Chapter 19
"And you know the difference it makes, and you know all that it takes is love so he won't break, he won't break. He's crazy from the pain and can't get hurt again. If he ever falls I'd feel sorry for us all."
"They're here for a reason, and it's not just for her. Give us a chance to figure it out before you do anything, okay?" Scott's voice did nothing to pull Isaac down from his oncoming surge of anger. He had his hand on the left side of his face, shielding him from possibly looking at Carmen from the corner of his eye. His ears were steadily trained on her heartbeat and he could tell that she was getting uncomfortable. He could tell that he was putting her in a difficult position. "Isaac?"
He could sense Carmen about to move her hand to put it on his thigh to calm him down. He immediately flinched before she could touch him and he closed his legs together, shifting his body in the complete opposite direction of her. He had to shut her off for this. He wanted to be angry. "Isaac, please just listen to us. We can figure it out. You don't need to prove a point." It wasn't just proving a point. He couldn't believe that two of them thought it was something so stupid, something so simple. He didn't want to understand their logic either. He felt like he was going to explode if he stayed in the room with them any longer. He needed to get away. He needed to find the twins and make them pay. To make sure they stayed far away from him and the people he loved and cared about.
Protection was a chief instinct to him now. He'd never had it offered to him when he needed it so now he was going to make sure that everybody around him had it. He wouldn't treat them like his father had treated them. He'd make sure they were safe. He'd make sure nobody would ever hurt them.
"Isaac, please." Her voice was gentle and he tried his best to not bask in it. It was so hard for him to not let her calm him down. He was just so used to it. She lifted her hand up onto the lab table and reached out to wrap her fingers around his. His hand was furiously tapping a pen against the tabletop as he got more impatient.
His hand immediately ripped away from hers once their skin touched and he could hear the breath hitch in her throat. He'd never refused to let her touch him. Never. Sometimes it was the only thing that made him better. "Don't touch me." He growled, shaking his head. He couldn't look at her now. He didn't want to imagine the look on her face but his mind wandered. He could see it so clearly in his mind that he didn't have to look at her. Her lips tightening together. Her eyes starting to water. Her trying to take in a breath but instead hiccuping in a mouthful of air like she was forcing herself not to show any weakness. That was it. He couldn't take it anymore. The longer he deliberated with himself the longer he was putting her through stress. "Mr. Harris, can I use the bathroom?"
As soon as his teacher gave him permission he bolted out of his seat and nearly ran out the door. "I have to go to the bathroom too!" Scott shot up immediately, garnering a few laughs and intrigued looks from the class. Carmen shook her head and blew hot air out of her mouth, sensing that the look Harris was giving him didn't seem to be one of consent.
Her knee started to bounce up and down. They were wasting time. "One at a time." Harris motioned for Scott to sit down, but he didn't seem like he was going to be doing that. He racked his brain for excuses.
"But Mr. Harris, I like, I reaaaally have to go. Like, medical emergency." Carmen groaned. Scott was such a terrible liar. He even started bouncing up and down on his heels to signify that he had to pee. What was he, four years old? Did he really have to do the potty dance in front of a room full of teenagers?
"Mr. McCall...if your bladder suddenly exploded and urine began to pour from every orifice of your body, I would still respond one at a time." The room gave a collective gulp and turned their heads down to look back at their notes. "Is that enough hyperbole for you or would you like for me to come up with something more vivid?" There was a reason that nobody liked Harris.
"No, no. I'm fine." Scott nodded, holding a reserved look on his face as he sat down. She glanced over her shoulder at him and she could tell that he was already hearing something that she couldn't. He looked back at her and nodded, signifying that now was the time for Plan B.
"Mr. Harris?" She called sweetly, getting to her feet. He looked into her eyes and she smiled widely, pulling him in. "Scott and I both really have to go to the bathroom, and if you could just bend the rules for us it would mean the world to me." She bat her eyelashes and stepped out into the aisle, watching with content as blankness washed over his features. He uncrossed his arms from his chest and gestured for them to leave the room and she reached behind her and grabbed Scott's hand to pull him with her. At least nine other students probably thought they were going to go have a threesome with Isaac.
