Scarlett White (19 page)

XOXOXOXOXOXO END FLASHBACK XOXOXOXOXOXO

When Scarlett finished the horrible story, she was looking down in tears. Her father was dead. Her brother was put in a mental hospital. Her mother didn't care about her. She was alone in this world.

"Scarlett?" Mr. Ortega came to their desk. Noticing her tears, he asked, "What happened?"

Scarlett was so overcome by the tears that she had been holding back for years that she couldn't bring herself to answer his question. She just stood up from the desk and ran out the door, ignoring the sound of her name being yelled. By whom? She didn't know or care. All she knew was that she wanted to get out of there as fast as her feet could carry her.

Chapter Ten

Tristan ran after
Scarlett. He didn't care if he was ditching lab. He didn't care if the damn teacher failed him. For some unexplainable reason, he would gladly give all that up for Scarlett.

Just some girl. Just some girl. Just some girl.

Those three simple words tried to enter Tristan's brain, but he wouldn't let them.
If she's just some girl, then she's my just some girl,
Tristan thought. Even though this statement wasn't true, it was enough to keep Tristan running after her.

"Scarlett!" He called after her, but she didn't turn; she just kept running. Soon enough the inevitable happened, and Tristan caught up with Scarlett. She was in mid-stride when Tristan caught up with her, and he wrapped his arms around her stomach.

"
Let go of me!"
she cried, struggling to loosen his grip on her.

"Scarlett, calm down, please!" Tristan begged.

"NO!" she continued to cry.

"Well, I'm not letting go of you until you calm down!" Tristan tightened his grip around her.

Scarlett then resorted in pathetically trying to slap at Tristan's arms. Tristan bravely took on the small blows and simply tightened his hold yet again. It took a while for Scarlett to stop fighting, but finally Scarlett, knowing that she was fighting a losing battle with Tristan, went limp in his hold. Tristan waited for Scarlett to stop crying, and when she did, he slid to the bottom of the hallway floor, leaning against the wall and holding Scarlett in his arms. It scared him that he liked the way her body curved against his.

"Scarlett, I swear to you, I didn't do that." Tristan finally spoke.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Scarlett scoffed.

"Listen to me," Tristan lifted her chin with his thumb, forcing her green eyes to lock with his brown ones, "I'm not that much of a douche."

"Then w-who did?" Scarlett whimpered. "You were outside and y-you heard Ch-Charles telling me the wh-whole story."

"No, I didn't. Scarlett, everyday during lunch in eighth grade I…" Tristan took a deep breath as if he was almost embarrassed to be telling her this. "I helped clean out Ms. Halls' classroom for Algebra because…well, I was failing and I needed the extra credit," Tristan confessed.

Scarlett just sat there speechless, trying to regain her proper breathing. "If it w-wasn't you, then who was it?" she finally asked.

"I don't know, but, Scarlett, I swear I would never have done that to you. That's such a dick move."

Scarlett laughed harshly, "Ya think?" And then more serious, she added, "But I saw you. It was you who ran away when I said your name. I swear it was you. If it wasn't you, then this boy had to be your twin because he looked a hell of a lot like you."

Scarlett sat there trying to remember every detail of the one who had snapped the twig and ran for it when she had spotted him. Brown eyes, dirty-blonde hair, fast, same height as Tristan, muscular, early growth spurt…who else could it have been if it wasn't Tristan?

All this time Scarlett believed it was Tristan who had done this horrid thing to her, and she had resented and loathed him for the deed. And now she realized it wasn't him she should be loathing. It was somebody else…but who was it exactly that she was supposed to be hating? Who had made it seem like Charles was a serial killer, and then tried to pin it on her? Who would have stooped so low to do something like that to her and Charles?

Thinking of Charles made her think of the past again. Her father was dead. Her cherished stepmother was murdered. Her mother didn't love her. Charles was locked away in some hospital. She was completely alone in this cold and cruel world. She had to fend for herself with no help from anyone. Most of the time, these thoughts simply made her shrug and think
'Well, I'm better off that way',
but on rare occasions these thoughts made her want to curl up into the fetal position and cry herself to sleep. This was one of those rare occasions. But the weird thing was normally when she felt like this, she was literally alone, but today someone was with her. Tristan was with her. And for some God forsaken reason, she was slightly happy.

Scarlett began to cry all over again as she buried her face in Tristan's chest. And Tristan held onto her tightly, letting her cry, again subconsciously thinking that he liked the way her body felt against his, even if she was crying.

It was lunch time the next day, and everybody had heard of Scarlett's breakdown during lab the previous afternoon. Nobody knew exactly what had struck her into tears. But it was the hot topic for the entire school. She could hear people whispering about it behind covered mouths and large palms. But she just tried to ignore it and go on her way as if this was completely normal.

Scarlett was yet again welcomed to the 'popular' table since she was dating Francis Rogers. Everyone considered her popular. But it was still a mystery to Scarlett as to why Francis suddenly liked her. There had to be some ulterior reason; she just couldn't figure out what it was, which really annoyed her because she was so good at figuring things out.

