Chapter Twelve: Behind These Hazel Eyes

Meg's eyes wandered as she was pushed down the halls by Mike.

She glanced at the open classroom doors, glanced at the colors of the studious decorations along the walls, and kept her eyes fixated on the tiles beneath the rolling wheels of her chair. The only thing she refused to look at were the faces of the students they were passing. So many people stopped to stare at her and Mike that it was extremely uncomfortable. It was a relief when he turned her chair around, shouldered his way through the front doors, and dragged her outside.

A soft wind brushed against her cheeks when he turned and pushed her down the sidewalk towards the woods behind the school.

The chair jiggled when he rolled her onto the grass towards a large tree with an enormous green canopy.

He finally came to a stop beneath it, swung her around so she was facing the school, then let go of her chair and stepped into view. She lifted her eyes and looked up at him, feeling small in more than one way. His blonde hair and fair skin made him look almost ruggedly angelic in the sunlight, natural gold that shone like a halo. She sat there for a long moment, not moving much, just peering up at him through her glasses.

"I'll be back with some lunch," he finally muttered, cracking his neck and walking away from her. "Don't move from that spot."

She watched him go, watched as he disappeared from view, and then she was alone.

Meg let out a weary sigh and leaned against the seat of the chair, dropping her head back so she could stare at the sky.

Her hair drifted back in the breeze, reminding her that she would need to cut it again soon. She'd actually wanted to grow her hair out for a very long while now, but her circumstances wouldn't let her do it since long hair was easy for other people to grab. Considering the kind of situation she was in, it wouldn't be smart or safe for her to have it. She took a deep breath and let it out, closing her eyes when a breeze rippled across her body, ruffling her clothes.

In that moment of calm, all she could think about was her future.

She didn't know how things were going to end up.

She was eighteen years old and in her last year of high school.

Where would she go when it was over? She couldn't and wouldn't stay with her parents, but taking care of herself would be hard. She would have to find a job, but with a disability as severe as the one she now had, she was fairly certain her job opportunities had been more than halved, which was a nightmare scenario since the possibilities had already been pretty slim to begin with. Her biggest aspiration was to become a nurse, or something similar to one, but it was out of reach.

College was something she couldn't have since it was too expensive.

"Well, look who it is! If it isn't the cocky little Griffin herself!"

Meg's eyes shot open wide and her head flew up to see Jared leaning against a tree with a taunting sneer on his face.

When he'd arrived, she didn't know... but she was so sick of seeing him she could have vomited. She instantly tried to roll away from him, but he lunged forward and smashed his hands down on her armrests, making her flinch and draw back with her shoulders bunched up to her ears. He brought his face close to her own and smirked, eyes glinting with something that made him look frightening.

"Ah, ah, ah," he warned, wagging a finger in her face. "You're not going anywhere."

When he tried to touch her face, she jerked away from his hand, leaning as far to the left as she possibly could.

His smile twitched.

"Aww, don't be like that," he cooed, eyes narrowing when he tried to touch her face again and she leaned even further. "Come on, let's be cool 'kay?"

When she frantically shook her head and tried to move the wheels of her chair again, he gave up the charade.

With a snarl, his arm muscles bulged and he flipped the wheelchair on its side and Meg went with it. She landed with a muffled wheeze on the grass, blinking as she tried to figure out what he'd just done. When she tried to pull herself out of the chair, Jared lifted his foot and stomped on her back. She would have screamed if she'd had a voice since the pain that shot through her body was beyond agonizing.

It hurt so bad that she almost passed out.

When he lifted his foot again, she forced her body to roll over to shield her back against the ground, but his foot came down a second time on her chest. She wheezed in pain, but then he was raising his foot again, aiming for her face this time. Immediately covering her head with her arms and cowering behind them, she braced herself, but couldn't keep from flinching when his shoe hit her forearms hard enough to break them. She was lucky that they didn't, actually.

She waited for him to kick her again, but nothing happened.

Everything fell silent.

After about two minutes, she hesitantly lowered her arms and looked up at him, but he was holding his phone out, smirking at something.

Meg felt confused until she glanced down.

Her heart nearly stopped when she realized that her skirt had ridden up.

He was taking pictures of her underwear!

Like lightning, she dragged her skirt down, heart in her throat, pulse pounding in her neck.

"Aw, why'd you have to go and do that?" Jared sneered, leaning down and thrusting the phone into her face. "That just makes the video look like you don't want it, Meg, but I guess it doesn't matter. Everyone knows you're desperate enough to sleep with anyone, even if they beat the shit out of you."

Meg's heart nearly dropped out of her stomach.

Her eyes widened and she stared at him, askance, when he stood back up.

