Chapter 4
SCHOOL DAYS
CHAPTER 4: FEAR.
Pamela recognized the feeling that clung to her guts after she finally acknowledged that Harley had left the room. She had felt it multiple times before. It was fear, storming like a hurricane right at the pit of her stomach.
She cringed on the sofa as she could hear Harley's steps outside, but she did not dare to move. Her heart was beating abnormally fast, as well as her breathing.
Her fingers tangled her messy and large mop of red hair.
Without even realizing it, the desperation became unbearable and she could not stand it any other second. Pamela stood up and went to the hall with the unconscious braveness of a fool. She was still frighten, but she was also simply unable to wait and give it a second thought. Thus she stepped into the school's corridor with all the intentions of talking to the blonde girl. However she just found empty halls.
The time that she had spent in the library had been too long and longer had been the minutes in which she remained numb and glued to the old fashioned couch.
Pamela took a deep breath and then leaned against the frame of the door, trying hard to stop the tears to run down her cheek. It was a suffocating sensation, as though she was drowning, as though the pain was burning up all the oxygen around her. And she ran, she ran until she could not see the school anymore. She speeded up, not with the intent of catching Harley but to detach from the sentiment of claustrophobia that suddenly came over her. Right across the street she saw the public soccer field with a big tree that was still strong and green. She went there and thanked Era that there was no soccer practice or match today. She sat under its shadow and stayed there, letting the smell of the leaves calm herself down.
She looked at the light through the branches and she simply accepted that she had made the biggest of the mistakes, and that is why she had also to accept and swallow the fact that she was going to be friendless. She was parentless, because she did not count the assholes who gave her life as parents. She was homeless because she would never call the dump in which the man that gave her a name insisted on living a home and now she was friendless…loveless.
Pamela bit her bottom lip hard enough to make it bleed and she leaned more over the tree. She had had a moment of simple stupidity. Somehow she had hoped to finish her feelings for Harley with a kiss. To discover that she was like everybody else she had ever kissed before: Meaningless, tasteless, boring, flat. But Harley was none of those things.
Instead she had touched the clouds with her hands and then felt them slipping through her freckled fingers.
She stayed under the tree as her brain continued rewinding self-hate messages and just when it was getting too dark for her to see the light caressing the leaves she decided to go home.
She effortlessly avoided her parents and curled under the covers of her room.
Needless to say, trying to make herself sleep became another failure for her countless list of the day- Not only because she continued to repeat the scene in her head but she also imagined Harley and Joker laughing at her the next morning.
The difficulty to breath increased with the simple idea of them just staring at her and jolting with guffaws, but she did her best to defend Harleen from the worst of her own suppositions.
"It's not even Harley's fault- Pamela told to herself a good couple of times while she rolled on her bed and pulled the sheets over her head- She doesn't have to love me back the way that I…" Pamela's eyes widened and she bit her pillow. It was then and just then, in the middle of her desperation, when she finally admitted the true nature of her feelings for Harleen.
On the next day, when the bags under her eyes were too remarkable to be covered with a simple foundation and the paleness of her skin outstand for its unusual abnormality, her strength was gone and she had not even a single drop of hope for Harleen's loyalty to her. Not when Joker crossed the classroom's door with his stupid green hair, his distasteful smile and Harleen following him like a puppy in her a ridiculously short crop top, black shorts and black high heels.
Pamela gritted her teeth when the blonde one passed by her side without giving her a glance. She did not look back at them, she didn't need to look at how Joker put his hand on Harleen's hips, a little too low to be appropriate for a class. No, she didn't. She did not need to feel that what had cost her a night of sleep, had meant nothing to her so called friend. She did not need to feel so easily replicable and meaningless. So she buried her face in her notebook.
She did not notice Harley's sidelong glance.
It did not crossed her mind that under Harley's make up there was a bruise that she had hidden. It did not even occurred to her that Harley's pretended indifference occulted a cry for help.
She did not see that right when Joker touched Harley's butt, fear also crossed the harlequin's painted eyes.
To be continued.