I blinked as I stared out the window, looking at the street signs as they passed. I didn't know what I was looking for, maybe nothing. I guess I was just waiting for myself to wake up. Or waiting for the quiet boy next to me to laugh and say "Just kidding!" so that I knew he wasn't completely losing his mind. Or maybe more so that I knew I hadn't completely lost my mind. All I knew was that tonight was definitely the wrong night to sneak out.
"Please tell me what you are thinking." Stanton almost yelled and his loud voice compared to the silent moments before it made me jump. I looked at him and he was just giving me a pleading yet frustrated look.
"What do you want to know?" I asked shrugging my shoulders.
"Anything, everything, I don't know just tell me what you're thinking right now. It really is torturing me to not know your thoughts." He stated dryly.
I thought for a moment before I told him my thoughts which I was sure he didn't really want to hear.
"Well in all honesty I'm waiting for myself to wake up. Maybe I'll find myself on the city bus somewhere, or hell, maybe I'll wake up in my dad's car and we'll be just coming into L.A."
I sighed and put my head in my hands. That didn't even sound reasonable. I just dreamed up another 24 hours in the last 6 hours of our drive to L.A. Usually the dreams seemed to last only about half of their actual length not 4 times as long.
"I don't know." I said lifting my head up again to stare out the window. "Can you just take me home now?" I asked still staring out the window.
He looked straight forward and drove the car. After a couple minutes he turned and looked at me. I didn't look at him though; instead I just closed my eyes and rested my face against the cold glass window. It felt good to feel something that seemed simple and real.
The longer we were in the car together the more I started to realize how far we really were from my house. It was then that I realized I had never even told him where my house was. I looked out onto the road and it looked like we were heading in the right direction. I stared at him suspiciously.
He looked at me again and noticed the look on my face. "What?" He asked uncertainly.
"How did you know what direction my house was?" I asked tightening my stare on him. (Yes tightening, like when you squint your eyes more and focus harder on the subject of your stare lol) "And when did we get so far away from it? What are you trying to do here?" My breathing quickened as a thought was brought to my attention. What if he's a psycho? It would make sense with his weird story. And maybe I was just hallucinating with the voices in my head.
He looked at me as if I were mentally incompetent. "I saw you getting on the bus remember? I was going back to the bus stop and then I was going to ask you where to go from there. And I had to take you farther out so that I would have time to explain." He clarified.
"You didn't really tell me much of anything." I retorted.
He really hadn't I recalled as I thought about his poor excuse for an explanation. He had only told me the basics of it, not really wanting to get into the details. I could tell this because whenever I asked a question about something other than basics he would dodge it any way he could.
Except for the mind reading thing; he had been overly specific on that. Not about other peoples mind, though, just about mine. He seemed to be able to put thoughts into my mind, but he couldn't read or mess around with my own thoughts. I wondered why that was.
"It's not my place." He answered simply, to my statement.
"Yeah you keep saying that. So whose place is it then?"
"Like I said the girls will tell you as much or as little about it as they want to. I'm only giving you the basics so you know what you're up against." He said sighing and I could tell he badly wanted a subject change.
But I wasn't ready to give up. He hadn't even told me much about his part in it all either. Which meant he was hiding something from me and if he told me too much he would have to tell me what he was hiding. I was getting better at reading people and their personalities. He wasn't hiding it from me out of fear or the desire to be mysterious. He was hiding it from me out of pride, I didn't know how, but I could definitely sense this from him.
"What is it?" I whispered to myself unthinkingly.
"What is what?" He asked looking at me.
"Nothing I was just thinking out loud." I replied looking back out the window. We were almost to the bus stop now.
"Would you please not do that? It only makes this more frustrating." He seemed extremely annoyed.
I rolled my eyes and then a thought came to mind.
"If I tell you what I'm thinking will you tell me one thing?" I asked innocently.
He looked at me suspiciously. "That depends…" He finally answered.