When she twisted the door handle and stepped out in the hallway she saw her boyfriend standing in front of her with a bloodied Ethan at his feet. She looked up at him with a panicked look in her eyes and he opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but the words never came out. "What's going on?" Harris called after them, stepping out into the hallway. Scott yanked Carmen backwards with him, distancing them from Isaac and Ethan. The last thing they needed was for all three of them to get in trouble at the same time.
"Are you all right?" Danny immediately rushed to Ethan, helping him to his feet. Carmen couldn't help herself if she thought they were cute together.
"He just...he just came after me. I didn't even see him." Somehow there was something about what Ethan said that didn't make sense to her. He was an Alpha. He'd have known where Isaac was even if he was standing thirty feet behind him.
"Isaac, what the hell did you do?" Harris asked incredulously, now believing that all the chatter he heard in the halls was true. Isaac Lahey, once the quiet and shy boy who never even looked at anybody was now a force to be reckoned with. Somebody who people were scared of.
Isaac poked his tongue into his cheek and looked up at his friends for some help or at least a little assurance. He never got it. Carmen didn't seem impressed and neither did Scott. He could feel his stomach sink. They looked so disappointed in him. He wanted to protect them and instead he ended up looking like an idiot instead. He didn't know what he was supposed to say. "I walked out into the hallway and the one of the twins started beating the other one up." That wasn't exactly the smartest possible excuse since all the freshman ever said about Isaac was that they were afraid he'd rip their limbs off if they looked at his girlfriend for too long.
"I'll have to give you a lunchtime detention." Harris crossed his arms over his chest, ushering Isaac back into the classroom as the bell rang so that he could write him up.
"You know that's just gonna get him more angry, right?" Carmen rolled her eyes, leaning up against the lockers by the classroom as she and Scott waited for him to get out so they could talk to him. "Why don't they just try to make you pissy instead?" She picked at her fingernails, mumbling a vulgar word underneath her breath when she realized she'd started to chip away the shiny polish on her ring finger.
When Isaac emerged from the classroom he was immediately flanked by the two other teenagers and he knew he'd have to end up explaining himself to them. "I didn't even get to hit them." He seemed upset with himself for actually not being the one to instigate the violence. "Aiden just started hitting Ethan and then he grabbed him and threw him at me. Like, could they seriously be anymore insulting?"
"They could have made it more believable." He laughed quietly when he heard Carmen agreeing with his sarcastic comment. "I mean, really? You're going to beat up the gay twin for hitting on your girlfriend...?" The two of them turned back to Scott who was just glowering at them.
"Isaac, you shouldn't have gone after them." He said sternly, making the smiles slip off their faces. "Their goal is to get you pissed off. They're getting inside your head because you're letting them."
"Oh, so I should just let them whisk Carmen off to become some servant to their pack? Um, no thanks." He opened up his locker to put his books away and he ran his hand through his hair, trying to alleviate some of his stress.
"I'm telling you, she's not the only reason they're here. They want something else too. We can come up with a plan." Scott insisted.
"Yeah, when? After the twins have already gone off and killed somebody else?" Isaac scoffed, rolling his eyes.
"We were planning on doing it during lunch, Mr. Don't-Touch-Me." Carmen copied his exact expression and he turned to her with both of his eyebrows raised. He couldn't help it if he was slightly turned on. "But somebody got a little too trigger happy."
"Your sass is the absolute last thing I need right now. But..." He trailed off as he looked her body up and down, making Scott scrunch his face up in disgust. Were they normally like this with each other? He couldn't tell. But they definitely traded a lot of snark. "And I'm sure your plan is gonna work wonders if it got me out of trouble this time around." He couldn't tell if he was more upset about the lunchtime detention or the fact that he never got to hit Aiden again.
"Maybe if you could keep yourself under control then we can get something down." Part of the reason she was being so sarcastic towards him was because he hadn't apologized for being an ass to her. She knew he was being protective but he really had a strange way of showing it. "We're going to think of something. Just keep yourself reeled in until after lunch." The bell rang and she and Scott walked off to the cafeteria together, leaving Isaac to walk back to Harris's for detention.
"Damn, she's really hot when she's angry. I bet you like that, right Isaac? I'd be lying if I said it didn't turn me on too." Aiden laughed, looking at him from across the hall. Isaac ground his teeth together and took in a deep breath, thinking back to when he had to internalize all of his feelings. Back when he was a coward. He slammed his locker shut and sulked off down the hallway.
