Chapter 5: Wishing Stars
The sun was finishing its moment of glory, seemingly burning down to darkness in its own sunset. Twilight was slowly creeping over France, and the five friends were lying on their backs, waiting.
The gang was enjoying one of their favorite pastimes of stargazing. It was a nice stress reliever, and a chance for them all to be together, for just a little while longer. Odd had not by a shot in the dark forgotten that morning, and at lunch had, in a sense, cornered his friend on the roof. At first it was an attempt to make her spill her guts about what was happening, but as the conversation went on, he decided that the purpose should be to keep his friend from whatever was happening.
He had an instinctive feeling that she would've skipped lunch after the awkward exchange of words that had taken place that morning. After checking around the courtyard and thoroughly scanned the lunchroom once more, he determined that the only place that she could be was the roof.
"Hey," She greeted dully when he shut the door behind him. She was leaning on the ledge of the building, chin propped up her elbow thoughtfully. She sighed.
"About this whole…thing…" Odd began, coming and leaning beside her, though not in the same position.
"Before you even ask, I'm going to tell you that you can't know." She cut him off, still staring into the distance.
"I can't know what? Can't know why my friend has bruises all over her face and is acting like some…some…depressed person? What can't I know? Why can't I know? I only want to help you." He finished his mini-outburst, disgustedly turning his head from her. Or was he more disgusted at himself?
"You simply can't know anything more than that it is not happening here. It isn't Theo, it isn't any upper classman, it isn't the track teams. It's far, far away from here. So far that no one but me can hope to venture there." She said this without moving to gain his appeal; she simply stated it as a fact. Zephyr knew that she had impulsively described the distance of the place because her home life was a whole different world from the paradise Kadic had become.
Odd glanced at the rooftops she had pointed out the previous day, then back to her, then back to the rooftops, then back to her. "It's at home, isn't it?" He deducted. Had the situation not been so serious he would have smiled with accomplishment. But his companion simply looked at him with dull, untelling eyes.
"No." She'd said simply, keeping such a steady gaze that Odd gulped and looked at the skyline. A few moments of silence passed before the blond decided to break the silence by changing the subject.
"We're all going to be star gazing tonight. Are you coming?" He asked, a phantom smile on his lips. Zephyr looked at him, gratitude in her eyes and a matching smile on her face.
"Yeah. I'd like that."
"Hey Ulrich, you see any?" Odd asked as the last of the light disappeared from the sky.
"Not yet." Ulrich replied. A few minutes passed before Yumi pointed,
"There's one!"
"And another!" Jeremie exclaimed excitedly as the longer they looked the more the stars showed themselves, flickering amongst the glow of a crescent moon. Soon the dusty Milky Way came into view and the blanket of black night had thousands, millions of pinprick holes in it.
"Hey Odd?" Zephyr asked.
"Hmm?" He replied absent mindedly, his mind obviously on something else.
"Do you think wishing stars really work?"
"Why sure they do! Everyone knows that wishing stars work!" He fairly shouted while his friend had merely whispered.
"Thanks for that, Peter Pan," Aelita rolled her dusty eyes, ignoring Odd's stuck out tongue.
As a few minutes passed, each member of the circle of friends was left to their own world and thoughts.
Zephyr had fallen into a light sleep, hands clasped behind her head. Odd, forgetting how close she was to him, spread his arms out and, completely by accident, one of them just happened to collide, almost softly, with Zephyr's ribcage.
She woke up, pale eyes wide with pain, quickly sitting up, grasping her side with one arm, biting the knuckle of her free hand to keep from screaming. Odd sat up beside her, hands on her shoulders.
"Oh, God, Zeph, your side too?" His friend slowly recovered and Odd gently turned her face towards him. "Zephyr…please…tell me. Tell me. Please, please tell me. What in the world is going on?" He begged. She pulled away, stood up, ignoring the stares of her friends.
"I have to go," She offered, starting to leave. Odd reached for her hand but she was already down, going back down the hill, leaving ten eyes to watch her go.
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Zephyr entered her house that night, relieved that Jack, her father, but not her dad, had already fallen into an alcohol-induced stupor on the couch. She doctored her wounds, cheering inside when she noticed her bruises were going away, but still riddled with guilt because her day had been a lie. She'd put a smile on her face when in reality she was dying inside. She'd told her friends she was fine when really nothing could be farther from the truth. The teenager leaned on her bathroom sink, scolding her reflection.
"You should've told them! They're not going to hurt you!" But her voice of reason reared its head, making an excellent point in the argument.
"But then they would've told the principal, or the counselors, and they would send you away to live with strangers. You'd lose the only friends you have!" Zephyr returned to her small, sparsely furnished room to ponder this. For a twelve year old's brain, or for anyone's brain, this was an aggravating decision, especially when one is so very, very traumatized and so very, very broken inside.
It is common knowledge that stress and guilt can do a lot to a person physically, mentally, and emotionally. Because her heart was cracked and fractured from the lies and beatings, from being reminded that she was worthless, that she was a waste of flesh and blood, her minimal amount of homework took an hour when it should take only half an hour. It exhausted her, concentrating. After she had finished her assignments she locked her bedroom door and windows so there would be no bruises the next day, and curled up in a defensive ball on her bed alone in the depthless darkness, trying to convince herself that it was a phase her father was going through and it would solve itself. The girl attempted to justify her lies, that this was one of those rare exceptions to the rule.
Yet no matter how hard she tried to tell herself that her actions were perfectly normal and perfectly okay for the situation, she really knew that she was hurting herself. However, she also knew that if she told her friends, they could get hurt as well.