Forbidden Desire

I didn’t hang around long enough to see the rest of their first meeting. That day I’d ran to the nurse’s office claiming to be ill. I didn’t have to pretend too much; she’d taken one look at me and pronounced me pale and sickly looking. So when I asked for my mom to be called to come pick me up from school, there was no hassle.

Mom had been in a panic, something I hadn’t considered when I made that mad dash to the nurse’s office. I’d forgotten how overprotective she’d grown in the years since the divorce, but that day I couldn’t find it in me to care. I’d just brushed her off with the lie that I was cramping, and when she put her hand to my forehead to check for fever, I’d only felt slightly guilty for deceiving her.

I’d gone home and climbed into bed with the covers over my head and was surprised when I actually fell asleep. It was my great escape, something that had started when mom and dad first started fighting with each other. For some reason, I would always escape into hours of sleep, only to awaken to face the same issues. But for those few hours, I could find peace.

I woke with tears on my cheeks and a lump in my chest. My heart hurt so badly I couldn’t even find the strength to move, and what’s worst, Tyler hadn’t been home from practice when I finally made my way downstairs. When mom said, he wouldn’t be home until later because he was with a friend, I wanted to die.

That night when he came home, I’d just glared at him with my arms crossed over my chest like a jealous wife. “Did you even know that I left school sick? Did you even care?” I didn’t wait around for an answer just turned and ran from the room before I knocked that stupid surprised look off his face. The pig didn’t even come to my room to check if I was okay. Some stepbrother he is.

I was a mix of confusion and hurt with nowhere and no one to turn to. Who could I tell about what was really bothering me? I couldn’t tell mom, the one person I’ve been able to share everything with up until this point. And I was for damn sure not going to share something so intimate with any of the girls at school.

There was no best friend back home to call and talk to. Most of those bridges had been burned before we left town when most of the parents had sided with dad and his new slag, so I was all alone. I was so angry at him for not even checking up on me that I refused to even eat at the same dinner table with him.

Instead, I’d said I was too ill to eat, which is usually true when I have my period. Mom must not have been thinking straight since she knows my cycle almost as well as I do; it must’ve slipped her mind. It was true anyway; I couldn’t have eaten a thing if my life depended on it. My throat was too clogged with emotion.

For the next few days, I felt like an unhinged person my moods more erratic than an out of control rollercoaster. I was short-tempered and agitated, and the slightest thing set me off. The only one not seemingly bothered by my behavior was the jackass that was responsible for the change in me.

I had to ride to school with him since I didn’t have my license as yet, something I planned to rectify within the next few weeks, but even that made me sad. Because once I get my license, I would no longer need him to drive me around, and it was the last thing we shared. Suddenly something I’d been looking forward to my whole teen life was now tainted.

Tyler had no clue, not even when I would snap at him and try getting away from him as soon as possible whenever we found ourselves somewhere together. For that first week, I watched him get closer and closer to that Sherry person, and I think I contemplated murder a time or two.

They went out one night; I’m sure because the other girls were fuming the next day, he’d told some lie about hanging out with his friends, at least that’s what mom had said the night before at the dinner table when he was once again a no-show. And then the phone calls started, the bitch was infiltrating my space.

Lora

She could talk to him all she liked at school; there was nothing I could do to stop that, but the bitch was not allowed in my personal space. That last day, the day I finally snapped, Tyler, the clueless, had been going on and on about her in the car on the way home from school.