"It's just one little thing, how bad could it be?" I said knowing full well how big it would seem to him.
"Fine, one thing." He emphasized the word one putting his index finger up.
"You'll go first." I said smiling. I thought for a moment of how to word it. It wouldn't give me the whole answer that I wanted, but if I could get a few little pieces it might make it easier to put together. "If you're not the bad guy, then why does Serena hate you?"
He was silent and I was getting painful vibes from him although I didn't know how that could be. Somehow this was a subject he didn't want to talk about.
"Serena and I…don't always agree." He said quietly. I felt sincere pain emanating from him and it made me want to cry. It wasn't a physical pain. No, it was more of a heartache pain.
"What happened between you two?" I asked sadly. I could feel his pain so strongly that it almost felt like my own.
"It's a long story." He said and after a moment that he didn't say anything else I knew I should stop.
I felt tears stinging the back of my eyes. His emotions were changing so fast that I was struggling to keep up. He must have been remembering something because the feeling went from awe, to a funny fluttering feeling in the pit of my stomach, to pure love. The feeling came so fast it surprised me and I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath because it was so strong.
Then the feelings began to change again. It went to anxiety, then to fear, and then some anger flashed, but it was so brief I almost missed it. Right after that was urgency, then sorrow, another flash of anger, and then it was just pain again.
"You loved her." I said without thinking. I knew he did because that emotion had been the strongest and it wasn't the kind of love you showed to a family member or a friend. It was real love.
He looked at me with an odd expression. "How could you possibly know that?" He asked, doubt filling his tone.
"I don't know." I answered honestly. "I just…I'm not sure how, but somehow…I can sense it." I told him and hoped I didn't sound crazy. Of course his explanations were a little more on the hallucinatory side.
"Maybe it's something the mentor can figure out." He said brushing it off. I could tell he wanted a change of subject and I let him. I didn't want to feel that pain anymore, it was too strong.
We pulled up to the bus stop and I pointed in the direction to turn. We drove down the road until we got to my house. He pulled over just to the side and I looked inside disappointed to see the lights on.
"He caught you." Stanton said with a hint of humor in his voice.
"Oh no…I am so dead." I said shrinking down into the seat.
"No you're not." He said turning off the car and moving to open his door.
"What are you doing?" I hissed. I'm going to die anyways for sneaking out if my dad finds out that a guy spent most of the time with me he'll make my death extremely slow and painful."
"You're not going to die because he's not going to know." He said with a devilish smile on his face.
"Okay then Sherlock what's the plan?" I asked doubtfully letting sarcasm color my tone on the word Sherlock.
"I'll make him think of something that'll make him really tired and then you sneak in and go to your bed. I'll move the memory of him going into your room and seeing your little setup. If he remembers at all he'll think it was just a dream."
I was amazed at the brilliance of his plan and part of me wondered if he had done this sort of thing before.
"Okay fine, is he asleep yet?" I asked quietly.
"Almost…okay let's go." He said opening his door and I did the same.
We waited by the door until he motioned for me to go. I grabbed the spare key under a brick by the porch stairs and slowly unlocked the door. We were as quiet as we could possibly be as we walked through the house. I went into my room and quickly put away all of the things I had used for the fake me.
Pulling the covers back I crawled into my bed without even bothering to change my clothes. It took me a moment to realize that Stanton was still in the room with me.
"What are you doing? Get out of here!" I hissed at him.
He put his index finger over his lips and we heard the soft thumping of my dad walking through the house.
My eyes widened in fear. I was so dead.
The door to my bedroom opened and just before I closed my eyes I saw Stanton's figure darken and almost disappear. The shadow now in his place moved to the corner of the room where the light from the hallway didn't touch.
I focused on keeping my breaths long and relaxed as the door closed. The plan had worked. When I opened my eyes the room was dark and I couldn't see anything that looked like a figure of a person.
"Stanton?" I whispered, but there was no answer. I rolled over and went to sleep even though I still had the feeling of someone watching me.