Chasing After Infinity (7 page)

Then I notice a huge crowd gathered in the end of the hallway, some staring and whispering while others are just backing away. I creep closer, curious to see what it’s about.

“—No, you shut the hell up,” the team’s quarterback, Ryan Kingsley is saying, his voice almost a growl, “you’ve been fucking around with my girlfriend and you don’t think--”

What a way to start my day, an
all out
fight. People in front of me block my view of who he’s talking to. “Yeah, you don’t like it,” the guy who he’s been threatening replies, “but she sure does.”

Then Ryan swings a wild punch at the guy, his fist connecting with his cheek in one hard crack. Some guys clear the way for them just as I recognize the person wiping blood off his face. Adrian.

He blinks at the guy clutching him by his collar and a small, cold smirk curls his mouth. It’s as if he enjoys this. Then the next thing I know, he shoves Ryan against the set of lockers so hard that his skull crashes against the metal with a loud clang, his eyes sliding close.

Some freshmen girls passing gasps and I try to push myself through the large mass of people but someone pulls me out of the way. As Adrian turns, Ryan gets out of his shock and
enraged,
tries to hit him
again but Adrian sidesteps him and punches him hard in the stomach, making him groan and bend over with pain.

“What’s the matter?” Adrian taunts him, panting slightly, grinning.

“Hey, stop it!” I yell. His eyes focus on me slightly but don’t seem to really see me. Adrian pulls back his arm to punch him again but I drag him forcibly by the shoulders from the slumped over Ryan. As quick as a flash, he pushes me away blindly. Shocked, I collide against the floor, my hip aching where it hit the cold tiles.

He stops and looks at me lying on the ground, his hands clenching. “Goddamn it! Quit getting in things you shouldn’t,” he spits and I stagger back from the sudden naked hostility in his low voice. The look in his eyes doesn’t seem like him.

Slowly, the crowd dissipates until it’s just me and him there.

 
“What the hell is your problem?” I shout back, pointing a finger at him and slowly getting up.

He laughs, wiping blood off of his face.
“My problem?”

Something about him is not right. All he is now is a kind of cold amusement and the slyness in his eyes has vanished.

Adrian shakes his head, laughing again. It’s not a laugh; it’s something much more
bitter
. The sound echoes around the empty halls, acting like dry starch on my tongue. “What’s the problem with me?” He repeats. “That’s it. I’m the thing that’s wrong.”

Not comprehending, I squint. He stares at somewhere behind me. “Leave,” he finally says.

I take a step back unconsciously, confused. The playful Huntington I can handle but this? “Hey--”

Adrian turns his beach glass green eyes on me. “Leave.” His voice is sharp as a scathing knife.

The air has shifted all of a sudden.

I jab a finger at his chest. “I won’t go away until you tell me--”

Then I stop as I feel him draw even nearer. I was hyperaware of how close his body is to mine and it sends chills down my back. I don’t know what he’s pulling here. This whole morning feels like a lucid dream. His eyes are half-closed and he tilts just slightly down so that our foreheads are almost touching. Our bodies press closely together and I can’t help but close my eyes and descend into the solid rush. I can feel him breathing softly, his mouth so close to mine and instinctually, an exhale escapes out of me and my breath hitches. I can smell his heady scent of cinnamon apples. He stays there for a second, feeling like an eternity as we stand there, me backed up against the locker, him immobile. Before our mouths fully touched, the barest brush of a kiss, I gasp and as if doused with ice-cold water, break away fast.

A breath I hadn’t realized I was holding in rushes out of me.

Then as fast as lightning, I turn and run away furiously.

chapter
five

ADRIAN

I’m a self-made insomniac. This urge to close my eyes and blot out the world for just a while can hit me at any time in the day. Sometimes, I’d end up wide awake in the middle of the night and I’d listen to the soft cricket noises from outside my window as I lay in my bed, watching the shadows revolve around the walls. On some other clear nights, I’d sneak up to the rooftop alone while the rest of the world was sleeping.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Every now and then, I’d fall asleep in either the middle of Civics or late into the evening and later, get dead beat when I was awake. My self-screwing is inescapable.

I muffle my slight moan with my arm as the alarm clock goes off the second time in the morning. I swear under my breath and roll off the bed, hitting my hipbone on the bedpost as I get up. I wince, hobbling to the door, pulling a crinkly blue shirt over my head, my dark hair sticking to the cotton in a static electric mess. In the bathroom mirror, I look like shit. My eyes look bloodshot green from the lack of sleep caused by the blow-out party last night. I vaguely remember the laughing girls pressing up against me, the cloying perfume clinging to them, the black smell of barbecue and smoke, jarring laughter and flashing lights.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I stumble down the long winding stairs, in a half-drunken stupor and enter the kitchen, coming face to face with my adoptive dad. “Don’t think I’ll let you go so easily,” he says sharply, turning his judgemental
eyes on me. “I just got a call that you got into a fight with Kingsley’s kid yesterday. He was supposed to go to a football tournament today but he had to cancel because he ended up with a mild concussion.”

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
“Oh, really?”
I say sardonically as I settle down at the huge oak table, shaking cereal into my bowl and watching his face grow increasingly red.

“You better watch it,” he replies menacingly, pointing a finger at me. “We’ve tolerated enough--”

I cut him off, standing up so abruptly that my chair bangs to the ground. “You’re not my fucking father. So don’t try to control me.”

