Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1) (12 page)

I really hate to take Derrick’s advice on relationships but the alternative is to pretend I’ve never met her, and I just can’t do that. Bree Porter is what I want. She’s the first girl I’ve even considered spending time with since Adrienne completely destroyed me. How can I just walk away from that?

I look down the hall just as Bree and Skylar turn the corner and enter into my view. Skylar has her arm draped over Bree’s shoulder and Bree is looking up at her. They are both laughing and they look happy. It sucks that they look so happy.

I watch them silently for a few moments, trying to see if there really is something between them. Derrick does the same, however, I’m sure he’s imagining them naked and having sex.

Bree’s eyes meet mine and she quickly looks away. Skylar runs her hand down Bree’s back and lets it linger on her ass. Bree reaches for Skylar’s hand and casually takes it away from where it’s lingering. As she does this, Skylar looks over in my direction and notices me watching. She kisses Bree on the forehead before whispering something into her ear and walking away.

I lower my head and Derrick pats me on the back in an attempt to comfort me.

It doesn’t work.

Skylar

I walk into the girl’s bathroom and lock myself in the last stall, putting the toilet lid down and sitting on it. I take in a deep and shaky breath.

After tonight, Bree and Evan will be more than friends. She will go out with him on ‘dates’ and she will spend her spare time with him. She will fall in love with him and slip out of my life and I will lose her
and
her mom and dad. I will lose the only piece of normal I’ve ever known in my life. Just the thought of it makes my heart ache uncontrollably.

I reach into the pocket of my hoodie and pull out my little plastic case of classic razors I’ve been using for cutting since I was twelve. Before that, I had always used whatever I could get my hands on, but the cuts were messy and didn’t heal nicely. With the razor blades, I was able to get a fast, clean, and virtually pain-free cut in seconds that would heal over nicely within a few days. Yesterday’s cuts with the knife and the compass are both still aching and that pain is a constant reminder that my life is spinning out of control once again.

I hate the reminder.

Knowing that I only have about five minute before the bell will ring for first period, I, without hesitation, take a razor blade out of the little box. I lift up my shirt and cut three times across my side from my back toward my ribcage. The blood begins to pool in the cuts as I wipe the razor off with a piece of toilet paper and shove it back into the plastic case. I look again at the cuts that are now bleeding down my side, toward the waist of my jeans and instead of wiping up the blood, I watch it slowly flow down my skin. My breathing begins to calm and I realize that my heart isn’t aching like it had been just moments before. I smile inwardly.

But when I look at the blood again, all I can hear is
his
panicked voice inside my head telling me to stop, and I cringe at the uninvited memory creeping into my mind. Why won’t he get out of my head already?

“Stop it! You’re mutilating yourself,” Parker exclaimed when he walked in on me cutting myself one night at The Misfit Mansion. Nearly six months had passed since our introduction to one another and since then, we had spent almost every weekend together in each other’s arms just talking and smoking pot.

I looked at him with my mouth hanging open in shock. What he had just done was in violation of the Misfit rules and he knew it. We were never to voice an opinion openly about someone’s actions unless the action was directly harming someone else without his or her consent. I covered the cuts I had just made on my inner thigh with my hand and attempted to hide my embarrassment. An embarrassment I shouldn’t have even been feeling. He was very much out of line, and he knew it.

“I could have you kicked out for that,” I said with narrowed eyes.

“I don’t care. I can’t watch you do that to yourself anymore and not say anything.”

“Then don’t watch,” I returned angrily. “I didn’t invite you in.”

“Skylar—” he began, but I cut him off quickly.

“No,” I hissed. I got up from the bed and shut the door before continuing. “You don’t have the right to call me by my name in here and make me feel like my persona isn’t ok. This is me. This is who I am and you’ve always known that.”

“You’re destroying your body.”

“We are all destroying our bodies in some form here, Parker!”

He dropped down on the bed and let out an angry sigh.

I stood in front of him in only my black panties and tank top. The cuts I had made on my inner thigh continued to bleed and roll down my leg.

Without hesitation, he placed his hand on top of the wound to stop the bleeding and looked up at me sadly.

I put my hand over his gently. “I’m not your responsibility,” I said to him as I removed his hand from the cut.

“You are.” He reached for a box of tissue on the bedside table and grabbed a few sheets to hand to me. “Please.”

I took the tissue and pressed it against the wounds as I took a seat on the bed beside him. “Why do you come here?” I asked with a sigh. “You aren’t even a Misfit, not really, not anymore. You smoke weed with me and that’s pretty much it.”

