dalexis01
I quickly pulled down my sleeve, realizing the ink on my wrist had shown. I stuck my hands in my armpits and shivered, even though it wasn't cold. He looked at me, down at my arms, and up at me again. I smiled. He shut his locker, slid his backpack on his shoulder, and said, "Well.. I guess I'll see you around." I nodded, my heart pounding hard in my chest, and felt my stomach drop as I watched him walk away. God, he was so cute.
The hair on the back of my neck rose. I shivered, trying to block the sound out of my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut and thought about Sanden, pictured him looking at me with that soft, crooked smile on his face, saw him walking across Broad St. to the bus stop in his leisurely gate and backpack weighing heavily on one shoulder. With my fingers jammed in my ears, tears started welling up in my eyes.
She tossed her sweater across the room and screamed to the top of her lungs, raising her plastic cup of apple cider up in the air and swaying her hips. People looked over, shooting confused glances as they passed the window and taking their noses out of their books. We were in a freaking library, for God's sake. It wasn't my fault this was the only place we could celebrate, but the least she could do was show some respect.
Biting hard on my frozen lip, I sucked in a deep breath and grabbed hold of the pipe. I stepped up on the edge of one of the shingles and pulled myself onto the roof with one quick jerk. The icy breeze whipped my hair around my face and stung my bare hands, but I didn't care. I'd made it.
The walls stretched high above our heads, reaching a dome-shaped ceiling covered in yards and yards of beautiful artwork. We'd never seen anything like it. I reached out to touch the polished armrests of the wooden pews as we made our way down the main aisle, gaping at the massiveness of everything and feeling smaller and smaller the deeper we walked into the cathedral.
A hundred pairs of eyes stared back at me in the darkness. I squinted, blinded by the spotlight, and felt sweat dripping down my face. My palms wouldn't stop trembling and my throat caught. I couldn't find those first few lyrics I'd been singing to myself since I was little. "Uh.." my voice echoed to the back of the club. C'mon, Becca, I thought. Get yourself together.
We layed the bones out on the sand, side by side, one by one, in the blazing June heat. I shifted my hat and wiped the sweat off try forehead just as Jess ran over to my side. "Hundred of 'em," she said, out of breath. We stood back and stared.
The huge, whispers of the crowd flowed to the back of my mind as I stood there in the middle of the field, soaking it all in. Specks of red and blue screamed and cheered, waving me down. I touched my heart and grinned even wider, a new kind of feeling washing over me.
I choked. I squinted and groped for the wall, feeling the slick kitchen table, the fallen wine glasses in the dark kitchen. My chest heaved and burned like a raging fire.