Brendon's Point of View:
There was something about Joyce that puzzled me. I didn't know why but I wanted to protect her, I wanted to be there for her whenever she needed me, I wanted to be the one she goes to for anything. I had never felt this way before and I surely did not want her to know about this, or anyone else for that matter. I let out a sigh as I stripped down to my boxers and crawled into bed even though I knew I wasn't going to be getting much sleep. This brown haired brown eyed girl had lived right down the street from me for years, gone to the same school as me even and I had never even seen her before. I knew that people were abused by parents but I never even imagined it was happening here. I needed to find some way to keep her away from that man without getting the police involved.
I lay in bed just staring at the celling and before I knew it, my door slowly opened. I quickly closed my eyes pretending to be asleep not wanting anyone to know that I was up and next thing I knew a body had crawled into my bed and was sleeping against me. When I heard the persons breathing stead, I opened my eyes and turned my head towards them only to find Joyce lying next to me. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. At age Seventeen, I had never had a girl in my bed before. I moved my sheet over so that she was fully covered then started back at the celling letting my mind wander. Time ticked by slowly since I didn't fall asleep.
Joyce-
I had no idea where I was when an alarm went off and I was woken up. I looked around the room and saw that I wasn't in my room. The walls were red and black and were covered in band posters, cd's everywhere and records lying around on the floor. My body stiffened as I heard movement next to me. There was a mumbled good morning and then everything came flooding back to me. "Oh my gosh. I am so sorry. I usually don't do this. I will just go. I am so sorry." I said quickly as my face started to fill up with color and I started to get out of Brendon's bed.
"Oh you mean you usually don't crawl into a guy's bed that you just met that day? Oh darn. And here I was hoping you were some whore and I could have my way with you." I stared at him with my mouth wide open in shock not sure what to say to him. His face was so serious and because I had just met him the night before, I wasn't sure if he was being serious or not. "Geeze calm down," He said with a smirk, "I was only joking. You might want to figure out something to wear though because in case you were unaware of the date, it is Monday and we have school which starts in about two hours." He started walking towards his dresser and pulled out some clothes for himself then heading towards the bathroom.
"Crap…." I muttered as I tried to figure out what I was going to do. I didn't want to go to school in what I was wearing but I also didn't want to go home.
"You can borrow some of my sister's clothes if you want," he told me as he was leaving the room, "I'm sure she wouldn't mind."
"Thanks but I will be fine." I said as I grabbed a piece of paper from his desk and wrote something on it. "here is my number, text me if you want to meet up or anything and so that if I need something maybe I can go to you." I said nervously before following him out of his room and leaving his house. I made my way down to my house, just hoping that my dad would be passed out and not notice me come in. as I neared my house I noticed that something seemed different but I couldn't tell what it was. I realized when I was in front of my house that my front door was wide open and there was a knife lying on the ground in front of the door. Nervously I grabbed the knife and walked inside.
My heart was racing a mile a minute as I made my way further and further into the house. My breath was caught in my throat and my heart seemed to stop when I heard a noise coming from the room next to me. I peeked my head around the corner only to find my father lying on the couch out cold with his hand hitting on the floor and a bottle of gin laying on its side. I let out a sigh of relief as I realized that the noise I heard was just him dropping the empty bottle in his sleep. Although that didn't explain the knife, though he was known to grab random weapons when he was drunk and leave the house at times so I assumed that is what happened and he must have woken up at some point and crashed on the couch. I quickly made my way into my bedroom and cleaned up before putting on a fresh pair of clothes, grabbing my school bag and heading back out the door, putting the knife back where I found it so that he wouldn't realize I was here when he woke up.
Brendon-
I didn't like the idea of her going back to her house. I wished she would have just borrowed some of Amanda's clothes and stayed with me where I can protect her. What am I saying? Where I can protect her? What has gotten into me? I ran my hand through my hair as I walked out the door and started walking to school. I enjoyed walking to school. It let my mind wander and just take in everything around me. Usually, I think about life in general or what happened in school the day before, or just about my friends, but today all I was able to think about was Joyce. She was a decorated emergency. I pulled out my phone and clicked on her number that I had just added into my phone and sent her a text message:
*Hey it's Brendon, Lets meet up for lunch. I will introduce you to my friends. I think you will have a lot to talk about with one of them* I hit send and waited impatiently for her response. It came within a minute of me sending mine.
*Oh ok. Umm, lets meet in front of the front office* just a plain simple text back but it made me smile. What was getting into me? I was smiling at a text message from a girl that I had just met. I am acting like some thirteen year old girl whose crush just smiled at her. I need to get myself together before I got to the school which was just around the corner so that no one saw me like this. I had a reputation to hold, well not really but my friends would kill me! As if on cue, I turned the corner and instantly saw my friends waiting in front of the school for me.
"Hey where were you last night? It was all-you-can-eat pizza night at Miranda's yesterday!" My friend spencer said as i got close enough to them to hear them.
"I was working on some songs and lost track of the time. Sorry guys." I lied. I hated lying to my friends but I didn't know what else to tell them. I obviously couldn't tell them the truth, even though Ryan would understand completely; it wasn't my place to tell. They nodded so I knew they accepted my lie. I didn't have any doubts that they would since I have the tendency of losing track of time when I am working on songs but I was still relieved that they didn't notice I was lying because I am a terrible liar.
"so what song were you working on?" Ryan, who was walking on my right, asked me as we started to head to our homeroom that we had somehow managed to get together.
"oh umm I was working on the music for the new song you wrote, Camisado." Another lie. I guess Joyce's habit of lying to hide the truth was starting to rub off on me already. Hopefully she would become close friends with them and be able to tell them what is going on so that I don't have to continue lying to them and also so that she has more people to talk to and to help her.
We sat down in our normal seats at the back of the classroom as soon as we walked in. I was only half paying attention to what my friends were saying. I knew it was something about band practice today but that was all I really heard fully before I started staring off into space. My mind just kept going back to her for some reason. I was going to have to figure out something to tell the guys because they would never let me live this down if they realized I was losing my focus because of a girl. Spencer nudged me to get my opinion on something and it was at that moment when I saw her walk into class. She had her brown hair tied up into a pony tail, a new, or old, pair of glasses, a light blue tank top and some faded jeans. She had covered most of her cuts and bruises with some sort of make-up and the rest she would be able to use her tree story and no one would think twice. How had I not noticed that she was in my homeroom before? Had I really never paid attention to who was around me in this class? But how could I miss someone as beautiful as her….wait…did I just say beautiful? I need to stop thinking like that. I can't fall for her.