He turned slightly, as if he were going to walk away, but then he turned around and kicked her in the side. Her mouth came open and she squeezed her eyes shut as the breath was knocked out of her body. Once she was able to breathe, she tried to push herself upright, but he pressed his foot against her chest and pinned her against the grass again, leaning forward with a nasty grin.

The pressure made her still-healing injuries scream.

When he caught the rigid expression of pain on her face, he grinned even more widely and leaned on his foot.

"Say something, Meg," he hissed, putting an unbearable mount of pressure on her breasts. "Come on, the whole world's watching!"

The pressure of his foot began to hurt to the point where it was hard to breathe.

Lifting her arms, she struggled to push him off, then resorted to hitting his leg and clawing at his jeans.

She was seeing spots.

She couldn't breathe.

Her flails grew weaker as her head swam, and prickling spots filled her vision, blocking the sight of his sneer.

She was just starting to fade out completely when something completely unexpected happened: the foot crushing her body grew light and Jared was unexpectedly pulled off balance. She watched, confused, as he was jerked backwards and roughly thrown to the ground, and her eyes slowly lifted to find Mike standing in front of her, legs stiff and shoulders back, but every single muscle in his body tense, as if he were about to spring.

"If you're smart," Mike said quietly, raising his fists and cracking his knuckles, "you'll get the fuck out of my sight before I rearrange your face."

"Excuse me?" Jared sneered, getting to his feet and shaking his shirt out. "Who the fuck do you think you're talking to, Pulaski?"

"I'm talking to someone who doesn't know when to stop," he growled, rolling his head and cracking his thick neck. "I'm really hard to piss off, but you and everyone else have been messing with this same girl for years now, and I'm not just going to let it happen anymore."

"Ooh, what'cha gonna do?" Jared taunted, turning his head and spitting at Meg—who flinched away. "You gonna beat the shit out of your own teammate? HA! Go ahead! Do it! You'll just get your ass kicked off the football team and then you can say goodbye to that sports scholarship you wanted."

In that instant, it happened... leaning down and lowering his head, Mike charged forward like the football player he was. Jared was obviously taken off guard since he looked stunned when he was knocked off his feet and body slammed, but before he could so much as let out a yell, Mike was straddling his chest and punching him in the face with all of his strength. Jared fought back, of course, but in the position he was in there was only so much he could do.

Meg watched in horror as Mike wailed on him, then finally stood up, breathing heavily.

Jared jerkily lunged to his feet, nose bloodied, eye blackened, lips puffy and split.

"Bitch!" he snarled, eyes watering in rage and pain. "Kiss that sports scholarship goodbye!"

"I applied for more than one scholarship, fucktard," Mike callously shot back, sneering at him in disgust. "Go ahead and kick me off the team. I don't give a shit. Football was getting boring and doctors are more respectable than athletes, anyway. I'd rather save lives than spend the rest of my life hanging around a group of stupid, sweaty guys."

"I thought you were above this filth," Jared said coldly, "but I guess you're right where you belong."

"Damn straight," Mike shot back, stepping forward and glaring down at him with eyes that burned like hellfire, "so don't ever touch her again."

Jared balked when he turned around and made his way over to where Meg was lying, but she could only stare at him in equal parts awe and fear.

He looked more pissed than she'd ever seen him.

"Bitch!" Jared barked, glaring at them with furious brown eyes. "You're an idiot! Just you wait!"

"Get lost," Mike growled, bending down and lifting Meg into his arms, despite her flail of protest; when he looked at her, eyes flashing, she clamped up and turned her head away to avoid his glare since the sight of it put a knot in her stomach. "Hold still, Beanie Girl."

"Is she really that good of a fuck?"

Mike instantly turned to look at him, eyes burning with such a threatening expression that the boy went from beet red to bone white nearly instantaneously.

He backed off a step when the blonde boy turned, tilting his head with a warning expression.

"Wouldn't know since I haven't bothered tappin' it," he drawled, making Meg's eyes pop open wide in mortified shock, "but make no mistake, if you ever touch her again... we're going to have a serious problem. Because the next time, I'm not going to hold back, and that means you'll have some really pricey medical bills."

"Whatever," Jared muttered, turning around and limping away, "fucking cunt... you'll regret this."

Meg watched as he made his way around the corner, arms curled against her chest. Once he was gone, she looked up at Mike with a stunned expression. His eyes were fierce: his pupils had shrunk into pinpricks and almost seemed to glow gold as he stared in the direction her tormentor had disappeared.

The anger she saw there was actually kind of scary-looking.

But then he blinked and his eyes were suddenly back to normal.

