Before I Forget

Belonging

She met him by the lockers after the second period.

Sky was stuffing her books into her locker, trying hard to ignore the stares and the laughs of kids passing by, but who was she fooling, really? It hurt to hear the mean names that were whispered, and it was getting at her. Maybe it had been too much to ask for, to hope that everyone would have forgotten the incident in two weeks, but still she had hoped.

It's never gonna pass. I'm always gonna be the crazy slut, they're never going to stop making fun of me—

"Hi," said a familiar voice, a voice she had longed to hear, a voice that was always a bit throaty, a bit broken. Sky turned around, and closed the locker with a slightly trembling hand.

"Eli—"

"It's Hawk now," he interrupted, looking down at her, and suddenly Sky felt like he had grown - surely he hadn't been this tall before?

"Even to me?" she asked silently.

"To everyone," he replied with a sideways smile. "Eli doesn't really match with the hair."

She raised her eyes to the mohawk, the blue blade on top of his head, the cropped sides. It made him look so different, like not only his hair had changed but his whole facial structure too - his high cheekbones stood up, the line of his jaw was sharper than before.

"Can I?" Sky asked, raising her hand to touch his hair.

Eli nodded, his smile suddenly replaced by such a nervous, serious look. He swallowed, took in a breath, his chest and shoulders heaving.

Gently Sky laid her hand on the side of Eli's head, feeling the soft, short hair against her palm, brushing it with her thumb. With a jolt she remembered how she had buried her fingers in his coppery hair when their lips had crashed together, remembered the taste of his mouth - salt, iron, need.

Their eyes met, his pupils were wide, the blue of the irises was dark like the sea before a storm.

Slowly she slid her fingers upwards to feel the mohawk, and couldn't help a smile.

"It's so... spiky!"

Eli made a throaty laughter. "Lots of hairspray."

He was standing so close to her that she felt the warmth of his lean, wiry body in the air, and there was no space in her mind for any other thought than him. If someone was laughing at her now, pointing fingers or calling her names, she didn't know, she didn't care. The crowded hallway around them had disappeared, and all that was left was the way he was looking at her, like her touch could lit him up and burn him to ashes.

Slowly Sky withdrew her hand, even if breaking the contact between them felt like a small death.

"What happened?" she asked. "Why did you do this?"

"Sensei Lawrence happened." Eli replied with a serious tone. "He told me to flip the script."

"Whatever that means."

"Well, he said that if I wanted for people to stop looking at my lip, I needed to give them something else to look at." Eli said, and for the first time broke their eye contact. "He was right."

Sky wanted to touch him, to take his face into her hands and force him look her in the eye, but her hands were restless and hot and trembling so she stuffed them into the pockets of her jeans instead.

"You know, that lip wasn't the first thing I noticed about you." she said silently.

"Oh?" Eli shifted, his gaze found hers again. "And what was?"