rush out in a sudden stream of tears. He pulled away and looked at me, his hands lingering on my shoulders for a moment before he gently wiped a tear away. "You're crying again, I'm sorry, I didn't meant for that," the concern in his voice echoed in my mind, my heart skipping a beat when his eyes met mine and I saw they mirrored the concern in his voice.
"Sorry," I laughed a little, "guess I'm just a little…unstable." He tensed a little when I said unstable and then stepped back.
"It's okay, I won't tell anyone," He said and left the janitors closet in a rush. I took out my pocket mirror and tried to make myself look presentable before I too left the closet.
I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out the look on Eli's face as he left.
-Eli-
I wished seeing Katie would've helped infuriate me more, so hurting her would be easy. I couldn't help letting go of any tiny bit of fury as soon as I heard what happened, as soon as the pain flickered in her eyes, as soon as I knew she needed someone. I couldn't help but want to be the person she needed, to want to take the sadness out of her eyes and just see her smile. Wanting to make people smile was a natural impulse of mine, but it was never this strong.
"Eli, didn't expect to see you in here," Ms. Dawes said as she walked into her English classroom that I was currently inhabiting.
"Just thinking, Ms. Dawes," I said, closing the notebook.
"You're always thinking, Eli."
"While that may be true, I needed somewhere to think andto be alone. Hence why I'm here," I played with the pages of the notebook while talking.
"Hiding from something, Eli?" She looked at me and crossed her arms, giving off that knowing look that pissed me off and made me want to spill my guts everywhere at the same time.
"Maybe, but maybe some things should be better left hidden?" I tangled and untangled my fingers, giving my hands something to do.
"Well, that may be true, but if you wanted it hidden so badly, you could hide it from your mind, too. It wouldn't really be a problem," she said and then walked to her desk, sitting down and looking at her work, signaling that that was her final say on the matter. I knew she was right, because she always was.
I rolled my eyes, got up and left the room. I figured that I might as well call it a day, and skip school for the rest of the day.
-Katie-
I was busying myself at lunch time with last minute newspaper revising and editing when I saw Eli walking towards the front doors of the school, my heart skipped a quick beat and then I turned around, so he wouldn't notice me, although I secretly wished he would. I pretended to look busy, looking at the bulletin board in curiosity.
"Working hard or hardly working?" I mentally cringed, but turned around with a smile.
"You caught me," I smiled at him and tried to act as if I was perfectly fine. It wasn't hard, because I seemed to feel that way when I was around him anyway.
He smirked. "How about you and I take the rest of the day off? I'm sure you could really used the personal hours…" He raised an eyebrow and looked at me questioningly.
"You honestly think I would skip school with a guy I barely know? I think I'll pass," I turned back around and flipped through a few random papers, "I have a lot to do anyway."
He took the papers from me and looked at them, "No you don't, these are all marked p and edited. Plus, you know me," he smiled playfully and raised his eyebrows, "all the rumors you've heard are one thousand percent and painfully true."
"And that's supposed to make me feel okay to skip school with you?" I took the papers back from him and set them down in their rightful placement.
"Probably not, but come on Matlin, you've got nothing to lose."
"I have a lot to lose Goldsworthy," I said, mockingly emphasizing his last name. "I'm student body president, and I can't really afford to have the fact that I skip school on my permanent record."
"Okay, fine. I won't pressure you. But my offer stands for the next-" he looked at his watch, "thirty seconds."
I sighed and crossed my arms, showing him that I had already made up my mind, and I wasn't going. Then he started make this obnoxious "tick tock, tick tock," noise, so I rolled my eyes and covered my ears, "I'm not listening!"
I heard the muffled sound of his laughter and continued to cover my ears. "Lalalalala, sooooo not listening!"
The next thing I knew, he took one of my arms and spun me around and I was looking directly into his eyes. I slowly took my other hand off my ear and rested it down on my side. He smiled at me. I felt my heart stop for at least a second. "Just this once?" I nodded weakly and let his hand slide down my arm into my hand so he could pull me out of the school.