When he glanced down at her, the fierceness she saw there had vanished and he was looking at her with something that wasn't so scary; she watched as his gaze flicked lower and landed on her arms, narrowing when he saw the bleeding scrapes Jared had inflicted when he'd kicked her. She stared with large eyes as a strangely pleasant feeling welled up inside her, blinking rapidly as it swept throughout her chest, not understanding it... or even why it made her heart flutter.

He had saved her.

He had actually come to her rescue when she'd really needed it.

"You all right?" Mike asked, eyebrows raising slightly in question. "Where else did he hurt you?"

Meg swallowed and hesitantly motioned to her chest, then swiveled a little and tried to touch her back, but she couldn't reach the spot Jared had kicked with his thick arms underneath her. Noticing what she was doing, he used his foot to right her wheelchair, but to her surprise he turned around and flopped down in it without warning. Her teeth clicked from the jolt that swept through her, but he quickly adjusted her legs and set them over the edge of the arm rest.

Her heart froze when he forcibly leaned her torso forward and lifted the back of the t-shirt he'd given her.

She heard him let out a low whistle.

"Ouch," he muttered, gently touching a specific spot along her back; she flinched since pain swept through it. "He whopped you good. It's already bruising."

Meg shrugged, since she didn't know how else to react. It wasn't like bruises were anything new to her. She could handle them easily enough. She thought it was over when Mike dropped the edge of the shirt and forced her to lean back, but when he tried to raise the front of her shirt, her mental alarm went off and she clasped the hem of it and held it down. He blinked when she looked at him with startled eyes, then frowned in a somewhat irritated fashion.

"I get that you're a girl," he muttered, looking her clean in the eye, "but you and I both know that if I really wanted to do something, I could have done it already."

Meg swallowed and a shiver ran through her body, a shiver that he obviously felt if his frown was any indication, but he had a point.

He could have hurt her a hell of a lot earlier, even when she'd been able to walk, and she wouldn't have been able to do anything.

Not then, and not now.

Well, whatever, she silently told herself. The worst that'll happen is he'll call my scar a third nipple like everyone else and laugh. Not like I haven't heard it before.

With that thought in mind, she tentatively lifted the shirt and squeezed her eyes shut, feeling more than a little embarrassed. Her face began to grow hot and her ears burned when she turned her head away, unable to look at him, and total silence filled the air for a good thirty seconds... but then, something touched the scar. When she flinched, the odd pressure immediately disappeared, leaving her hands quivering.

She felt his hand touch another spot on her side, where a scar she'd practically forgotten about resided.

Then another place with a scar.

And another.

She felt wildly uncomfortable with his probing, and she wished she could say so, but she couldn't, so she dealt with it as he touched more spots along her abdomen.

"You can put your shirt down," he said in a strangely thick voice. "I've seen enough. It'll bruise by morning, but you'll be fine."

Meg instantly let go of the t-shirt and let out a disheveled breath of air. She kept her eyes fixed on the grass, shoulders bunched up to her ears, but then he rose without warning and she jumped, startled as she was once again lifted into the air. There wasn't even time to wonder what he was doing: Meg's glasses slid down her nose when he set her down in the chair, and she stared at him when he headed over to his bag and grabbed two wrapped sub sandwiches and two cartons of juice.

Without a word, he handed her the food and the drink, then flopped down in the grass beside her chair and started to eat.

She watched him for a few seconds, then did the same, unwrapping the sandwich and taking a bite of it.

They ate lunch in total silence.

By the time she was finished, the bell still hadn't rung, so she took the opportunity to pull her writing pad out.

Mike glanced at her when she wrote down what she wanted to say and held it up.

"Thank you for saving me."

"Don't mention it," he muttered, running a hand through his hair. "It was part of our deal. I just decided to skip waiting a month."

Then, for whatever reason, he looked at her.

Meg felt uneasy because she could tell that something about his demeanor was suddenly a little off: his face didn't have a stoic or a scary expression for once, and he looked kind of apprehensive, almost as though he didn't know how to bring up an uncomfortable conversation. After taking a better glance at the expression on his face, she felt her stomach knot up. He looked really uncomfortable, which wasn't normal.

"Hey," he grumbled, taking a deep breath and uneasily running a hand through his messy hair a second time. "I… uh…"

When he trailed off, the different struggles of emotion searing across his face made her stomach feel queasy.

Swallowing her unease, she scribbled something on the pad and held it up.

"What is it?"

When he read her question, he let loose a disheveled sigh.

"It's about those scars," he finally muttered, looking away with a deep grimace. "Mostly the one on your chest. How did you get them?"

Meg suddenly couldn't think: the only thing she could do was stare at him.

Hesitantly, she scribbled a response.

"Why are you curious about my scars?"

