Somebody
By. Misery's-Toll
Chapter Thirteen: Pretty Girl
Has someone taken your faith?
It's real, the pain you feel
The life, the love you'd die to heal
The hope that starts the broken hearts
You trust, you must confess
- "The Best of You" by The Foo Fighters
When Sakura returns to school, people give her funny looks or just completely avoid looking at her in general. But she thinks that maybe, for Ino, it's even worse. Because when their mother died, even if she wasn't Ino's real mother, she might as well have been, for she had been in the blonde girl's life as long as she had been in Sakura's, and Ino didn't have an angel to hold her when she cried. And no girl deserves to lose two mothers when they're still a kid.
Ino puts on a tough face. She goes to school looking like maybe nothing happened; her hair is straight and in its high ponytail, her face perfectly made up. Though Sakura can see that the girl is a mess. She doesn't even remember to let Sakura out of the car a block away from the school that morning, so Sakura sees when the blonde stumbles out of the car and vomits in the bushes just half a minute before Shikamaru shows up out of nowhere and takes her hand. And so Ino puts on that strangled smile and lets go of his hand, crossing her arms over her stomach.
"Sakura!"
The pink-haired girl is surprised at herself when seeing the blonde boy running towards her makes her want to tear up a little. She doesn't consider herself overly emotional –no, perhaps just thoughtful.
Hinata follows timidly after Naruto, tapping her pointer fingers together in an awkward habit the shy girl can't seem to get rid of.
"I'm sorry I didn't come to visit you in the hospital; some things came up," he winces apologetically, "How are you?"
Sakura tries to offer him a smile, but somehow she knows it doesn't look right. As though she can see her reflection in Naruto's reactions, "I'm…my arm doesn't hurt anymore."
That is somehow the only reply she can give that answers his question truthfully, and while she can see it doesn't fully satisfy the boy, he doesn't press it. Instead, he offers one of his signature grins that he hopes will light up her day and says, "Hinata and I are looking for a job for her; Kurenai left that to me, since Kiba's busy with his own job after school and can't drive her to any of the interviews."
Sakura offers a distracted twitch of the lips in reply as she sees Shikamaru walk towards another girl and leave a dejected-looking Ino, "Oh, and how is that going? Have you found anything?"
Hinata flushes and squeaks out, "I've passed out from embarrassment every time."
Naruto rubs the small girl's shoulder reassuringly and her blush deepens, "You'll find something Hinata. I believe in you."
"Naruto! Come see this! Kiba's trying out an awesome move on his new skateboard!"
The blue-eyed boy's eyes seem to brighten, "Really? Come on, Hinata! Let's go! Wanna come, Sakura?"
She shakes her head subtly and brushes her fingers across of one the peeled scabs on her cheek, "No, thank you."
-=Ino=-
SheLovesHimSheLovesHimNotSheLovesHimSheLovesHimNot.
SheLovesHimSheLovesHimSheLovesHim.
It was…difficult.
Like an itch she couldn't scratch or a burn she couldn't cool, her mistakes were grating at her until her skin was chaffed and bloodied and she was dying on the inside. As though maybe all anyone needed in order to see what was really happening was to scratch away at that first layer of flesh, and then when they came to the sinewy muscle beneath, her soul would leak and spurt out in blackish ruined gore and they would laugh because she could act all high and mighty but really she was nothing. And beneath it all, she was really just a little girl who wanted her not-real mommy to come and tell it would all be alright, though she'd tell herself over and over again, "No, both of your mothers were fools who never loved you."
Sometimes she would stare into her bathroom mirror after her shower, naked, water dripping from her long-ago ruined body, her make-up running down her face like spilt ink. She would part those perfect rouge lips and whisper over and over again in reassurance, 'I don't love him. I don't love him. I don't love him.' Because she doesn't know what she would do if she did.
She thinks maybe she's made of reverse butterflies. She started out as a beautiful winged creature of dazzling colors, but she's turning into a chrysalis and maybe someday she'll be an ugly caterpillar. Or maybe she already is.
