Break Away (Away, Book 1) (9 page)

“Food? You call that food?”

“Everything you take into your mouth and
ends up in your belly is food. That includes the occasional spider
that crawls up into your open mouth while you’re sleeping, or some
other type of nasty bug. It doesn’t matter.” Another
thump
and the iced tea was ready for my hand.

“Couldn’t you at least leave aside your iced
tea ritual today and take water instead?” She aimed her brown eyes
over the large can, disapproval flickering in them like two torches
on a shadowy passageway. “Give your body a break from the caloric
savagery.”

“Like the one you need to give me from the
nosy assault you can’t seem to stop?” I asked her with ice-sharp
voice, the cold indigo in my eyes unearthing icebergs between
us.

She planted her feet and stood there
silently, her shoulders slumped. I knew she could sense the cold
walls I’d erected, thin as a gauzy veil and hard as glass. But a
veil was fragile and glass was breakable, and she knew this, too.
She knew they weren’t as impervious and paramount as the ones I
placed with other people, but they were there, etching a scar
between us. And that hurt her.

“Linda, I’m…” I caught my lower lip with my
teeth and gave a frustrated sigh. “This is why I need chocolates,
okay? Now you see it?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t.”

I looked aside, bringing down my shoulders
in despair and struggling to find a way to explain why my temper
was balancing on a wire instead of being tied up. And the candy
outburst gave me an idea. “I’m on my period,” I muttered, looking
back at her. It’d been a lie, of course. But she didn’t have a way
to know—unless she highlighted the days on that meticulous agenda
of hers, which wouldn’t have been as bizarre as one would think.
Her enhanced motherly instinct pushed her to do things like this.
That candy rebuke was one among hundreds.

“So?” She shrugged off my excuse.

“
So
, I need an overflow of sugar
running through my body. It’s the only thing that calms me down.” I
pointed my eyes at her. “And you know what a hard case I can be if
I don’t wolf down sugary stuff.” That myth of girls turning into
creatures of hell—okay, maybe not a myth—every time their
moontime
came was absolutely true. Not every girl was
subject to this horrible allegory, but I was.

Though, when wasn’t I?

“Hah, you’re lying. It’s always ice cream
with you in those days, tons and tons of ice cream, even the
occasional brownie, but not Skittles or Snickers,” she said,
looking at the bottom of the tote cuddling my hip. “You only use
them when you’re enraged about something and when—”

“Ice cream has sugar. And guess what?
Skittles and Snickers have sugar as well. It’s all the same.”

“
And when
,” she repeated, squelching
my words aside. “Something involves your sister’s boyfriend.
Actually, you
only
eat this stuff when it’s Ian—and when
your Hot Tamales supplies have perished.”

Having best friends was a wonderful thing,
so rewarding and special. A treasure, Gran would’ve said—a rail one
could hold on to when falling. But sometimes, people knowing you
like the back of their hands, or like those favorite songs blasting
through their earphones, wasn’t that wonderful. It was, in fact, a
royal pain in the neck. “I don’t care about that douche bag. He can
go and choke the life out from him with his guitar strings if he
wants.” I sneered, that fire I’d been working on so hard to smother
since last night about to explode into a firestorm. I slid my hand
into the tote and fished out the first chocolate my hand found. My
heated body needed a good injection of cooling sugar.

“Since you spent more than twenty bucks in
that machine, it must be pretty bad this time.” She arched her
eyebrows, her eyes flying with possible ideas.

I peeled of the noisy paper from the bar and
plunged my teeth into the hard-mushy concoction, biting out a
mouthful of nuts and caramel. Though I wasn’t very fond of nuts—I’d
always felt they tasted like wood—their marriage with chocolate was
definitely good. “This time, however,
lovely
Ian doesn’t
know it.” I mumbled between munches, the streams of sweetness
sliding past my tongue and into my body. The fire was already
decreasing, as if flaming trees amid a firestorm were being
splashed with water.

“Okay, so, maybe it’s not as bad as you
think. I mean, if he doesn’t know that what he did was wrong, maybe
there wasn’t an evil purpose behind…whatever it was he did,” she
added after realizing she still didn’t know what’d happened.

“It is bad,” I said, taking another mouthful
of chocolate. Suddenly, one bar didn’t seem enough to cool me down.
“And he
did
have a purpose.”

