Tony: Do you really think this will work?
Mike: It’s worth a try. Better than nothing, right?
Tony: I don’t know, Naira here seems pretty shaken up. She hasn’t told me much and I don’t know what exactly happened, other than the Jaime thing, but it doesn’t seem like she’s too upset about that.
Mike: Maya here isn’t sure about what to do anymore :/
Tony: Oh fuck it, let’s just try this. I don’t think we can make this any worse.
Mike: Be here in 10?
Tony: Let’s make it 30, I’m not sure how I will get Naira out of this house without dragging her…


Naira’s POV

I felt bad… really bad. I should have let Tony be and let him go do what he was originally planning on doing, but I my head was still here, in his lap, my eyes still not running out of tears. Not even I knew how I had so many tears in me, but everything just came out. It was like I wasn’t going to be able to cry for years after this. Slowly but surely I was draining everything out of me: any hope left, my energy, and my optimism.

I didn’t even leave room to get to know the girl’s name. She was still here with us -- now in some actual clothes -- and there had been some tension surrounding us. Only after I had vocalised the problem I had with Jaime, did she seem to ease up. She probably thought Tony and I had something going on. And that just got me all upset again. The situation I was in with Maya was never going to get any better.

The one person I trusted with all my heart had betrayed me. Things were never going to get better. The one time it actually seems like a guys likes me for the right reasons, it brings me all this. It always happened like this. The good guys brought trouble… or were they actually bad guys? I didn’t even understand it anymore, but I knew my ‘relationship’ with Jaime was over. Nothing would make it better, no matter how hard he tried. Not like he was going to fight for me anyway… Maya was a much better catch. She wasn’t crazy like I was.

“How about we go do something to cheer you up?” Tony stopped trying to comfort me, already realising it wasn’t really working. Instead he went a ‘completely different’ route, trying to get me to do something while I obviously didn’t want to.

“D-do you want me gone?” I looked up at him. Of course I was stupid enough to believe he was going to help me. But no, he probably also thought I was some messed up bitch who just didn’t have any friends or any family. “I understand if you do.”

“No, no, no, no,” he shook his head violently, eyes widening because of what I thought he meant. “I just don’t want you being upset like this. I know I’m not as close as you and Vic are--”

“Vic and I aren’t close,” I snapped at him, sitting up as quickly as I could. Even though he didn’t know what had happened, I still couldn’t believe he said that. Vic being nice to me was also all just a lie. He had this all planned with Maya, and they probably got the others to gang up on me too. “I don’t know why you think we are, but we aren’t.”

“Well, you guys always get along well with each other and laugh with each other…”

“No, we don’t. It’s only what he wants you to think, what he wanted me to think. But none of it’s true.”

“Why would you think that?!” Tony’s voice raised slightly, his pitch going up, as he sat up straighter.

“Maya told me,” I mumbled and didn’t look at him. For all I knew, he was doing the exact same.

He froze up, looking at me with bewildered eyes. It was like he didn’t believe a word I was saying. Like he thought I was crazy… “Maya? No… she wouldn’t say something like that. I mean, you guys are best friends!”

“Were best friends. Not anymore. I don’t want to see her ever again, she doesn’t want to see me ever again.” I clarified. Did he really not understand a thing of what was going on?

“Is this all about Jaime?”

“No,” I shook my head, tears staining my eyes already, “for her it might be, but for me it isn’t.”

He pushed it further, not noticing how upset I felt, “well, what happened then?”

“That doesn’t matter!” And it really didn’t. Although I wanted to stay here for one night before I would leave forever, it was none of his business. He couldn’t fix it, so he shouldn’t even be trying. For all I cared he could go back upstairs in his bedroom with that girl and I’d just happily sleep on the couch. He did not need to snoop around in my business!

“I still want to bring you somewhere to make you feel better, though,” Tony continued to insist. He didn’t even care about the outbursts I had.

But there was one thing he didn’t know. I was trying my best to hold back the ticks I started feeling coming on. This whole situation was too confusing and stressful for me. All I wanted was a nice calm place to stay, and Tony was always the calm one! Apparently I had made a mistake, though. The humming desperately wanted to come out of my mouth, followed by words I couldn’t control. I had to fully concentrate on nothing happening. The girl didn’t need to think I was a freak show as well.

“I’m not going to take a no for an answer,” he told me before I could even think about protesting, “If you’re going to be leaving tomorrow, I’m going to make sure that you won’t be leaving upset like this.”

