The front door slammed shut behind him.
“Varian!” His mom stood up from the living room couch. “Where the hell have you been!”
Varian stopped in the small hallway that opened to the living room from the front door. His hair was dripping wet from the rain outside. He hadn’t been thinking when he stopped into the house, dragging in mud and cold rain. He was bundled up and the heat in the house was turned up so high that he was starting to sweat.
It wasn’t enough, however, to warm the freezing chill inside of him. He still felt as if he was standing by the lake’s edge, waiting for a sign to appear to him that it was time for him to die.
He hadn’t thought about what he was going to say to anyone when he came back from wandering the same forest he’d been abducted in. They couldn’t know where he’d truly been. They would flip the fuck out.
That was what any rational person would do anyway.
He stared at the almost pristine living room. Though it was still September, his mom was already pulling out the Christmas decorations. October would have been to callous after what he’d gone through. Hanging dead corpses and spider webs wasn’t exactly good therapy when he’d seen the real thing.
Thanksgiving would have been better.
Varian wasn’t sure he could handle the constant reminder that he was going to have to pretend to be happy to get stupid things on the holiday.
Though at Thanksgiving he would have to pretend to eat.
That was easier than putting on a fake smile.
He looked away from the pretty lights on the too green Christmas tree. It was all too fake. Faker than the plastic tree his mom had bought before he was born.
“Out.”
His almost bored eyes fell on his mom. She rushed toward him and pulled him into her arms.
His hands stayed limply at his sides. He tenses as her hands spread over his back. It had been soothing when he was younger. It felt inappropriate now. He didn’t feel any comfort.
She pulled away. Her eyes frantically looked over his face. She was searching for her lost son.
“You think this is funny? I was just about to call the police!”
He pushed her further away. His fingertips burned. He yanked them back and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets.
“I’m fine. I don’t need you riding up on my ass all the time.”
There really was no point in even pretending to be normal. In this house or outside, it didn’t matter where he was. He was a monster that didn’t belong in this world.
She was close to tears. He’d done that. He hadn’t even been trying. He had a true talent for ruining things.
Strands of her hair was falling out of her pony tail. Her clothes were ruffled as if she been pulling at them for some time. Perhaps she had. It didn’t change things.
Her fingers wrapped tightly around his wrist. She was faster than he was. He was too caught up in his thoughts to see the attack.
“When you came home, I didn’t ask questions. All that mattered then was that I had you back. That you were safe.”
He looked away. She was looking at him like he was a freak. Her emotion was too raw.
“Now all I can think about is if all this wasn’t just a mistake. What happened Varian? What happened to you while you were out there?”
The floor was a lot more interesting than anything else at that moment. It couldn’t talk back. It didn’t ask questions. It didn’t need something in return for being kind and for just listening. He didn’t have to talk to it to be comforted.
Humans always wanted answers. They really didn’t care if demanding hurt others in return.
Her warmth used to be a place where Varian sought out safety. Now, he just wanted to escape from it as badly as he’d wanted to escape the masked man.
She cried out as she shook him with all her might. Sobs tore from her, tears streaming down her face. “Who did this to you?”
Everything was boiling up inside of him. He couldn’t take it anymore. He was going to explode. He was exploding.
“No one!”
He smacked her back, his hand raised before he could think. All he wanted was to escape. This place wasn’t his home anymore. No house would ever be able to calm the person he was turning into. If he could save his family from the heartbreak, he wouldn’t ask for anything else.
As he watched her stumble back, the lights of the house flickered. Lightning struck outside the living room windows. Rain poured down, pelting against the roof like storms of angry fists.
She touched her cheek where he’d struck her. She gaped at him.
He didn’t mean it. But he couldn’t open his mouth to apologize. Between them, the air turned cold, silence oozing to fill the gaps of thunder.
“Nothing happened. Nothing.”
The lying was becoming too easy.
He stepped around her and disappeared to his room. She reached for him at the last second, one last try to hold him, but he pretended not to notice.
***
It was another day at school. Another day in which he had to pretend that he was eating. He was starting to notice how thin he looked in the face. He knew that he needed to eat. He’d forced himself to at least put something in his stomach, but it was so much work. It felt like it was using up more energy to stuff his face than what he was getting back from the food.
He didn’t bother looking at his friends at the table. Hazel still hadn’t tried to talk to him, not even a phone call. That didn’t bother him as much as did the fact that Padriac hadn’t heard a word he’d said the day he’d confessed his feelings. He truly believed that that would have been the end of his problems. As foolish as it was, it was all he could have hoped for. There wouldn’t be another chance.
He couldn’t bring himself to say the horrible thoughts he was having.
Mary tapped the lunch table in front of him. “Have you thought about the party?”
He shook his head.
He stared down at his lunch. He wasn’t hungry at all. Not in the slightest.
“I don’t think I should go.”
“Have you talked to Hazel? She seemed like she really wanted to talk to you.”
He didn’t really believe that. If she wanted to talk to him, she could have texted him. Or just cornered him in the hall between classes. It wasn’t that hard to get in touch with him. Kacey had been able to find him in the forest. It wasn’t a hard thing to do.
He bitterly brushed off the need to say any of that. It was better sometimes to not say anything at all. Things couldn’t get much worse than it already was.
Mary opened her mouth to say something else, but she was cut off by Kacey pulling the empty chair out from beside Varian.
“Hey.” Kacey sat down, slamming his tray down onto the table. “What’re you doing sitting over here?”
Varian blinked, unsure if he wanted to say anything at all. He hadn’t noticed that he’d picked the opposite side of the fairly large round lunch table of where Padriac and Mary were sitting. They were almost touching sides from how close they were.
“‘Cause,” he said. He sighed when Kacey stole his milk. “Go away.”
He hadn’t exactly forgotten when had happened between them in the forest. Kacey surely couldn’t have forgotten either.
It felt like an intimate moment that shouldn’t be brought up when there were others around. He wasn’t planning on doing anything like that in the first place. But he wanted to remind Kacey that he’d spoken loudly about how he didn’t want to be touched. It seemed like he hadn’t learned.
“No.” Kacey opened the carton of milk and downed it all at once. “I don’t want to. Are you going to eat that?”
He pointed at the sandwich that was untouched on Varian’s tray. It was nothing but a big slab of meat squashed between two stale pieces of bread.
Varian shook his head.
It was nice to see Kacey’s face light up no matter how much he annoyed Varian. The simplicity of his joy for a sandwich was a nice turn of events. A small distraction from the horror of the world. It also showed that Kacey wasn’t completely a horrible person. He just didn’t know how to understand social boundaries.
Kacey was a sight to behold even without his quirky personality. His hair was cut just above his shoulder, not too long and not too short. With natural straight hair and bright green eyes, it wasn’t ever a surprise girls fell for him the moment they saw him. But his character always scared them off. It wasn’t every day that someone could settle him down.
Mary had always been the exception.
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