“Tell me what it was, then.”

I was about to explain that treacherous
truce of his when I spotted the double J’s and Buffy walking toward
us. They hadn’t seen me yet. Their prattle was all too interesting
to pay attention to the rest of the human beings in the hallway.
Taking my chance, I pulled Linda by the hand and dragged her toward
the storage room standing a few feet away from the busy cafeteria,
careful to avoid the trio—Buffy especially. Linda was utterly
confused, I could see it from the corner of my eye, but she never
said anything. She just kept along with my pace.

Knowing the storage room door would be
unlocked around this time of the day—a secret only a few knew—I
pulled it open, waited for Linda to pass, and silently closed it
behind me. A dim shaft of sunlight sneaked through a small window,
spilling a muted shade of the afternoon’s color over the edges of
the lined shelves crowded with tools and materials of all sorts.
The maintenance room was a relaxing place, one I’d especially
visited before Linda’s arrival. It was the only place in school
where I could find peace, and the small old couch in the corner
made me feel at home. So with the quiet air pervading the room
and—

Was that a leak? An incessant, rhythmic
sound, like water droplets falling onto the ground, played in the
air. Following the nagging, little noise, I realized there was a
second sound trailing it.
Gasps
. Someone else was here. And
with the awareness came a clear image. Besides us, I was certain
there was more than one person haunting this shadowy room—and I was
certain what the noises were. I turned to look at Linda and pressed
my finger to my lips, asking her to not break the silence masking
us. I tiptoed to the third row of shelves, the noises getting
deeper, and stopped at the edge. Wanting to have fun for at least a
few seconds, I readied myself and jumped into their space with
mighty strength, screaming at the same time, “Busted!”

The girl unstitched herself from the guy as
if she’d suddenly touched acid and jerked her head in my direction
so fast that it was a wonder her neck hadn’t cracked. It wouldn’t
have been a surprise if she’d had a heart attack in the process.
But more than alarm, her eyes gleamed with humiliation, whereas the
guy’s wide eyes froze in worry—at least, until he grasped the sight
of me and realized I wasn’t part of the school staff.

“What a Kodak moment,” I told them with a
wicked smile. “Just look at your rosy faces and swollen lips. You
must be a passionate kisser, huh?” I asked the guy who was now
straightening his shirt.

He threw me a quick scan from head to toe,
one of those that guys specialized in, and stopped on my lips.
“Want to find out for yourself?” he asked huskily, pushing away all
trace of worry from his face.

“You idiot!” The girl slapped him on the arm
and stormed away. She must’ve seen Linda before snapping the door
close because she shouted, “Enjoy your threesome you morons!”

Since all his focus was aimed on me, the
girl’s biting words didn’t reach their goal. His brain only seemed
to be between his legs. “So…are you up for some tasting?” he asked,
looking at my chest and suddenly finding it hard to detach his eyes
from there.

If the circumstances were different, with no
Linda waiting for me in one corner, and with no desire to punch him
in the face for being such a prick with that girl, I would’ve
considered his offer and maybe ended up making out with him.
Despite his callous and poised attitude, the guy was really cute,
and it’d been so, so long since I’d kissed someone that it was
growing into a sharp pebble in my shoe. I couldn’t even remember
what it was like pressing my lips against someone else’s, and that
wasn’t normal. For anybody. I wasn’t an easy girl, I’d hardly had
two boyfriends and never kissed a guy who wasn’t, but I had my
needs and they were calling to me—especially now that my body was
desperate to stamp out that ball of fierce fire inside of me. A
kiss would’ve helped to the cause, no doubt.

But this wasn’t the place, and he wasn’t the
guy. “Kind of desperate, are we?” I told him with a tilt of my
head, stamping my hands on my hips.

“For you, always.” He slipped his hands
through the arcs of my arms and settled them on my lower back.
“I’ve always known there was some warmth inside all that coldness,”
he said, looking down at me. “And I'm more than willing to have a
sample of it.” He leaned his face toward mine.

I smiled. “If you don’t get out, right now,”
I said calmly, though infusing the right amount of sourness to stop
him midway. “I’ll chop off your friends there,” I glanced at his
lower part. He shot a glimpse to the same area. “And have them for
breakfast.” I ended with an innocent grin.