“That’s it.” He stops and slams his hand on the table in rage, making the crystal glasses shake. Just then, my adoptive mother walks into the room wearing a robe with fuzzy slippers and stops once she sees us.

“Greg? What’s going on?” She
asks,
a crease between her brows. “Look--”

“See? This is what you get for agreeing to raise a baby we didn’t even know,” he says angrily to her, cutting her off.

“Wasn’t he one of your colleague’s sons?” She objects, her eyes thin when she glances at me.

“I thought we were being kind for taking him in but now look at what our kindness has done,” he spits, his eyes brutal.
“Wasted!”

They’re talking about me as if I’m a dog that hasn’t been trained properly. Rage simmers under me and I want to break things.
A lot of things.
I take a couple of plates and smash them to the floor, hearing the satisfying cracks as they hit the tiled floor. My adoptive mom gasps audibly and a dead silence follows.

 
“Little bastard!” My adoptive dad snarls and he raises a hand as if to hit me.

“Go ahead, punch me,” I say, gritting my teeth, daring him.

For a while, he looks like he wants to kill me but he doesn’t do anything. Finally, he just sets it down and growls, “You’re grounded.”

I almost want to laugh.
“Yeah, sure.”

I’m just like my biological dad. Doing, doing, and still not being enough. I’ve never known him but I heard stories about him. My real mom would rage on about him while she was drunk when I was five. To her, I was the “bastard child,” a kid that she didn’t want to have but gave birth to anyway. She knew that I would grow up to be my dad.

And I did. I ditched classes, got drunk, went to night bars with fake I.D., slept around, and the typical shit.

I’m spinning downwards like a drain.

The sad thing is that I don’t give a shit.

I pick up my jacket and sling it over my shoulder, heading for the door.

“Where are you going?” My adoptive dad yells. “Come back here!”

 
“Well, I don’t answer to you,” I answer crisply and open the door.

“Don’t you go out that
door!
” He shouts angrily behind me. “I’m still talking!”

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Without another glance, I grab my Cadillac car keys before going out, letting the front door slam hard behind me.

Ψ
Ψ
Ψ
 

AVENA

After school finished and I felt like the entire day was drowning me in exhaustion, I took the car to Verona Shores, a private coastline beach on the side of a few enclosed houses on a cul-de-sac. As soon as the car is parked on the side, I take off my shoes and my toes curl into the soft, chilly sand. I’m glad that there’s not a person in sight because I feel the need to be alone. The feeling of the freezing cold water calms me as I
dip
my fingers into the pool, making a slight ripple. I’m by the seashore, tasting the familiar breeze. The stretch of sand and the fields of long grass seem infinite. The gray rocks guard the shoreline, grazed and scored by the roiling waves.

I lean back on the sand, tucking my chin on my knees, staring out at the expansive shimmering lake. Seagulls crow down at me, gliding lazily above my head. I toss them a few of my half-eaten crackers and they swarm over to fight for the crumbs. The red-golden setting sun’s beams hit the crashing
waves
just right and I tilt my head under the syrupy rays. This is my getaway place. The place I want to go when I feel like I want to just laze under the sun and feel all the weight on my shoulders being melted away.

The silence seems almost trancelike now, making me feel like I’m the only person alive at this hour.

All of a sudden, I just want to cry. This used to be her special place too. Ever since I was ten, we’d come up here and pick out seashells together. She’d teach me what stone was what and we’d collect a bunch of different rocks to carry home. On one warm summer day, we’d built this huge sandcastle with its own moat, stairs and towers. When I came back to admire it the next day, it was gone.

“The waves must’ve gotten it,” Mom said, gently combing my hair with her fingers.

“They stole it?” I was indignant and even then, I was a stubborn ten
year
old. “Well, I want it back!”

She laughed. “No, the tides come in the night time and the castle probably collapsed.” She sighed and shook her head derisively, the laughter draining from her eyes. “Like they say, good things never seem to last, do they?”

I held on to her hand, my eyes taking in the spot where our sandcastle once was.

I close my eyes against that memory, its end stinging me. The hole that I’ve been trying to escape from threatens to consume me again.
Bottomless, dark.
I’m scrambling to fill it with everything I had, it still devouring its way through me.

Unable to take it anymore, I spring up, eyes soaring open. I roll my pants up to my knees and weave through the tides into the water. The sea wind blows my hair back and I like the free feeling that runs into my blood. I spread my arms out, lifting myself to the wide open lake.

The waves splash over me, withdrawing, and coming back at me full-force. All of my emotions boil to the surface, all the confusion, anger, and sadness hitting me, almost knocking me over, and leaving me breathless.

Caught up in the feeling, I spin around and around in the lake, the water swirling around me like a mini whirlpool. I keep on going around in circles, breathing in the salty air, feeling a rush so powerful.

When I stop, the dizziness catches up with me and I blink once, twice. The water seems to dancing below me, spinning on its own, out of control.

Just like everything else.

Then I hear my name being called.

Squinting in the sunshine, I see a silhouette coming towards me.

“
Avena
?”

With a startled noise, I realize that it’s Adrian, his hair windblown, jacket open, coming down the shoreline. He’s wearing
a pale
blue button-down and ripped denim, padding barefoot on the sand. His eyes are wary.