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Date Posted: 22:25:08 11/28/03 Fri
Author: Starfire
Subject: Rock the Boat Ch. 9... and bonus Chapter 10

I haven't been able to get on the computer, so that's why I haven't posted anything. Therefore... because this is late, (and because I don't really like chapter nine) I thought I'd post TWO chapters instead of the usual one. Enjoy!

Chapter 9- Gaby

I dug my toes into the cold sand, feeling the wetness between my toes. Erik smiled as he watched my reverse ostritch move. He lightly kissed me on the cheek. So unlike a boyfriend should, somehow. More like... a brother, or a friend. I can't quite explain what the difference was. It was just all of a sudden there, staring me in the face. That was it. I had to do something.
"Do you ever feel like..." I started.
"Like what?"
"Never mind. It's stupid."
He kissed me on the right side of my neck.
"It's not stupid, just tell me."
I paused, not exactly sure how to phrase it.
"Here, I'll even help you start. 'Do you ever feel like-'"
"Like there's ONE place you can relax and actually be yourself? Like you're putting on a show the rest of the time, and the only time you feel real is in that one place?" I finished.
Silence. Erik just sat there, his arm around my shoulders, staring off into space.
"All the time." He looked at me. "What brings that up?"
"I don't know, it's just... lately I've been feeling that way a lot."
"Any reason in particular?"
"Why are we still together?"
He took his arm away from my shoulder and turned to stare at me.
"What?"
"Why are we still together?" I repeated.
"Well, my guess is there's some sort of feeling behind it..."
"Erik, stop. Let's just stop and be honest with each other for once, huh? This thing we have going has been over for a long time. Why do we keep dragging it out?"
He grabbed a stick and started doodling in the sand with it. He seemed unable to look me in the face all of a sudden, like he was ashamed or something.
"I don't know. Security, I guess. Fear. What do you want me to say?"
"I'm not sure what I want you to say. The truth."
"You don't want the truth."
"Why?"
"Because you'll hate me."
"Erik- I may not be in love with you anymore, but I could never hate you."
"Don't bet on it."
"What's so horrible?"
"Look... I want to stay friends. I don't want our relationship to end badly."
"There's only one thing that I can think of that would make this 'end badly', as you said it, but I can't imagine that you'd be so low that you'd cheat on me."
He stared down at his doodles. I leaned over to look at it, and I could clearly read the words 'I'm sorry' drawn in the sand.
"Oh my god."
"It wasn't-"
"How COULD you?" I screamed.
He shrugged. His brown eyes were even darker than usual, and I guess it was at that second that I really knew he was serious.
"I can't believe you cheated on me!"
"I don't really have much to say for myself except I'm sorry. And I hope you'll forgive me at some point."
"Forgive you?! You tell me something like this and I'm supposed to FORGIVE you?"
"I said you didn't want to know."
"Who is she? How long has this been going on?"
"Names aren't important, Gaby. Would it help if you knew?"
I thought about that for a second.
"No, probably not."
"As far as length... almost a year."
"Almost...." my voice trailed off in my shock. "I guess I always figured that if you met someone else that you would be decent enough to break up with me first. Not go behind my back and making me look like a total idiot."
"I didn't mean-"
"Of course you 'didn't mean'. You never MEAN to do anything, Erik. That's your problem. You never think anything through, consider what repercussions there might be to your actions.The only person you ever think about is yourself."
I stood up.
"I hope you two are very happy together. As far as you and I are concerned... it's totally over. Have a nice life."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I got home from the beach, I noticed an unfamiliar car near the entranceway to my apartment. Red, an old Chevy that looked like it was on it's last life.
'Oh no.' I thought. Could this day possibly get any worse?
When I opened the front door, there was no one to be seen. Strange... but not unusual. The younger kids usually hung onto mom when she was home, because they didn't know any better... and because she was home so little.
"Hey, Gab." Ana walked came out into the kitchen and opened the refridgerator. "Mom's home."
"I figured. Who's car?"
"One of her 'friends' let her borrow it." She rolled her eyes.
"Supposedly." I mumbled.
"Yeah, pretty much. Look, she's saying that she has big news for everybody, I think she's just been waiting for you to get here. Everybody's in the living room."
"Okay. I'll be right there."
I took my shoes off and poured the sand from them outside. Then I grabbed some juice and headed into the living room.
"Gaby!" My mother cried as she ran to hug me.
She looked pretty much the same way I remembered her from the last time. Long, dark hair, sandy brown eyes, stick figured and bony. She probably was attractive a long time ago, but food deprivation and drugs stole that from her. She wasn't even 35 yet and she already looked old.
"My baby." She looked at me with tears in her eyes "It's hard to believe you're sixteen already."
'Yeah, especially considering you weren't even here most of the time', I thought.
"I hear you have news." I said.
"Yeah. Sit down."
I sat in the nearest chair and waited.
"Look, guys, I came by to tell you something really important."
'Oh, just get on with it.' I thought bitterly 'Stop wasting my time.'
"....I'm pregnant."