Maybe my voice had been more vinegary than
I’d intended, or maybe the image hadn’t been so pleasant to his
senses, because he released me a moment later and strode out with a
final look at me—an anxious look. I tapped my shoulder inwardly for
that one.

Linda, standing on the corner as if she’d
been grounded, stared at me with awe.

“What?” I asked.

“Did you really just tell a guy you were
going to chop off his…you know.” She motioned her hands to the area
in discussion.

“It worked didn’t it?”

“Sheesh, no wonder why guys are so afraid of
you.”

“Oh, what a cruel world, loneliness hunts
me. I’ll never meet love.”

She shook her head. “And you really don’t
care.”

“Of course I don’t. The day I’ll decide I
want a guy…he’ll come to me in a heartbeat, easy as that.”

“Coming from some other girl, I would’ve
said she was bigheaded. You though…there’s no point in denying the
truth, you can have whoever you want,” she said, suddenly wistful,
dropping her eyes to her shoes. Brad’s image was most certainly
piercing her mind. “And he’ll be really lucky, Dafne. You have a
huge heart, even if you hide it most of the time,” she said,
looking up at me.

I gave her small smile. “Yeah, yeah, I know
the speech. But I'm sure the luckiest guy will be the one who finds
this sweet damsel in distress.” I waved my hand in her direction. I
paused and looked at her, fathoming her sorrow, and sighed.
“Someday you’ll find your knight, Linda—because, believe it or not,
knights are the heart-stirring and cool ones. Fairy tales just got
it wrong, somehow,” I told her. “Brad was just the lame, spoiled
prince with skin-deep beauty that stumbled in your way.”

She chuckled, the gleam back in her eyes. “I
think I’ve never heard a better analogy.”

“Well, it’s true.” I shrugged. “Princes
suck.”

She laughed. “Yeah, you never struck me as
the princess type.”

“Never.”

“But you do have the heart of one. Just look
at the nice things you told me.”

I snorted, but kept the barely-there-smile
on my lips.

A groan spurted between us. Linda lowered
her eyes to her stomach. “Looks like I haven’t totally forgotten
it’s lunch time.” She raised her eyes to me once more, a plea
brimming them.

“If you want to know what happened with Ian,
you’re staying here.” I reached the bottom of my tote and fished
out some supplies. “Rainbow or chocolate?” I held them up in my
hands.

Being the curious person she was, she knew
she didn’t have a choice. “Rainbow.” She sighed in resignation,
plucking it from my left hand. “My stomach will resent this, you
know.”

“It’s just this once, Linda,” I said,
settling down on the floor. It was a little dusty, enough to trace
random shapes with my fingertip, or to leave the faint print of my
butt on it, but I didn’t care. I could wash my hands later. “There,
you can have my throne.” I pointed to the couch in front of me.

She walked up to the old fella and bent to
wipe off the surface with her hand. A small cloud of dust floated
into the air. “I guess you’ve been here more than once.” She sat
down on the edge, reluctantly, keeping her back away from touching
the rest of the couch, her slender arms squeezed to her sides. She
reminded me of those well-mannered girls in old movies, all
straight and chin high, ready to have a cup of tea in the parlor.
The only thing missing was the funny hat, the too long dress and
the lacy gloves.

Her stiff posture, however, had nothing to
do with old-fashioned manners. Unlike me, dust was a nagging issue
to Linda. It would’ve been to anybody whose second name was
“Tidy.”

“Once upon a time, this place and I used to
be like two peas in a pod.” I peeled off the chocolate and sank my
teeth into my second sin.

“I’ll take that as you spending a great deal
of time here—because the simile is kind of loose.” She poured some
of the skittles on her hand. “Two peas in a pod need to—”

“Stop with the mechanics,” I said annoyed.
“I really don’t care. Just focus on my next words because I won’t
repeat them. If I do, I may incinerate myself in a blast of
fury.”

Before losing the impulse, I lunged myself
into the explanation, telling her about the movie session, the
humiliating tearful moment, the utterly embarrassing exposure, and
the damned truce he’d tricked me on, leading me to a whole new
level of hate. Being played was something that punched my thin
boundaries of forbearance, and the fact that I’d been played by
Ian, nonetheless, pushed those fences far into the stratosphere,
blurring my limits of good judgment.