43. Tattoo

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Chapter 43 - Tattoo

"Laila!"

    The thickness of the sticky red substance ran down on my wrist. Her screams petrifying into my ears over and over again. My mother's pleading words to make me stop did little justice to anything of my reoccurring actions towards my sister.

"Laila! Wake up!"

      Cold sweat dripped from my forehead, my eyes quickly took a glance at the surroundings. The dark night held the secrets of what had just happened, something unforgivable. 

"Laila, Jesus Christ, wake up!"

     The shaking of my shoulders jolted me out of my nightmare. The vision of Derek came clear after rubbing my eyes a little. He stood hovering over me, breathless and in his pajamas. 

        "What time is it?" I panicked. It was dawn, I knew that. But I had school today, and being late was something I couldn't do anymore. Graduation was gaining closer and closer it felt like. 

     "About the same time you get up for school." he informed me, his body took a step back, allowing me to have space to breathe. 

   "How long was I screaming for?" I rubbed my tired eyes. These night mares were getting out of control.

    "Fifteen minutes," he said. "You know, you can tell me. You don't have to keep your nightmares in the dark from me."

     I briskly nodded my head. His offer was sweet, but it was too soon, however, these nightmares had been reoccurring since I could remember. It was a part of me I didn't want anyone to know about, especially Derek and my father. 

     Shortly, he left my room so I could get ready for the day. I was beyond tired from last night. I didn't arrive home until two in the morning, all thanks to my lovely boyfriend. But of course, I didn't mind. Last night was another memory to put down in the books. 

    However, Alex's words kept constantly replaying in my head, over and over again, like a broken record player. 'I swear I'm going to marry you', was he crazy? I was in love with him, and I knew it was likewise for him too, but marriage?

      Surely, it proved that time in a relationship was merely just a concept. It was how you spent the time. We hadn't been together for a year and yet he was so willingly to bluntly say how he wanted to marry me. I got a fuzzy warm feeling just thinking about it all. Alex nicely dressed in a tailored suit with his hair hopefully tamed and standing at the end of an aisle. 

Laila Gaskarth.

Laila Rose Gaskarth. 

   I grinned at the thought. The sound of it had a nice ring to it, no pun intended.

    "Laila, hurry up! Ten minutes." My annoying brother called out from down stairs.

     Groaning, I swung my legs over my bed, and gradually got up. I switched into a simple pair of jeans and black blouse, along with a headband to keep my messy hair company. I applied my makeup and out of my bedroom I went. 

     Derek was nice enough to put out a bowl and the necessary items to have cereal, which brought me back to our old times, when we both cooperated as siblings and had a strong bond.

    "Thanks," I yawned loudly, my arms working their magic with pouring the milk.

      After preparing the breakfast, I sat down on the stool next to Derek, who was nonchalantly sitting there, watching me closely, once again. I got the gut to say something, plus this was his second time of this whole staring thing.

    "Why are you acting like this?" I suspiciously inquired.

He gulped noticeably. "Don't tell dad." 

    Instantly, another yawn chimed in, coming from the entry way of the kitchen, and it wasn't coming from neither of us. My head jerked towards the direction and a gasp escaped from my mouth involuntarily. 

Oh god.

     Out of all people, Caleb came marching in, along with wearing Derek's pajama bottoms. Once his eyes landed on mine, they immediately widen from shock. The look of on his face might as well have been my expression too.

      He was dead in his tracks, staring blankly at me as if I was a murderer being caught in the act. He stood there rooted in dismay, keeping his eyes directly on me, and not moving a single inch.

     "Caleb?" Derek called his name, trying to steal his attention. Derek's eyes went back and forth to mine and his boyfriend's expression. He was clearly puzzled from the scene and odd interaction that was set between Caleb and I. His eyebrows lowered as he rubbed his chin, and tried to think possibly why it might be awkward besides the fact I was the one who ratted out their relationship to my father. 

   "Hi, Laila." Caleb greeted me discreetly. His eyebrows rose as he nodded at me. I returned the nod clumsily. God this was dreadful. 

  "Wait, you know each other?" Derek was clearly confused.

   "Yeah," Caleb mumbled, his legs finally moved, and walked towards the fridge. 

     Without wasting any more time in this unbearable situation, I hurriedly stood up and left to the front door, a sign for Derek that I was ready to leave for school.

 While waiting, I could hear them whispering to each other. 

   "Sorry about her, but I gotta go take her to school." I recognized the voice as Derek's. "I'll see you in a bit, babe."

    'Babe' alerted me. He called him babe? I mean, I knew they were in a relationship, but hearing that, just made it more real for me. My brother was actually dating a guy, and you know what, I was okay with it. He was indeed my brother anyway.

  Finally, Derek showed up and cleared his throat, gesturing his hand towards the door. We both walked out to his car and didn't talk among ourselves until we arrived to my school.