I grumbled and rolled me eyes. Of course it was up to Tony to decide to be strict and demanding now. He was always a sweet person that wouldn’t harm anybody, but now he was insisting on doing something. I didn’t even understand why he was so determined. It wasn’t like anything was going to cheer me up right now. This was going to take ages for me to get over, it wasn’t like I could just forget about it in no time.

But there also wasn’t any point in arguing with Tony. He obviously wasn’t going to drop it any time soon, so I tried up my tears and stood up. My composure wasn’t as strong as I wanted it to be, but I still took a deep breath. As much as I didn’t want to go, I could at least try to make him a bit happy before I said goodbye to this city forever.

“Where are we going?” I sighed, running my fingers through my messy hair.

“It’s a surprise.”

----

We stopped in front of another house, one I had never been to before. I would have wondered what we were going to do if it weren’t for the cars that were already parked on the driveway. I could have recognised them anywhere. You know, I wouldn’t have freaked out as much if it was only Mike’s car standing there, but Maya’s was next to it as well.

I swore to god that if Maya had this all planned out just to make me feel even worse, I was seriously going to run away.

The other option, of course, was that Tony and Mike had been talking to each other while Maya and I were with them. But it wasn’t like that was any better. After all that crying, didn’t Tony understand that the last thing I wanted to do was talk to my ex-bestfriend? Wasn’t it that simple? Well, obviously it wasn’t.

Tony turned off the car and opened his door, waiting for me to come out as well. But I refused. I was not going to leave this seat until he brought me somewhere else. He just stared at me through the windshield, expecting me to move. Glaring at him was my best option, but it also wasn’t going to work. He came over to my side and opened the door for me. When I still didn’t show any signs of giving in, he reached over and undid my seatbelt himself before literally pulling me out of the car. He tried not to hurt me, causing him to have to pick me up around the waist and drag me to the door.

He didn’t even knock or ring the doorbell. The door was already opened slightly, letting me know that Mike had already seen us coming, and Tony pushed it open further with his foot. Now it was time to panic. I wasn’t going to let him take me further than that.

“We’re here!” Tony shouted through the house, hoping for it to reach the ears of the people we were here for.

I was kicking and squirming around, trying my best to leave his grip. But it wasn’t working that well. With my feet just off the ground and my arms pulling at his arms, I was surprised that Tony hadn’t dropped me yet. That didn’t mean I was going to give up, though.

“Let me fucking go!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, really not caring if that meant Maya knew I was here, and scratching at Tony’s hands, “I don’t want to fucking be here!”

And somehow my nails managed to dig deep enough to cause Tony enough pain to drop me. I was on my own feet, his arms no longer around me, and it took me a while to realised this was my opportunity to run away; to run for my life. I rushed for the door, almost reaching it, when Mike was suddenly standing in front of me. He locked the door and blocked my way to it. But he smirked too fast.

Just a couple feet away there was an open window. I dashed towards it, this literally being my last window to get out of this place. I was easily going to be able to climb out of it, it being on the first floor and all. Plus, it was big enough for me to squeeze my body through. Sometimes being small like I was, was really an advantage.

But then there was this thing called Tony that was still here. He did exactly what Mike had done, and reached it before I could, making sure I couldn’t leave this place at all. I could feel my last hope washing away and terror settling in in it’s place.

“Why are you guys torturing me! Don’t you see I don’t want to fucking be here! All I want to do is leave and never come back! Is that that difficult to understand! I don’t want to fucking be here!” I was screaming, but it wasn’t exactly me screaming either. It was a weird mixture between me raging, not having control over my tourettes as much as I would have liked (but also not having it completely take me over), and me not even caring what these people thought about me anymore. Maybe if I got them to be too mad at me, they would kick me out and I would be able to go to the airport instead.

And then my eyes fell on a figure in the doorway. While my body completely froze up, my mind was yelling at me to get away as quickly as possible. Maya was watching it all unfold, standing there like this was none of her business, like she had nothing to do with it.

----

Maya and I were both on separate couches, avoiding acknowledging each other. She wasn’t there in my world, I wasn’t there in hers. We lived separate lives now, even though we had only been apart for a couple of hours; we didn’t care about each other anymore; we were strangers.

Tony and Mike had both tried us to get talking, but nothing was working, we were too set on something. I hoped they were slowly starting to realise their plan failed miserably and that it wasn’t going to get any better. Nothing was going to get resolved, so they could forget it already. As much as I wanted to scream at Maya, I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. That wasn’t how I rolled anymore.