Because he's here with her. And she's not with him. He's here, looking at her, seeing the inner her, but not the outer. And the outer is all she's ever been good for. And she's out there, fulfilling every other guy's needs except for his.
He doesn't say anything to her, even though he knows what happens in her family (her sexual activities aside –he can't know about that, because then he'd leave her, and even though she doesn't love him, can't love him, will never love him, she needs him more than anything else right now) but he's there, touching her hand or pressing his lips to her hair or smiling at her. Because he's never felt any sort of true grief, but he knows she's grieving and he'll give her all he can while still remaining Shikamaru.
He started out as another plaything with a pretty face. But maybe she should have known that she couldn't just use him and throw him away when she first met him. After all, they had had an actual conversation. She couldn't quite remember what it was about, and she's sure it was probably about the weather or maybe nothing at all, but he spoke to her and saw her through charming half-lidded eyes that weren't clouded with lust or arousal.
And they talked, or they touched, or they sat together, and never once had he so much as stuck his hand under the hem of her shirt or touched her butt or grazed her breasts or even looked at her the wrong way. They kissed. And when they kissed it was softly, with him tucking that one untamable lock of hair behind her ear and stroking her cheek with the back of his long gentle fingers. He wasn't a tousle under the covers or a ravaging in the broom-closet. He was a friend. One that she didn't love, couldn't love, wouldn't ever love because she was Ino the Unbreakable, never mind that she was already long broken.
So that morning before school when she stands dripping, naked, in front of her full-length mirror knowing she hasn't had her period in two months, she begins to cry spilt-ink tears. Because if she is to have a –she stops and whispers– 'Baby,' then it isn't his. And for someone she doesn't love, can't love, won't ever love she thinks that maybe she wants very much from him.
And she's sad and confused when she goes to school, and she throws up in the bushes and she's sososo scared. And then Shikamaru takes her hand and she wants to slap it away and say, This is your fault. I'm pregnant, and it's not your baby. Why didn't you love me so that it could have been yours?
But she knows she doesn't want it to be his, because that would make him just like all of the other boys she has entertained.
ILoveYouILoveYouNotILoveYouILoveYouNot
ILoveYouILoveYouILoveYouSoDamnMuch!
Her gut is churning and she thinks she's going to throw up again, only this time from nervousness and realization because she has to tell him now, and she says, "Shikamaru, I have to talk to you-"
"Yo, Shikamaru! Help me with my history!" Tayuya, a girl Ino particularly despises, shouts.
Shikamaru gives Ino a hesitant smile, having seemed to not have heard her cut-off sentence, "Troublesome."
He walks away and Ino's churning gut constricts and she wants to cry but she is Ino the (already broken) Unbreakable and she can't cry no matter what. So she runs to the girls' restroom before she can.
-=Sakura=-
Kiba stares at me
almost creepily.
I realize
I'm probably not the smoothest
sight. But
it still feels sort of painful
to know that people look at me and
just see the
fading yellow bruises
and the pink
dotted lines that
outline my face and neck where
the scabs have
mostly
peeled away.
I can't
hide behind my hair. There is
too little of it, and I realize that
it is awkward and choppy.
Don't hide your face, without one, you're nobody.
Last night I took the scissors and
tried to even it out a little bit but
I'm aware that I still look like
a street kid.
"How'd you get hurt,
Sakura?"
Kiba asks with
unmasked curiosity, as
always,
and I feel like a
science experiment.
I roll my shoulders
a little bit to
ease the tension that is
built up inside of me.
I can see Hinata and
Naruto
sharing a look at
my expense,
adding to my discomfort.
"I was in a
car accident,"
I offer another
unsatisfactory smile.
Block it out, bleed it out, it'll go away.
Now that I've
let my memories of my mother
come back into my mind
they come without warning
and I find myself almost
feeling crippled
beneath the weight of them.