    "Don't tell dad." he urged.

   "I won't." I said simply before getting out of the car.

   Quickly, I walked into the school and straight to my locker. As I got out different binders for my next three classes, my phone vibrated in my jacket.

Alex - Won't be in for first period, good luck and don't die from boredom!!! See you in a bit x

     I huffed at the text and hesitantly made my way to my class after sending him a message back.

Me - My funeral will be during second period. Cause of death - boredom. Why are you late anyway??

     I sat in my regular seat as per usual. Thankfully, fat old man was out due to a family emergency and left us with a substitute. We ended up just watching a movie, which allowed me to catch up on homework and anything other than watching the film that was useless and pointless to my future.

    My hands fumbled with my jacket expressionlessly. I was tired and my eyes weren't doing a good job on staying awake. With every passing second, my surroundings sulk into dullness. This was hell.

    I much rather be with Alex, perhaps actually waking up next to him this morning, and seeing his big brown eyes, which were better than the over-rated blue eyes that stupid books romanticized over. Brown eyes were better than any color, especially Alex's. I wished I was in the wrap of his warmth, and his delicate lips against the back of my head, whispering sweet things into my ear.

     I nearly whimpered at my thoughts. It was almost embarrassing at how much I loved him but instead of actually being embarrassed, I embraced it. Although I missed him when I had just seen him last night, it was ridiculous. 

   Luckily, and about time, the bell rung and my legs instantly carried me out of the boring classroom and onto the next.

      Alex never messaged me back, leaving me to ponder where he might be at, or perhaps he might be having a hangover. I had one, but it wasn't too awful, and taking a couple of pain killers for it did the trick this morning. Appreciatively, the rest of my classes went by pleasantly swift. I was occupied by my classwork that allowed my mind to stop thinking about Alex for a little while.

     Eventually, lunch time rolled in. The growling in my stomach was intolerable and caused my legs to work faster in the halls just to get to my desired location. I silently prayed that Alex was in school, just to be able to have lunch with him would make my day. I wanted to see him greatly.

      With my mind clouded and my eyes directed straightly on the floor, I harshly bumped into something rather hard. Immediately, with my eyes landing on what it was, or better yet, who, It was Rian. His muscles were tensed and along with his jawline being sharped in a line. It was painfully uncomfortable to have bumped in him, which caused me to take off without even nodding my head or giving him any recognition. 

     My heart was racing from the encounter. I will not have another panic attack. I will not have another panic attack. You will be okay, Laila. 

    The doors to the library were in my eye sight, and in almost in my reach. Until, seeing that the lights were turned off, and no one was in there caused misery in me. I reached to the door, and peaked through the glass. Of course, it was vacant. A single paper was taped to the door, reading 'Library closed for today.'

     Quietly I cursed and cautiously walked away, and kept an eye on the moving faces passing me. I took out my phone and was disappointed that there weren't any new messages. Deciding to text him again, I sent him another message.

Library is closed. Where do you want to meet me?

Much to my delight as I was pacing around, my phone vibrated a minute later.

Alex - come to the cafeteria. 

 I groaned loudly out into the now empty hallway, and impulsively kicked the nearest trash can. The cafeteria? Really, Alex?

    But of course, I obliged and headed towards the cafeteria with great fright of the possibility to see Jack, Rian, and Zack, or worse, Brenna. I hadn't seen her ever since I punched her in the face. 

    I entered into the busy and crowded cafeteria. The loud chattering and restless movement of people had put a countless toll on me. This was one of the biggest reasons why I hated school. It was things like these that fueled my anxiety in me and made me want to curl up into a ball for the rest of my life.

    My eyes urgently searched through the area, trying to find a specific face. More than a dozen of faces I recognized but none of them were the brown haired boy I was looking for. At this point, I just wanted to sit down and full fill my stomach's need for food. In which, I gladly did.

        I sat at an empty table and kept to myself as I ate my sandwich from my brown paper bag. I sulkily sat and was upset at how things turned out to be, until a sudden blanket of darkness cascaded over my eyes, which immediately panicked me until a raspy voice whispered in my ear.

"Guess who."

    A smile tugged at my lips, and quickly I removed his hands from my face. He sat next to me. He wore black jeans and an ugly green colored trench coat, and oddly wore gloves. 

     I ignored his weird fashion statement and continued to eat.

    "How was your day?" he asked, stealing one of my crackers.

     My eyes spontaneously gave him the death stare. He was seemed to forget the one major thing about me, which me being mute. Talking around here made me extremely nervous, better yet, just thinking about it made me want to curl in a ball once again. People now in days were judgmental. And being known as the mute girl and who wouldn't utter a word outside her home, I was bound to gain attention if I spoke anything in school. 

   "Oh, right." he said, realizing my crippling disability. 

