Viper

Ch. 9

  I don't know what I was expecting when I walked through my front door- someone asking where I was, or what had happened. You would think that, after seventeen years, I would be used to my parents actions (or lack therof); but I still felt like salt was getting rubbed into my wounds. Ostentatious, who followed me to my apartment, knew better than to comment on it.

  As we walked through the kitchen doorway, my shattered arm bumped the doorpost, making my vision go blurry and the bile edge its way up my throat. I forced it down, refusing to spew my insides with Ostentatious at my side. I tried to take a step forward, but the renewed pain made my head spin. Ostentatious caught me when I started falling forward.

  "Woah, man. You need to go to the emergency room-" he leaned me against the doorframe- "I know, I know. You can heal even faster than I can, but speed doesn't matter if your arm doesn't heal right."

  "I told you last time asked. I'm not going." I coughed. My heaving chest swung my useless arm around, bringing on another wave of nausea. This time, I actually did black out for a moment, and Ostentatious had to catch me again before I smacked onto the floor.

  "That's it. I'm calling an ambulance." He held up a hand to stop my protests. "Nothing you're gonna say will change my mind." He pulled out his phone and dialed 911.

  I blocked out Ostentatious's voice and tried to fight down the panic rising in me. The hospital system is one of the only amenities that the metacryptals don't have or run by themselves. So, we try to avoid hospitals at all costs. The doctors and nurses there tend to give us weird looks when they get the results to our tests. Our readings are different from a normal human's. Much different.

  "There. The ambulance is on its way."

  "No. No," I mumbled. I coughed again, sending another wave of nausea and pain through me.

  Ostentatious saw it coming and held my shoulders back. "Let's go to your room so you can lie down."

  I nodded, but as I took my first step, I fell into him. To my embarrassment, he picked me up, careful to keep my arm as still as possible, and carried me into my room where he laid me down on my bed, grunting and grumbling the entire way about how much I weighed.

  As I succumbed to the painful darkness that hovered over me, I heard sirens in the distance.

...

  Ostentatious rapped on my car for the fifth time in the past hour after I left the emergency room. Since he learned that it wouldn't hurt me, he wouldn't miss an opportunity to knock on it. I don't know why I was surprised; weird quirks like that were right up his alley. At least he hadn't asked me if he could sign it- yet.

  Though there was more space on the kitchen table to do homework, we passed in favor of the desk in my room. Well- I passed on the table for the desk. Even though his books were spread over every available square inch of desktop, Ostentatious wasn't doing homework. He was reclined on my bed,, reading and talking to me at the same time: a talent I envied. I could barely keep up with the rather one-sided conversation while doing homework.

  "So, Silas," he said, adding snark-y emphasis on my human name, clearly still peeved about my choice to refer to him as Oliver. "Have you decided on an instrument for band?"

  I gave him a disappointed look and held up my cast. "Does it look like I've had time?"

  "Fair point, but you have to choose something soon unless you want to be stuck with that triangle." He smirked.

  I looked up from my homework and turned around in my chair to look at him. "How'd you hear that?"

  He shrugged, "I have friends." Suddenly, Ostentatious sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed; eyes wide as he looked up from his book. "He did not just do that." He took a deep breath and slammed the book shut before giving me an annoyed smile like the one a friend will give you when they've ticked you off but don't want to tell you. "Sorry. I'm getting distracted. Han's poor life choices can wait for now. You need an instrument to play." He paused, deep in thought. "Guitar would be nice," he commented.

  I shook my head. "Doesn't fit in an orchestra. No parts for it."

  Ostentatious nodded. "What about violin? They're more expensive, I think; but the check I gave you should cover a beginner's one."

  "How would I learn?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "YouTube?"

  I rolled my eyes and turned back to my homework. On a side note, what kind of teacher gives homework on the first day, anyway?

  "You know," Ostentatious started, "I saw Owen toting around a big black case earlier today. If it's a violin, he could teach you."

  I sat back in my chair, listening to it creak in a cold sort of way as I thought. Owen did play violin. He and Grace both did, but she was out of the question, and I didn't know if Owen would be willing to struggle through lessons with me. I shook my head. I wasn't about to put him and myself in that awkward of a situation on the second day of our (almost) friendship. What if he said no?

  "Instruments aside, what happened to our schedules? I thought we already saw that we had all the same classes."

  I turned around again. "Does it matter? We can't change it."

  "I never said we could change it. I just said that it sounds fishy. Our court system may not be fair, but once it makes a decision, it never changes it. What happened this time?"

  Now that Ostentatious mentioned it, the switch did seem a little uncharacteristic of the court to mess up the class. Whatever happened, I didn't have an answer for, so I turned my attention back to my homework as Ostentatious layed back down on the bed and continued reading.