I can feel my eyes
tear up a little,
the water gathering up
to rest on my lower eyelid
but I blink them away.
I bite my lip
to focus on the pain
rather than the thoughts,
and sniff.
"Sakura,
could I please see you in the
hall?"
I feel my gut clench
the
same way it always does when
I have to come in
private contact
with a teacher.
I'm vaguely aware of the
collective 'Oooh' that
several of the kids in the
class
make, but
I can barely hear it through
the cotton that
seems to have clogged my ears.
But
Kurenai leads me into the
hall and
gives me an encouraging
grin.
"Sakura,
your art has improved
so much
that Deidara-sensei,
the AP art teacher that
transferred here over
winter break has
agreed to
take you into
his class.
Congratulations.
You will be transferred
to that class
in two days time."
"Have I failed you as a parent?"
If she'd made it to today...what would she think?
"Here," Sasuke says, shoving a bag into Sakura's hands when she enters the classroom. She stumbles a bit and loses her shoe in surprise.
"Good morning, Sasuke," she says, "What is this?"
"Open it and see."
He sits on top of the nearest table as she puts her shoe back on, and then sits beside him as she fishes through the bag, and pulls out a long-sleeved navy-blue dress. She looks up at him in question, whilst feeling the fabric between her fingertips. Cashmere.
"I guessed the size. Tell me if it doesn't fit."
He meets her gaze evenly, but where hers is full of confusion, his is blank.
And then he
smiles.
It's not a big one, and it's gone so quickly, Sakura's not sure whether or not it really occurred. But it makes her happy, and she doesn't silently question the gift any longer.
AnAngelSmile.
When Kakashi arrives, they discuss a book they've all been reading. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. A man starting out as a poor farmer with all the trust in his land is enticed by the dishonest world of riches and power. As the man gets more involved in material things, he abandons his harvest. In the end, his family turns against him and the one he cares for most dies, and as he dies, he realizes where he went wrong.
Kakashi divides the class in half and tells them to give an oral presentation on why they think the book is called The Good Earth. Sakura is in a group with Sasuke and Naruto, and they both give her a general outline of the book.
"So basically…the earth determines the book?" she asks, tracing her index finger over the illustration of the man on the cover.
Naruto grins, "Exactly. You know what? I think you just gave us our answer."
At the end of class, Sasuke waits at the door for Sakura to finish putting away her things. Sakura can't help the small smile on her face as she glances at him from the corner of her eye. She's just so happy he's here.
"Sasuke, why don't you go on ahead? I'd like to speak to Sakura, privately," Kakashi interjects, interrupting Sakura's thoughts.
Sasuke stares at her for a moment, and she nods. He nods in reply and leaves the room silently.
Kakashi spins in his swivel-chair and gives Sakura a soft smile she doesn't see, "I just wanted to tell you that I'm glad that you are alright, and that you have my condolences."
Are you really alright?
The images of her mother wipe away Sakura's glee once again, like someone rubbing their hand over dry-erase marker, leaving an oily residue behind. She briefly remembers the scarf she has folded under her pillow that she received for Christmas; she's still not worn it in fear that Ino will take it.
"Um…thank you, Kakashi-sensei," she mumbles, fidgeting. She chews her lower lip and averts her gaze.
"Just Kakashi, Sakura, if you've forgotten," he replies with his smiling voice that reminds her of peanut-butter sandwiches when she was a little girl, and how smooth they were, "I'm afraid you've gotten quite far behind these past two weeks when you were gone, and I'd appreciate it if I could have a conference with your father tomorrow afternoon. Is that alright?"
The bell rings.
Sakura strokes her hair and is momentarily distracted by the length of it before responding, "Um…I'll see if he can, but I don't know if he can make it in on such short notice," she wonders how much easier this would be if it were her mother instead.
He nods, "Of course. Take care of yourself, Sakura."
You just can't stop disappointing people.