Chapter 10- Brian

[i]November 3, 1995
Another day in the life of me. I want to run, but I can't. It's like I'm stuck on pause mode and I can't get my feet up off the ground or even scream for help. I want to disappear, crawl into a corner somewhere and die. I just can't seem to run away from myself or what's happening. It won't go away, not even in my dreams, and the reality of it all weighs down on my shoulders when I'm awake. There's never an escape from it. School used to be an escape from everything bad in my life, but I can't get myself to concentrate or to sit down and do the work, so that's become another bad thing. I'm dying inside, drowning. And no one is around to hear my cries for help. No one cares, no one sees that there's a shark pulling me down into the water. I want to die.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hands. All I could see or feel were hands, grabbing at my clothes, pulling my hair. And the feeling that something was horribly, horribly wrong. [/i]

I sat bolt upright, waking myself up in the process. I slowly rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, trying to delay the time when I actually had to try to go back to sleep. I really wasn't in the mood for another nightmare. They'd become familiar to me, but no less frightening. Most nights they destroyed any chance I might've had to have a decent sleep.
Somehow I found myself climbing the ladder into Christina's window, like I usually did when I couldn't sleep. She always kept her window unlocked, simply due to her forgetfulness, so it was easy enough to sneak in. I sat on the floor next to her bed. I loved to watch her sleep. It was probably the most comforting thing in the whole world, at least to me. Watching her breathe so rythmically, so peacefully... it was like she didn't have a care in the world once she closed her eyes at night. She usually even had a trace of a smile on her face while she dreamed.
She didn't know about my nocturnal visits, no one did. Not even John. I knew they'd laugh at me if I told them, or think I was a complete nutcase. Maybe I was. All I knew was that after a few minutes of being there, I didn't feel afraid anymore. Not just of going back to sleep- but of everything. She put some sort of spell on me that made me feel like everything was going to be okay... somehow. Even when everything in my life was going wrong-really wrong- she would silently put me at ease and make me forget. That was the real reason the whole scene was so comforting to me, I think. When I was watching her I could forget everything that I never wanted to remember.
After about ten minutes I climbed back out the window and returned to my room. I threw my slippers in the corner, wet and cold from the snow on the ground, and snuggled into my bed under the covers. The rest of the night was filled with dreamless sleep.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[i]June 30, 1995
Alan's been coming over a lot more lately. I don't really mind, he's a nice guy and all that, but… it just seems like every time I come near him he's touching me somehow. A hand on my shoulder, a pat on the back. He always did that kind of stuff, but lt's just weird. Because he's a touchy feely kind of person and I'm not. I don't know... I've never been comfortable with that. But I don't want to say anything to him, either. It would make it seem like he's doing something wrong by being himself- not to mention making me feel stupid. I'm not going to waste time thinking about something that there's not even any point in thinking about. [/i]

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