Hey everyone! Okay this one is a little different. This was for the angst workshop my friend QuinnLark posted on her author website. We had to post about something angst, obviously with the name lol. So this is a story about Bella and James. I don't do angst well so I used my own experience and made it happen to Bella, sorry B! lol. So please be gentle with me, angst isn't my thing!
Thank you so much kitchmill! You rock!
Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight. I do own this story and ridiculously long AN.
My shoes squeak as I drag my feet on the gym floor, holding my sweater close to my body as if it is my shield. The heavy weight of my backpack pulls me down and I sit against the grey bricks.
Picking at my cuticles, pulling the skin away from my nail bed, I embrace the sharp pain I get and the little drops of blood that follow it. The pain reminds me that I'm in control. No one can hurt me if I don't let them.
I'm in control.
I'm in control.
I'm in control.
It's like a broken record playing in the emptiness of my mind. The constant mantra is better than the images that seem to sneak up on me, just like he did.
I shiver involuntarily and close my eyes, trying to push everything away. Just try to clear my mind.
"Watch out!" A voice echoes off the gym walls and my eyes snap open, just in time to see a basketball flying toward my head. I duck and miss the collision, but I don't miss the laughter that comes from his friends.
My stomach twists as I pull my knees into my chest. If I don't make eye contact, then I don't have to listen to them call me a bitch anymore. Or worse, have them ask me for my side of the story.
It's not like it matters anyway, right? Whatever he says is true, and whatever I went through is a lie. My tears aren't real. The dark circles under my eyes, a constant reminder of my sleepless nights, are fake. Just like the knife.
"I don't know what her problem is anyway," Angela, his best friend, says. She flicks her blonde hair over her shoulder as I watch her from the corner of my eye. "He wasn't even on her property. Plus, it was a fake knife! He was across the street with a fake knife, and she takes him to court. Unbelievable."
"That's low," sneers another girl.
"Now he has to go to a different school and everything. Forget about Prom. He can't go because of her." I hear the venom in her tone and I look back at my feet. Her eyes feel like their melting me down like you would a metal. No matter how strong it is, something could tear it apart.
I'm in control.
I'm in control.
I'm in control.
My stomach twists into knots as they walk away laughing. Their voices take over the mantra in my head. No more control for me.
It seems as if the dam holding back my memories just cracks and my mind is flooded with visions of his face. Not the happy ones, when we first got together, but the volatile ones. The crazed look in his eyes as he popped out from behind the barrels by my door. The way his voice shook with rage as he screamed in my face, our noses touching and the smell of his breath hitting me hard. The words slicing through my wounded body so I had nothing left to feel. The force behind his hands as he pushed me as hard as he could when my feet outran him. And the way he charged into my house, the door no barrier to him.
I remember the feel of his fingers as they gripped my arm like a snake suffocating its prey. I remember the salty tears that fell down my cheeks as the pain radiated from his vice-like grip, wondering how a first love could hurt you so bad. And the way my pale arm turned into a purple and yellow swirl of a bruise.
The self defense I had learned didn't work as I tried everything I knew on him. His face never changed from his heated eyes and fierce scowl. My attempts to save myself were in vain.
I can't tell anyone that because how could they understand? How could they comprehend how suffocating he was by me telling my story? Or the way that smelling his cologne made me shake and cry? Or the way he still haunted me, even if it was in sleep?
So I stay quiet.
No one understands. No one cares what I say.
If they did, maybe him missing prom wouldn't be such a big deal.
They would know the knife was real.
And he wasn't across the street.