But lunch today was definitely going to be different. Not only was she sitting with Francis—his arm yet again wrapped securely around her waist, almost protectively—but Tristan was also there. Scarlett didn't utter a single word during the entire lunch period. Neither did Tristan nor Francis. They were just staring—make that glaring—at each other like they had the previous day by Francis's bike. Every time Tristan's eyes would slip to glance at Scarlett, Francis would automatically pull her a little bit closer into his body as if to say 'I got the girl.' A few times Scarlett had to actually push away slightly to give her some clean air to breathe.

"Hey, Scar, I just remembered something," Libby said, calling Scarlett back to reality, "Weren't we, like, friends or something back in middle school?"

Oh, wow, you have a wonderful memory, Libby, our friendship must have really meant something to you,
Scarlett thought. She merely nodded. The tension between the two boys beside her was almost too much for her. She couldn't answer any questions with her own words because she was sure that if she uttered one single word, the thin ice she was treading on with Tristan and Francis would certainly break, and they would fall into a pit of stingingly freezing cold water.

"I thought so," Libby said and then plunged into a long speech about how she must have been Scarlett's first best friend. Scarlett didn't pay any attention to Libby; yeah, she heard her voice droning on and on, but made no sense of the meaning of her words. She was worried that at any second Francis or Tristan would leap across the table and begin tearing each other apart, which still didn't make the slightest sense to Scarlett. Why did Francis suddenly ask her out? Okay, so maybe he had been sending little innuendos her way at the hospital where Charles stayed, but he had never done anything at school until just the other day when he had asked her out. And Tristan hadn't even talked to her until they had been assigned to be lab partners a week ago. Why the hell was she getting all of this attention so suddenly? It just didn't add up in her mind.

The bell signaling Honors Pre-Calculus for Scarlett and Honors English Lit for Tristan rang, and they parted. Scarlett was simply glad that lunch hadn't ended with a fight between Tristan and Francis. Tristan was not so happy to be away from Scarlett. He still didn't know if Scarlett believed him about not doing that horrible thing to her. He didn't know who in his right mind would do such a thing, especially to a girl who had so recently lost her family. He didn't know if he could have survived in a situation which Scarlett had to live with everyday. He didn't know what he would do if his mother didn't care about him or if she was some sort of alcoholic or drug addict. He couldn't even begin to think of a universe where his family was as screwed up as Scarlett's.

Right now Tristan's mind was going over everybody in the school who could have done such a wicked thing to Scarlett. But in the end he gave up. He could think of no one who had a motive. Boy, this sounded like some cheesy cop show where he was trying to find out who the suspect of the murder was.

Soon English Lit ended, and lab began. While Scarlett and Tristan finally completely finished their project, Tristan said, "I've been thinking about who…you know…might have posted that paper up back in eighth grade. And all I could come up with is…Francis."

Scarlett began laughing so hard tears started spilling out of her eyes. Finally when she regained her breath, she said, "Tristan, Francis and you have nothing in common except football. He's definitely not as tall as you. He has green eyes and brown hair. And you're a lot paler than he is."

"It was just a suggestion," Tristan mumbled, looking down at his work.

"No, it was a way to get me to dump him," Scarlett replied.

Tristan looked up, "If I could prove it was him, would you?"

Scarlett looked at him sideways, "Is somebody jealous of Francis Rogers?"

Hell yes.
"Hell no. He's just a dickhead, that's all."

"Yeah…sure, that's why you keep accusing him of the crime, u-huh," Scarlett said, coating her words with dripping sarcasm.

"But if I could prove it was him, would you break up with him?" Tristan looked down at the finished project, avoiding Scarlett's searching eyes, as he asked.

"Probably. But it wasn't him. Francis was already a freshman when we were in eighth grade, idiot," she said teasingly.

"Right."
Damn it,
Tristan thought.

The rest of the period Tristan was determined to figure out who had done that horrible prank, per se, to Scarlett. And all Scarlett wanted to do was forget about it.

"It must have been Sal," Tristan said.

"Sal has red hair."

"Kenny, then."

"Kenny transferred here sophomore year."

"Tom."

"Tom is too stupid to have thought of that devious thing."

"True. Parker."

"Parker…Parker…" Scarlett mumbled as she tried to remember a reason why it couldn't have been Parker.

"That's it. It was Parker!" Tristan shouted.

"Shut up, Tristan. It wasn't Parker because Parker was home schooled in eighth grade."

"Well, shit."

Scarlett giggled at Tristan's persistence. It was cute. Wait…hold up, what? Did she just think Tristan was cute? No. She thought his persistence was cute. He definitely wasn't cute…well, maybe a little. But that was it—he was cute. She didn't like him. She wasn't falling for him at all. She had a boyfriend, so that was the end of the discussion. But she did like how he kept trying to get on good terms with her; it was sweet. Well, fantastic, he was now cute and sweet. Wasn't it just a week ago, she thought was an egotistical, narcissistic bastard? And now she was thinking he was cute and sweet…and maybe even funny? How twisted was that? Very twisted. But as she watched him try to help her with the project and screw up miserably, she giggled, and he smiled, which made her heart do a funny thing that scared her.