disclaimer. i own nothing of The Vampire Diaries. How unfortunate this is.
These bruises make for better conversation,
loses the vibe the separates,
it's good to let you in again,
you're not alone and how you been?
Everybody loses,
we all have bruises.
That boy with the unruly hair was fourteen. His lanky body was beginning to broaden, his thin shoulders becoming wide and his hands were becoming larger. His hair and bright eyes remained the same.
He sat at his kitchen table, paying much more attention to the markings in the oak than to the test in front of him. Instead of seeing a math test, he saw a page with nothing but a series of variables and numbers amongst multiplication symbols and fractions. His head throbbed, lean fingers yanking at raven follicles as his leg shook beneath the table.
He'd been there an hour, staring at a test with eighteen questions on it. He would stare at the equation before slowly think of a number that was most likely incorrect. The only section of the test he was absolutely certain of was his name—the date he'd written would be found incorrect.
When he finished his test and slid it across the table to the woman across from him, Mrs. Howie, she gave him a wary glance. The calendar read the second of June—he wrote the eighth of March. Mrs. Howie excused herself from the room for a moment as Damon sat there, staring at the patterns in the oak table.
June second.
His mother had been dead for seven years—announced dead on June 2nd, 1999.
He got a C- on the test; not a single question he answered correctly.
Four years later
I wouldn't talk to Damon Salvatore again until two days had passed. There was something in the way he looked at me—like he knew me. Sweet irony, thou art a heartless bitch. I'll apologize to Damon for my foolishness and forgetful mind within a few months' time, but, for now, let us focus on the beginning.
I sat at the same table with the same group of friends during the lunch hour—the closest to the door with Bonnie Bennett, Caroline Forbes, Tyler Lockwood, and Matt Donovan.
Bonnie Bennett was a small and sweet girl with lovely dark skin and chocolate colored hair that matched her eyes. Tyler Lockwood was broad and lean with a cocky attitude and his own opinion on everything. He was a typical football player. Our best friend, Matt Donovan, however, was a completely polar opposite to what you expected of a Mystic Falls Timberwolves player; he was muscular, like Tyler, but instead of dark hair and black eyes, he had short blond hair with comforting blue eyes.
Matt Donovan and I were inseparable as kids—hell, we're inseparable now—we even shared a crib as infants. His mother and mine were good friends. His mother tended to lean on mine for support. See, Kelly Donovan had a drug problem throughout high school, besides a small intermission during the time she became pregnant with Matt, and picked up the nasty habit in her mid-twenties. The father had left her with two children (Matt had a younger sister) and she was working two separate jobs. Her money was going to her addiction while her children would complain of how their stomachs ached.
My mother was able to get Kelly off the drugs—until she died in 2009, the summer before my junior year. Kelly left town afterwards and never spoke to Matt or Vicki, his little sister, again.
Matt was forced to work two separate jobs: managing the bar while being the bust boy at the Grill and local yard work. Unfortunately, he spent about half as many hours working at the Grill than doing yard work but he got about double his salary mowing, raking, and trimming lawns around town than scrubbing down the bar.
This isn't my story to tell. Allow me to move on.
I picked at my food. School lunches were never very aesthetically pleasing to the eye—nor were they anymore pleasing to the mouth. However, when I peeked up at Tyler, he was scarfing down what looked to be beef stroganoff. Although, I've never seen beef stroganoff blink at me.
I shivered and pushed away my tray. I kept silent during this lunch period, glancing amongst my friends as I listened into their normal conversations: football, pep club, the new kid. My attention was immediately caught as Caroline began to mention a boy with dark hair that beside her in Chemistry. She said he was extremely good at memorizing the periodic table even though he'd never bothered to look at one beforehand.
And then she continued:
"We've only said about two things to each other—both consisting of the word 'Hey'. But I swear, I felt something!" she squealed, grinning at all of us.
"Do you even know his name?" Matt grunted, glancing over at Tyler who was smirking with heavy amusement.
"It's Daniel," she snorted.
I couldn't help myself, I laughed. I don't know why I laughed, but I did. When people put so much confidence into an incorrect statement, it causes me to giggle—especially when I knew the correct answer.
"His name is Damon," I corrected, receiving a quizzical glance from everyone sitting around the table.
"And how do you know?" Matt demanded, narrowing his blue eyes.
"I'm tutoring him in math," I replied calmly, shrugging my shoulders. "He needs the help—and you should have heard the awful things Tanner was saying to him," I added, finally earning sympathetic glances from the table. Even Tyler whose eyes had become naturally stoic in his teenage years.
"Ouch," Tyler muttered, downing the rest of his water before clapping Matt's shoulder. "You ready?" he asked before the two stood, saying their goodbyes, and leaving to dump their trays.
I waited for Bonnie and Caroline to finish their meals, and once more my train of thought began wondering free. My eyes had a habit of wondering with them, often times leaving me staring blankly at another person. But this person was worth staring at.
When I regained focus of where I was, I noticed I had been staring into blue eyes from across the lunch room. Damon was sitting by himself—I wish I would have noticed him before I walked in—without a tray in front of him. His gaze, like always, held a sense of longing in them.
