Arms

Drew

Life has blank pages where you stare and stare at the perfect whiteness, and you can think of everything to write but have no way to write it. You can hear the music, see the words, feel the emotions coming through, but it's all just what it is, unmarred and untransferrable to human comprehension. She's always done this to me. When I look at her, I see endless possibilities, and my mind is only a page, a shadow that waits for light to touch it and make it reality.

Perhaps that's why I did what I did. Maybe I couldn't stand it anymore, maybe it was all a fluke of destiny, but I know... I feel as if I shouldn't have. I don't know anymore.

After the party, I had managed to escape from Catherine's clutches and into the dim hallways. At last I was alone. Glancing

I strode on past her, resolute, trying to keep myself from turning and falling and crying at her feet.

That is, until she turned back and grabbed my shoulder. A thrill ran through me.

"Drew."

Was that anxiety in her voice? Was it anguish hidden in those folds of sound?

"Drew."

No, I couldn't look back. I tugged away resignedly, but she held on.

"Drew!"

"What?" I shouted back at her, shaking off her hand. "Don't bother me."

May laughed a high, brittle laugh, drier than bark and sun-blown dirt. "Me? Bothering you? What do you think you've been doing to me all this time?"

I stared at her. "What did I ever do?"

"You're asking me? You're asking me when you've looked at me that way ever since the first time that... that I showed any interest in Brendan."

She had known? When had she ever seen me stealing glances, turning my head ever so slightly, watching out of the corner of my eyes? Was it only Catherine and May? Or had everyone else seen the blatant refusals of truth in my eyes?

May was crying.

Gods, what an idiot I'd been.

"May."

Sobbing. She covered her face with her hands.

"May."

She continued crying, each sob shaking her fragile frame. I took a step forward, then stopped. I couldn't do it. I couldn't. She wasn't mine to hold, to comfort anymore. But... I battled with myself. I couldn't leave her like this.

Slowly, gently, I let my body move into the position that I had known for so long: the one that I had abandoned seven months ago. May did the same. Her will to fight was gone, shredded into tears that wet my shirt and somehow stained my black heart red again. I laid my cheek on her head and felt her cling closer, fingers entangled in my shirt in an almost painfully familiar way. One hand moved to the nape of her neck, the other to her back. I almost felt her heart beat against mine.

"May?" The voice came not from me, but from the end of the hall. I stumbled apart from her. She stood there looking dazed, her face a mess, her eyes reddened with tears, but somehow still beautiful.

"May!"

The figure at the end of the hallway came running toward us, his dark hair becoming clearly defined under the flourescent lights. A chill went through me that I was sure went through May as well. A few feet from us, Brendan halted.

"May?" he said again.

May gave him a stiff, cordial nod. Brendan had the strangest look on his face, as if he'd swallowed a Magikarp whole. Evidently he was still trying to make sense of what he had seen.

Turning to May, he asked, "Are you alright?"

"Yes."

I watched as she let him slip his arm around her waist in the way I had done once before, and the only thing I could do was to watch.