After receiving a tardy-slip, she runs out the door. She stops right outside his classroom and rubs away the stray tears that have made their way down her cheeks, though she doesn't remember crying. The journey to Speech class is a long one, because she walks slowly instead of rushing, trying to clear her head.
"Hey, what are you doing in the halls, un?" A tall man with blue eyes and blonde hair with a thick lock over one eye (it reminds her of Ino's) stops her. His harsh demeanor drops when he sees her crying-swollen eyes that are a little too large for her face, "What's wrong, un?"
Does he really care?
Sakura bites her lip and runs a hand through her choppy hair and offers a smile, but her lips tremble, "I have a pass."
"Anything I can help you with?" he asks, not bothering to examine the slip of paper.
She catches a glimpse of his nametag, "You are Deidara-sensei? You must be my new art teacher."
"You are Haruno Sakura?" he asks, "Your art is amazing –especially for a lower classman, un. You have a knack for drawing angels."
She wipes her cheeks on her sleeve and gives him a sheepish smile, "Thank you. But I have Speech class. It was nice meeting you."
She begins to walk faster towards her class when Deidara-sensei calls after her, "If you need it, you can always come to my classroom, un!"
Sakura turns her head and nods to acknowledge she heard him, before proceeding up the stairs. She enters her classroom quietly and hands her teacher her tardy-slip before slinking into the seat beside Gaara.
"Oh, Sakura, how great it is of you to join us! Now we are complete! We can proceed! Everyone…organize yourselves in order of birthday, excluding the year unless two people share a birthday, please!" Gai-sensei orders buoyantly, "First, Gaara, when is your birthday?"
"January 19th."
"I missed your birthday?" Sakura murmurs sadly, "Why didn't you tell me?"
He stares at her, and she can't help but think it is in a different manner than before her accident. She wonders if she's really that horrible to look at, "The day I came to visit you in the hospital was my birthday."
"Okay, Gaara, please go stand in front of the book shelf! Yosh!"
Perhaps he still cares.
-=Ino=-
You have to tell him. Tell him. Tell him.
Shikamaru walks through the door, right past Ino's desk without saying a word, and in the desk furthest away from hers. She bites her thumbnail and strokes her ponytail in an attempt to calm herself. She can feel her mistakes grating away at her mask, and she knows that if she isn't careful, she may have a full-out breakdown.
She spends the whole class period fidgeting and thinking to the thing that's growing inside of her, This is your fault.
Once class is over, she immediately runs to her boyfriend as he exits the room and puts her hand on his arm. He doesn't look at her.
"Shikamaru-"
"What do you want, Ino?" he asks, pulling his arm out of her grasp. She stifles a gasp as though this action burnt her, and she immediately places her disregarded hand over her belly.
"I…what's wrong?"
She can't tell him, not while he's upset.
He faces her, and while his face is impassive, she can see a weary aggravation building up inside of him, "Ino, I'm not going to just be one of your toys. If you're not looking for a real relationship, I'm not going to hold you back from what it is you really want. I'm breaking up with you."
She's not sure where it hurts, but when he walks away from her, it hurts sosobadly and she can't make it stop. She backs up against the wall and slides down, unable to keep herself standing as the first few tears spill down her cheeks. "Mom...I need you…"
ILoveYouILoveYouILoveYouSoDamnMuch!
-=Sakura=-
When I go to meet Ino
at her locker she
isn't there.
"Hello,
Sasuke."
He nods at me in greeting.
Touch him, just to see if he's real.
I touch his hand
and
look up at him to
see if it is alright
and he
doesn't protest so
I hold his hand
in mine.
"Have you seen
Ino?"
He looks away,
"She came by
earlier.
She was crying and
she left without saying
a word.
I think she has
already left,"
"-Do you,
want a ride
home?"
I nod,
though I can't help but wonder if
my mother knows
that I'm disobeying her.
When they get in the car, Sakura blurts out, "Can we go to your house?"