"Did you tell anyone that I was at the school the other night?" Allison asked quietly, completely turning her body towards Isaac. She'd stopped stacking the toilet paper on the shelf but he was occupying himself, probably so that she wouldn't talk to him. That hadn't worked out in his favor. He looked over at her and shrugged, shaking his head. "Not Scott, not Derek, not Carmen?" He shook his head again.
"Nah, was I supposed to?" He really didn't want to be talking to her right now. Just being in the same room with her was making him unbelievably uncomfortable. Not to mention the size of the closet seemed to be shrinking by itself. He kept throwing nervous glances over his shoulder to make sure the door was still open. It was like he could only take a full breath in if he saw that there was an open space within sight.
"It would just make me really happy if you didn't." She smiled slightly, returning to her job. He couldn't help but roll his eyes.
"Well, you being happy really isn't a big priority of mine. Since you stabbed me. Twenty times. With knives." She hadn't stopped at 10 or 15. She'd gone to twenty. The more he talked about it the more he still felt kind of felt it. He swallowed and gingerly rubbed his chest, trying to shake himself out of it.
"I, um...I apologized to Carmen. We're friends again, you know." Maybe that would make him like her better, she didn't know. That sort of just made him a little more irritated.
"Well, I'm not her. So that doesn't really do anything for me." He shrugged passively, just wishing that she'd stop talking to him. He wanted to slap himself in the face for getting this detention. He could have been actually helping the situation and coming up with a plan with Scott and Carmen. Instead he was standing in a painfully small janitor's closet with a girl who tried to murder him.
"Well, I'm, um...sorry." She mumbled quickly under her breath, realizing that he wasn't going to let her off the hook. She heard him chuckle softly and she turned to see him with a smirk covering his features.
"Was that...was that an apology?" The tone of his voice was so ridiculously cocky that her cheeks managed to flush. Even when he wasn't flirting with people he was still flirting with him. It was like his demeanor commanded it.
"Would you accept an apology?" Carmen had given in a lot easier than she'd thought, so maybe Isaac would forgive her too. It was worth a shot. She needed them on her side. She needed things to be back to normal, at least partially.
He started laughing again and he was in mid-sentence when the door to the closet shut and the red emergency lights turned on. Suddenly her trained ears could hear his breath get caught in his throat as he immediately flicked his head in the direction of the now closed entrance. He rushed over to turn the door handle over and over again to no avail, his heartbeat beginning to skyrocket. "No, no, no, no, no..." He said frantically, the pitch of his voice ascending with every passing moment.
"Maybe it locked from the outside?" Claustrophobia was something that Allison could only understand if she was in an extremely tightly-packed elevator. Even then she'd only felt extremely uncomfortable. But Isaac didn't just have claustrophobia. He had extreme, paralyzing fears of being in a small and enclosed space. He hadn't been in one since the freezer. It wasn't just a phobia. It was the manifestation of a nightmare.
"No, I think there's something up against it." He grunted as he exerted his body's weight on the door coupled with twisting the handle, feeling the pressure from the outside. His thoughts were starting to blur. He had to keep telling himself that he was going to be fine. "Oh God, oh God...okay, okay...come on..." He mumbled to himself and to the situation that was beginning to take place. Not again. it couldn't be happening again.
"Isaac, relax. Isaac." Allison repeated, not knowing how else she was supposed to calm him down. She'd never had to deal with somebody who was having a panic attack before. He only kept mumbling to himself and his shortness of breath was growing more and more frequent.
"No, no, no...come on, please, please, please...not again, please..." His voice started to crack into whines as he ran his hands through his hair and pressed his body up against the door, praying that there would be somebody who could hear him. Somebody who could help him. Make everything better.
But nobody would be able to. He was by himself now. He was alone. And he was suffocating.
This chapter's song was "So He Won't Break" by The Black Keys.
I'm thinking about getting at least one or two updates in before school starts up for me on the 28th so you guys will have that to look forward to. Also, I just got to 100 follows so thank you so much to everybody who's read! My next goal is to get to 100 reviews so if you guys could expedite that I'd love it haha. :)
Also, to the anonymous reviewer who said that the references in the last chapter were from when Carmen started to feel Isaac's pain, then you're right. On the agenda before I close out writing episode 4: her first meeting with Deucalion and some Stiles/Carmen bonding, because everybody knows that's the best. hahahaha :)