And then the front door suddenly opened again, the lock turning before Vic stepped in, “ok, so why do you need me--” He froze when he saw that Maya and I weren’t even looking in each other’s directions anymore. Guilt washed over his face as he let out a small sigh, his hands dropping to his face. “Jaime.”

My muscles tensed up at the mentioning of that asshole’s name. But it wasn’t what he had done, but that it actually came out of Vic’s mouth. All that time, he had known. He knew this was going to happen, he knew about Jaime’s sneaky little plans, he could have avoided it all. Yet he never did anything about it. All this time when I was talking to Vic about Jaime, he had known, but he was always encouraging. It would have been so much easier if he would have told me before.

I rested my head in my hands and groaned, “why does everybody keep lying to me. I swear to god, everybody in this room has lied to me!”

“Ok, no,” Vic interrupted before I could say anything I regretted, and took a seat on the recliner that put distance between the couches, “this isn’t going to work. Yes, I knew; yes, I should have said something; but I can’t do anything about it. Now, I’ll explain exactly what happened, ok? Just listen to me and don’t start questioning everything I say.”

And so Vic started telling the story. He told us how devastated Jaime had been after I had rejected him, how confused he was about his feelings for Maya after they had slept together, the moment he knew everything had been a mistake, and how he just kept digging himself a hole further and further. Then came the part of when Vic found out, the day I was staying with Jaime. It explained why he offered to bring me home as soon as he left. Only then did I realize how difficult it was for Vic to keep a secret like this when three of his best friends were involved. Apparently he had tried to talk Jaime out of doing it, but that nothing really worked. Jaime knew what he was doing was very, very wrong, but he didn’t know what to do.

Mike and Tony just stood there, trying to understand exactly what was going on. I understood it in no time, and maya also did, but it seemed like the two guys got lost about half way. But for some reason the explanation hadn’t made me feel any better.

I snorted, “yeah, but I really don’t care about this. Sure, I freaked out at first, but I didn’t like Jaime enough to make it all blow up to this. Seriously, I would never cause a fight over a guy like that. If I had known any of this, I would have called it off with no problem. Yes, I liked him, but not enough yet to be so upset about it. I’m used to it.”

“Ok, what?” Tony piped up, looking more confused than ever, “all you told me about was this Jaime thing. Are you seriously telling me you’re upset about something else?! I’m so confused right now!”

“Tell them, Maya,” Mike sighed, also contributing to the conversation. He shook his head, already disapproving of the information Maya was going to tell us next. But she never directly told us.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled with tears forming in her eyes.

“No, you’re not,” I contradicted, rolling my eyes, “everything you said is true, and you know it.”

“Well, it’s not like you didn’t say anything to me!”

I raised my voice, “Excuse me! I never said anything like that--”

“Girls!” Vic shut us up, “we’re here to fix things, not make it worse. Maya, what did Naira say?”

“She told me I was selfish and didn’t care about you guys,” she glared at me in the process of quickly telling us.

“I never said that, I was just giving you some advice. I mean, how can you help other people without helping yourself first?” I told her honestly, not caring if the situation got any worse. I was leaving in a couple of hours anyway, so it didn’t matter how I left things here.

“Naira, nothing you’re saying is helping you right now,” Vic said bluntly, “I suggest you either rethink everything you said, or you just keep your mouth shut.”

Told you so. I said in my mind. Vic did hate me. And so do the others. Maya already made it clear I was a freak, Vic didn’t even care about supporting me one bit, Tony lied about wanting to comfort me, and I could feel Mike judging me from afar. I… I didn’t want anything to happen like this. All I wanted was a nice life, and I had started building it up. Nobody made fun of me here when I came. I thought things were going to be different.

I couldn’t help the tears that started trailing down my tears. As my thought continued and talking between the guys was going on, sobs started escaping. Everything turned quiet and I tried my best to hold in the sounds, but it wasn’t working. The whimpers that did come out of me sounded extra loud.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and I shrugged it away as soon as possible. The pressure and size made it clear that it was Vic, but I didn’t want him trying to comfort me anymore.

“I like it much better to know the hateful things people will do to me, than have false hope,” I murmured out loud.

I would rather time travel and go back to high school, and be called the motherless kid who said weird things and had a strange father, than be here with fake friends that I put all my trust in.

Notes

Are things going to be ok?
This definitely wasn't how I expected this chapter to go. Trust me, I had something else planned.

- aweirdkindofyellow