Sasuke seems surprised for a moment, before all expression is erased completely. He doesn't say anything for a moment, just checks that her seatbelt is buckled and that the doors are all locked before backing out of the school parking lot. Sakura feels like maybe she's said something wrong and that he might be angry.
"Um…I'm sorry, I just thought that since I've never been to your house, and you've been to mine, and because nobody is waiting for me back at mine that…"
Sasuke glances at her, but doesn't say anything.
Sakura becomes increasingly uncomfortable throughout the car ride. Eventually the car stops.
"Hideki's Hair Salon?" she asks in disbelief.
He reaches over and fingers her choppy hair in contemplation before nodding and getting out of the car. Before she can get out, he opens her door for her. She looks down at the ground as she murmurs quietly, "Thank you."
The store smells of perfume and hairspray and it reminds Sakura of the way Ino's mother's bedroom smelled when they would play dress-up, and for a second she feels like a little girl again, her hand swallowed in her father's as they would go to visit the Yamanaka household. She wonders if things might have turned out a little differently if she had said something that day when she saw Ino's father hitting Ino's mother. And if Ino would still be crying by herself right now if she had.
"Go change into this," a tall stocky woman with a nose-ring and bleached hair says, thrusting a purple smock at Sakura and pointing her in the direction of a bathroom.
Sakura spends ten minutes trying to get the shirt off over the cast and sling she wears. When she finally removes it, she stares at herself in the mirror for another five minutes, just prodding her lightly-bruised abdomen. She's so thin that her ribs stick out the same way Ino's did years before, back when the girl had been submitted to the hospital for a year, and she thinks that maybe that even as emaciated as she is, she still wouldn't be light enough to fly. She finally pulls the smock over her head and exits the restroom.
Both Sasuke and the lady with the nose-ring are staring at her when she leaves. She blushes, "I couldn't get my shirt off with the cast."
The woman immediately gets to work, "My name is Kana, and I'll be doing your hair today. Sit down over here. I'm going to wash and condition your hair first."
Sakura looks at Sasuke with a questioning look. He just motions to the seat in front of the sink. She bites her lip and complies.
It feels weird, having someone wash her hair for her. She remembers her mother's soapy fingers stroking her scalp, and she shampoo is the same scent –strawberry. She closes her eyes and just basks in the feeling of it.
"So, is he your boyfriend?" Sakura's eyes flicker open and she sees that the woman standing over her is grinning, "He's the prettiest boy I've ever seen."
Sakura focuses her eyes on the light above her head –she doesn't dare look at Sasuke, because she's sure he would have heard the woman's question, and she doesn't want to know his reaction. She bites her lip, "Um…no."
Kana leans over Sakura to pick up a bottle of conditioner and whispers to her, "But you want him to be?"
Sakura doesn't say anything, but the woman seems to understand by the look on her face. She pats Sakura's smocked shoulder with dripping fingers before wrapping the girl's hair in a towel and leading her to another chair, this one in front of a mirror and a myriad of styling tools.
She consults Sasuke, who stands nearby, "You sure?"
He nods once, leaving Sakura confused.
After an hour of snipping and drying and straightening, Kana leads Sakura into another room, this one smaller and without a mirror, not giving Sakura a chance to look at herself. The woman strokes Sakura's face with a warm wash cloth, and then begins to apply several different cosmetics.
Sakura thinks the moisturizer feels weird, and she the unfamiliar feeling of cover-up makes her feel like her face has been baked under the sun.
"Change into your dress," Sasuke says, handing her the bag that he must have retrieved from the car at one point during the make-over process. Sakura nods and reenters the bathroom from earlier. After struggling to pull on the dress, she looks at herself and almost doesn't recognize herself.
You're like a green rose. Not pretty, but still a flower. You're almost there.
Sakura thinks too much. At first she thinks that maybe Sasuke is nice because he bought her a pretty dress and made her hair prettier than it has ever been in her life, but then when she thinks about the make-up and the complete clothing change she begins to worry. What if the reason why he does these things for her is because she's ugly? She has friends, but she sees the way they look at her now, and she doesn't know if it's with sympathy or pity or maybe even complete disgust now that she's this little broken girl.