Clearing his throat, Mike made a face that said he was struggling to find the right words. For a long moment he simply stared at her, and she suddenly forgot about her fear: his crystalline amber eyes seemed to cut into her soul, almost as though he knew exactly what she was feeling.

"Beanie girl," he sighed, deep voice vibrating her body as he stared at her, "you were shot by someone."

The weight on her chest tightened into a knot that settled into her gut.

Meg stared at him with enormous eyes, then wrote a frantic response.

"How do you know?"

She watched as his eyes flicked across the question.

"I can tell by the type of scar."

She scribbled another response.

"I could have shot myself. What makes you think someone else did it?"

"Because I can tell that you didn't shoot yourself, too. It's visibly obvious."

Her third response came even quicker.

"You can you tell something like that just by looking at a scar?"

He read it and snorted.

"Damn straight. There's no burn marks around the spot where the bullet entered," he explain, making her stare at him all over again; when he caught the weird way she was looking at him, his eyes slid to half mast. "My dad's a cop. The two of us watch a lot of forensic science crap every weekend. I know how guns work."

Her response was quick.

"So you're saying that the type of bullet scar I have can prove that I didn't shoot myself?"

"Yeah. Of course it can."

Meg's eyes widened and she covered her mouth.

She hadn't ever really thought about that, but it did make sense.

"So, someone really did pull a gun on you," he muttered; when Meg jerked her eyes away from his, he grabbed her wrist and forced her to look at him. "What happened?"

For a second, something strange flickered behind his eyes and the urge to run away hit Meg so hard in the gut that it nearly winded her. Taking a deep breath, she calmed herself and tried to think of a lie to tell him; her mind started whirling for something to say that would get him off her back. She really wanted to tell him that the scar was extremely old, but she felt too numb and detached... taking a moment to pull her hand back, she tentatively scribbled a response.

"I don't remember. Are we done now?"

"No, and I really don't like being lied to," he growled, "so just tell me the truth."

A lie of any variety would have been suitable, but... somehow, her mind went blank. Panic set in when she realized she couldn't think of anything false to tell him, or even how to word it. So, after flipping through a multitude of different scenarios, she finally sighed and decided to tell the truth.

It wasn't like her father deserved defending anyway.

Quite the contrary, she felt he deserved the blame after everything he'd done to her.

With a sense of finality, she wrote down her response and held it up, turning her eyes away.

"My dad shot me."

Mike read the paper, then blinked and furrowed his brows as he read it again, and again, and reread it a fourth time.

Then he leaned back and stared at her.

"Seriously?" he muttered. "Your old man was the one who gave you that scar?"

She nodded, feeling a little ill.

"Why the fuck would he do something like that? And how is he not in prison?! A bullet to the chest... that's attempted murder!"

Meg's shoulders sagged and she weakly wrote down a lengthy explanation before holding it up.

He tilted his head slightly to read it.

"He didn't really have a reason. I was sort of having a good day, but when I got home from school, I walked into the living room and said hi. That was it. All I said was 'Hi dad' and he just whipped around and shot me in the chest with the gun he keeps under his bed. And after he did it, he just left me there on the floor, like it was nothing. If it hadn't been for my brother, Chris, I probably wouldn't be here right now... he was the one who called the ambulance."

Mike's eyes actually widened in what looked like shock.

"Seriously?" he scoffed. "How did he not get arrested?!"

"He told everyone that I shot myself. My whole family was pulled into court over it, but everyone testified that I'd been strongly suicidal for weeks," Meg wrote, then sadly added, "which was... actually the truth. I was feeling suicidal back then, and that's why he ended up getting away with it and didn't go to prison."

Mike's eyes were blank, lacking any and all sheen, when she averted her gaze with a tight jaw.

"And yet you still live in that house," he droned; it wasn't even a question.

Meg gave him a pained look, then scribbled on the pad and held it up.

"Where else would I go? Everyone in this entire city hates me for some reason that I can't even figure out. I get that my family is insane, but I never understood why I'm always being blamed for their stupidity when I never do anything or get involved. People hate the Grifffins, and I'm one of them. That's just how it is."

Mike shook his head, but before he could say anything else, the bell rang.

He looked up, then, and sighed.

"Looks like lunch is over," he said quietly, getting to his feet with a grim expression. "Come on, Beanie Girl. Let's go."

Meg closed her writing pad and put her pen behind her ear when he got behind the chair and started pushing it towards the sidewalk.

She didn't know if telling him had been a good idea, but in the end, it didn't matter.

He had listened to her and for whatever reason, he was actually on her side.

It gave her the illusion of hope.

And that, in a world where everything was so dark and bleak that she would normally rather die than keep going, was a blessing.

A blessing that was very hard to find.