     I nodded my head and munched on my lunch furthermore. Alex's fingers began to drum on the table, bringing my attention back to his gloves. Without warning, my hands reached over to his right hand and slide the glove off. Nothing but the ordinary was seen. Alex had raised his eyebrows at me with a deceiving smirk pulling at his lips.

      Narrowing my eyes at him, I reached over to his left hand, and noticed Alex shifting uncomfortably in his seat and his eyes staring precisely at my moves. 

      My fingertips lay delicately on his glove and gradually slipped it off, and I nearly gasped at the colored ink before me. Hurriedly, I grasped his hand and examined it. A beautiful colored red rose with a few light green leaves around it was permanently on his hand forever. My eyes couldn't believe at what I was studying at. The lining of the tattoo was clear cut and particular. His hand was wrapped in saran wrap, keeping the fresh ink safe from any harm.

    "I took your suggestion from last night. I was able to get an artist to book me in quickly this morning." he informed me, chuckling at the sight of me still viewing his hand.

       I shook my head out of disbelief. I had no idea he would actually take my words seriously, but certainly, he proved me wrong and did take them literally, and got a tattoo for his brother.

The initials of his brother's name were just below the rose. J.E.G was nicely inked in all capitalization. I was breathless from how appealing and alluring it was. I could effortlessly stare at it for a lifetime.

       But of course, I gave Alex his hand back for the sake of not looking like a complete psycho at school for staring at my boyfriend's hand for an hour. 

      My eyes traveled the cafeteria and landed on the other set of eyes staring back at me. Alex's old table filled with Jack and the rest of All Time Low were glaring over at us until I spotted them. They right away went back to a conversation and not rudely watching Alex and me.

    Alex had realized what happened, followed by a groan. "Ignore them."

It was easy said than done. How was I supposed to ignore them when it's straightforward obvious that they were gossiping about me?

   "I know what you're thinking." Alex said before sipping my juice pouch.

   I rolled my eyes, he always said that, but did he really know?

    All too quickly, the bell signaled off, and it was time to head back to our schedule. Next was art, and thankfully, I was able to spend another hour with Alex, along with our creative writing class.

     We both walked together, our hands linked together through the halls of the school. We arrived on time to our class and took our seats. Miss. Berrywinkle spoke for a while, assigning our new project.

     Alex, who kept fiddling with the hem of my shirt, distracted me to the point I had no idea what the project was about - the curse of having him sitting next to me. 

     He, of course, went straight into his work with blasting his earbuds, leaving me clueless and including malnourished of a pencil to even begin anything. I reached for his book bag without him even noticing and unzipped the black bag. It was filled with folders and a book or two. Papers were crushed and miscellaneous items were disorganized.

     My hectic mind forgot about my search for a pencil, but quickly I was occupied by the interested of one of Alex's books he had.

    It was a psychology book.

   There was multiple sticky neon tabs sticking out of the book, keeping bookmarks of pages. I opened to one of the pages that were book marked. The two pages I flipped open to were filled with words. Some one of them even highlighted.

    It was only dawn on me that Alex didn't take the psychology class here at school, so why did he have this book? And clearly, he was reading it too. 

    The first highlighted words on the page put a hole in my heart and boiled me with anger.

'Selective mutism is a condition in which a child who can speak stops speaking, usually in school or social settings.'

   Perhaps it was a coincidence that it was highlighted. I wasn't going to make a conclusion just yet, despite the searing thoughts that made me want to scream in Alex's face.

    I flipped to another page that was filled with more highlighted words. 

'Impulse control disorder (ICD) is a class of psychiatric disorders characterized by impulsivity – failure to resist a temptation, urge or impulse that may harm oneself or others.'

     This time, I was hurt and absolutely outraged by my discovery. The rest of the words that were highlighted only added more trouble to my conclusion of what this meant. Alex was seemingly doing his own research on me behind my back.

'Five behavioural stages can prove to be the symptoms of ICD: an impulse, growing tension, pleasure from acting, relief from the urge and finally guilt which may or may not arise.'

     Instead of reading any further, I powerfully slammed the book down on my desk, permitting a boom throughout the room, causing everyone's attention to turn at the source of the sound, including Alex.

       I hurriedly stood up, and stomped my way out the numbing silent class room, forgetting about all the consequences I was going to receive from the school.

     I didn't dare to think to come back into the classroom. I needed to get home, whether or not if this damn school was going to allow me or not. 

_______

a.n

ohhhh shiiieeeettttt Alex why you gotta ruin the cuteness of Lailex smh

I have no idea when this book is going to end. I didn't plan for Laila to punch Brenna so it added more to the plot. If she hadn't then this book would be almost done. I think this book might end at 55 chapters? And an epilogue that will blow y'alls minds >:))

  Also Happy holidays to every one! And idk if I'll update before the new year so this might be the last update of 2014. Absolutely crazy!

 - Kc Dec. 27.2014