We hadn't spoken since Monday but we'd seen each other in the halls, and when I'd go to my locker, I'd glance in his direction to meet his penetrating gaze head on. It wasn't overbearing or, for lack of a better word, stalker-ish but rather sad. It was if he was silently begging me to read his mind and I so badly wanted to.
I had gotten lost in pools of cerulean before a series of snaps alarmed in my ear. Turning, I noticed Bonnie and Caroline staring at me.
"Did you say something?" I asked, once more returning to poking the stroganoff on my tray.
"You ready to go?" Bonnie repeated and I nodded. We dumped out our trays and left.
I guess I didn't notice Damon wave goodbye to me.
Another thing I wish I would have noticed.
Two days afterwards, Friday, January 11th, 2011
I know what true frustration was—the exhaustion of walking from my bed to the bathroom located a convenient thirty feet from my bed, raising three children; hell, raising one was frustrating enough. However, none compared to teaching Damon Salvatore Algebra II.
"Come on—we've been through this already; the answer is negative nine or positive three," I repeated, motioning to the work I had done to prove the solution.
It was my first day of tutoring Damon and boy was I over my head with this guy. He absolutely had no idea what we were talking about—although he could repeat to me the entire periodic table. I knew he was smart. Not just because I had witnessed a fraction of it, but sometimes you could look at another and just see the knowledge in their eyes. Blue hues were drowning in it.
We were in my bedroom, sitting on top of my bed with a bag of chips—now nearly gone—between us. I could tell he was paying attention but he just didn't get it.
"How'd you figure out what 'b' was?" he asked, running a hand through his hair for the fifth time.
I stared at him hard, my lips pressing together in a hard line. I was silent while he stared at the book in front of him. Apparently he noticed the silence because he looked up to see my expression—which must not have been too nice because he shot a look I'd never forget.
It was hard, defensive even, with cerulean orbs becoming stormy as they glared back at me. He knew what I was thinking, he always did; he knew I thought he was brain dead in that moment. The look made me shrink back against my headboard as he spoke through a clenched jaw.
"If you didn't want to help the dumb kid, you could'a just said somethin'," he snapped before he moved up from the bed and exited the room.
Guilt ran into me like a freight train, crushing my body. I immediately jumped up and hurried after him. He moved fast.
I found him in my backyard, cigarette hanging from his mouth as he lit it expertly with a match. I smiled very faintly as he brushed the smoking tip on the concrete of my patio before tossing it into the trash by my father's grill.
He turned when he noticed me, pulling the cigarette from his mouth before blowing a cloud of smoke out from the corner of his mouth.
"You could have said somethin'," he repeated with a grunt, flicking cigarette ash on the patio.
"You're not stupid, Damon," I said gently, settling into one of the patio chairs as I watched him expertly drag the cigarette repeatedly from his mouth, flick ash, and place it back into his mouth.
He glanced over at me, silent. I could see the anger slowly roll away from him in waves, and slowly, his blue eyes once more gave me that look.
"Why must you look at me like that?" I sighed, shutting my eyes.
"Like what?" I heard his soft reply as he settled into the patio chair across from me.
"As if you expect me to get some secret message," I said, opening my eyes to find him grinning at me, cigarette remaining in his mouth.
Withdrawing the cigarette from his mouth, he flicked the last remaining ash before stomping on the smoking butt and promptly throwing it into the trash.
"I've only had two best friends in my entire life—to be quite honest, I really only had two friends," he mused. "Lorenzo Augustine and you," he murmured.
I was taken back; shocked. My mouth gaping open, I attempted to reply, but he waved a hand to stop me.
"It's pretty obvious you don't remember," he said gently. "I suppose most wouldn't—but like I said, I've only really had two friends. It's not hard to remember two people," he murmured. "It was Kindergarten. We use to run on the field all the time—past the baseball field. And Ms. Cooper would grab our ears and drag us back to the playground," he smiled, tugging on his earlobe.
The memory was lost, but I did distinctly remember Ms. Cooper dragging me by the earlobe. "But… I just don't remember you," I murmured and I could see his smile deflate slightly.
"I, uh," he scratched the back of his neck, "on the last day of school I told you I'd teach you to run. You didn't like it when I beat you because I was three inches smaller and I was constantly having to jog to keep up with your strides," he began to ramble, desperate no doubt for me to remember.
"I told you that you were my best friend. I think I was with you three days in total before I left," he murmured. "We went swimming together and you thought you could handle the deep end because I could. You about drown," he licked his lips. "I drug you over to the side where you could grab on."
When you nearly drown in a pool, it sticks with you. I remembered him—faintly, but it was something.
I grinned and nodded. "Yes! Yes, I remember that!" I giggled.
Damon's mood immediately seemed to inflate, a bright smile beaming towards me. "You wouldn't let go of me. I 'bout drowned!"
His laugh was contagious. My cheeks hurt from how much I was smiling.
We returned back to tutoring.
He still didn't get variables but he was happy.
an. That's chapter two! It's long - I apologize, I ramble - but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. Leave a review and tell me what you think?