Sakura murmurs into her knees, loudly enough for Sasuke to hear clearly, "Why did you do that? Are you…ashamed to be seen with me the way I am?"
Are you…just a freak?
Sasuke jerks his head to look at her with another one of his inscrutable expressions, and Sakura motions to the road so that he will pay attention to it. And while he doesn't entirely turn his gaze, his eyes flicker back towards it every few seconds before turning back to face it, putting his hand on her shoulder, "If I were ashamed of you, then the rest of the world wouldn't have a hope."
She buries her head into her arms that rest on top of her knees.
"Thank you."
After driving for a little over half an hour, Sasuke parks the car.
"You brought me to…" she murmurs, her eyes wide. Sasuke leads her down a set of cobblestone steps.
The light outside has mostly faded, but Sakura can see by the light of a couple of tiki-torches that a small group of her friends are standing around, talking to each other. The group quiets when they see Sakura and Sasuke approach. Hinata, Gaara, and Naruto stand around a blanket with a two picnic baskets set on top, torches surrounding the scene. They're all dressed up nicely, in varying shades of darker clothing.
Naruto clears his throat, "Well…the reason I didn't come visit you in the hospital, was because I was trying to set this up. I got the dudes in charge to let us stay out here later than their hours during this time of year and I prepared the food with Hinata's help…but since I made a portion of it, sorry if it's not edible. But anyways, we all put this together because we couldn't go to your mother's funeral, and because you didn't get to have the fun part afterwards where you get to see all of your family and have cake and cheese-cubes and stuff. So…we're here for you."
Sakura smiles widely as the tears come down and she runs forward and hugs Naruto, knocking him off balance. He laughs and blushes slightly, patting her on the back.
"W-well, that's as good a speech as any!" Hinata squeaks, pulling out a bottle of sparkling apple cider and a few plastic cups. She passes the bottle to Naruto, who pulls the cork out of the top of the bottle with his teeth. The two pour four cups of the beverage and pass it around.
"To having lived this far," Gaara says, holding up his glass in a toast.
"To having lived this far," the others echo, and they clink their cups together and drink.
-=Ino=-
After school, Ino goes out and drives. She drives until she doesn't know where she is anymore, she pulls into the parking lot of a 7/11, and she cries. She curls into a ball in the front seat and just sobs for an hour. When she's through, she wipes her face, gets out of the car, and goes inside.
She buys a 32 oz. Very Cherry Slush and downs half of it before she even reaches the register.
Large empty black eyes meet her puffy red ones.
"You're that asshole in my Geometry class," Ino states dryly. He blinks at her.
"Hello, beautiful," he says, giving her an empty smile, typing up the product number on his machine, "Would that be all for you today?"
She stares at him for a second before nodding.
"That would be three dollars," he says, and takes her bills, giving her precise change, "My name is Sai. If you thought I gave you sufficient service today, on the bottom of your receipt fill in my name, rip it off at the perforation on the bottom, and insert it in the box by the door as you exit. Have a nice day."
"You're really weird, Sai," Ino says with a smile, "Sit with me at lunch tomorrow."
She exits the 7/11 feeling a little bit better for no particular reason.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, 'The Good Earth' by Pearl S. Buck, or anything else.
Author's Note: Um. Okay. I know it's late. Really late. But the chapter is the longest one yet, so forgive me? It would have been out a lot later if it weren't for my fabulous new beta, Ira Feye. Give her a big thanks, everybody! And happy late Halloween. I was a fancy cliché Goodwill witch. Nothing better than wearing reject cocktail dresses at a tenth of their original cost and making them into a costume. Next update will definitely not take a month.
In other news, I finally got the first one-shot of my request-story done. Check it out, even though it sucks, will ya? And request something for me?
-MT