He smirked slightly despite the seriousness of our conversation. “Did you ever think that maybe how you know me in here is the complete opposite of how I am out there? Or even how I used to be in here for that matter?”

“I know about your misfitting days before me, you told me all about the sex rooms with your friends,” I reminded him.

He shook his head in distaste, not wanting to remember those drug-filled nights. “Yeah well, maybe I’m an angry drug dealer out there who beats up people for fun, did you ever think of that? Maybe me taking care of you now and smoking a little bit of pot
is
my persona.”

Was that a possibility? Could the guy I had spent every weekend with for the past six months really be so different out there in the real world? I suddenly realized that I don’t actually know much about Parker’s life at all.

I turned to look him in the eye. “Is it?” I challenged.

He shrugged. “What would you say if it is?” He lay down on the bed and placed his hands behind his head as he attempted to look indifferent, but I knew better.

I thought the question over for a moment. I lay down next to him and turned on my side. “I’d say it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to know who you are out there because out there isn’t real. In here, who we are to each other, this is real.”

He smiled, taking my hand into his. “In here, all I want to do is take care of you.”

“I know.”

“Do you want to know everything…about who I am out there? Because I’ll tell you if you want.”

Did I want to know? Did it really matter? We weren’t anything to each other out there. Would we ever be?

“No.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Who you are in here is who you want to be.”

He licked his lower lip, looking as though he was trying to decide if he should say something to that but was unsure of how to approach it without setting me off.

“What?”

He hesitated before speaking. “Is who you are in here who
you
want to be?”

My eyebrows narrowed. “What are you getting at?” I demanded, feeling the anger rise in me once again.

“Those guys you sleep with in here,” he said, “they’re using you.”

“I’m using them.”

“Fine,” he scoffed.

“It’s the truth.”

“Ok.”

“You aren’t being fair,” I said, raising my voice. I sat up in the bed. “This is who I was when we met. And now you expect me to just change because… because what? Because you’re jealous?”

“I’m not jealous.”

“What are you then?”

He shakes his head. “I just want you to stop sleeping with them. They don’t deserve you. You should be sleeping with someone who deserves you.”

“Oh, and I suppose you think that
you
deserve me?”

“I think I know you, and I care about you! I think that matters.”

“I never asked you to take care of me! And I certainly didn’t ask you to care about me.”

He sat up quickly. “Well, I do! God damn it, Skylar! I can’t begin to tell you how much I wish I didn’t care. But I fucking care! I care that you go around fucking all these strangers, giving your body to them like it’s nothing. Like it
means
nothing!

“Oh, you should talk!” I interjected.

“I’m not done!” he countered, jumping to his feet. “I stay there, waiting for you to come out of their rooms, praying that you’re ok, and it drives me crazy! I don’t want to care, but fucking I do!” He slammed his fist on the bedside table and the lamp sitting on top crashed to the floor.

I bent down to pick up the broken pieces. “Parker,” I began.

“What?” he grumbled miserably, sitting himself back down beside me.

“I don’t know what to say.”

He took a shaky breath and reached for my hand, squeezing it tightly. “Please just say you’ll stop.”

The first period bell brings me back to the present. I hastily wipe up the blood dripping down my side and cover my three new scars with my shirt.

I hurry out of the stall and wash my hands in the sink before making my way to class. I’m trying everything in my power to forget what I just remembered moments before, but I can’t push it out of my mind. My memories of him haunt me.

When I enter my class I walk as casually as possible over to my assigned desk in the third row and take a seat without looking at any of my classmates. I take extra special care to avoid eye contact with the fifth row where I know both Parker and Evan sit.

Mr. Clark closes the door and begins his calculus lesson after I take my seat. We are about ten minutes into a detailed explanation of time derivatives and their proper uses, when Parker walks in.

“Mr. Michelson, better late than never I suppose.”

“Sorry, Mr. Clark,” Parker mumbles quietly, as he saunters over to his desk in front of Evan’s. I look up at him because a simple mumbled apology, when he walks late into class, is not Parker’s style. He has a black eye and his bottom lip is busted and swollen. I sigh. This is the third time in two weeks that he’s looked like this.

Parker looks up, having heard my sigh, and his head turns toward me. I don’t turn away though, not this time. Instead, I tilt my head to the side and look at him sadly for a moment, remembering the damaged guy I met two years ago at
The Misfit Mansion
. His expression softens as his eyes seem to be searching my face for an answer to a secret question.

I notice Evan watching this exchange. His curious eyes are watching us closely, and as soon as I realize this, I instantly turn away to face the front of the class.