Eli Borrelli

19: Treat me better

Eli POV.

It was already Thursday, and I was more than ready to go back to school. My brothers had started to treat me differently, but I'd just roll my eyes and move on, hoping, then I'd just go away. It felt like I was an egg, they were balancing on a spoon, praying that the egg wouldn't explode. It was easy to say, I was looking forward to going back to school. 

In the three days I was out of school, I studied a lot and I had a better understanding of what they were doing. I was starting to move to the things they had done last year, and then the year before that. I was catching up easing my continuous anxiety a bit.

"Hey man! Where were you?" Damian asked as he saw me walking towards them.

They all turned to look at me with smiles as I walked into their group. I even got a few shoulder pats, as Travis threw his arm over my shoulders. I didn't like it, but I wasn't going to make a scene, plus, Travis had this safe aura about him.

"I had to go to the hospital for a bit. I had a bitch of a seizure," I said rolling my eyes.

I wasn't going to tell these people everything, but telling a part of the truth was easier, than coming up with a lie. That was something I learned at an early age.

"Oh shit!"

"Are you okay?"

"What happened?"¨

I just chuckled a bit at their sudden reactions. I get it, it was a bit weird.

"It was nothing really. I passed out and my brothers took me to the hospital," I explained making a few of them relax.

"But you're okay now, right?" Jess asked looking deep into my eyes, with a worried eyes. 

"Yeah, I rested for a couple of days, which was pretty nice. I caught up with a lot of schoolwork," I said with a shrug. 

It felt good having my new friends worry about me. With my brothers, I was always scared, that it was fake, but whit my friends, I didn't really care. If it was fake, then so what? They couldn't throw me out, and if they hurt me, I could fight back and tell someone.

"Dude, you had three days off school and you used it to study?" Manny asked in disbelief.

He had his arm around Abby's shoulders as she leaned into him with a smile. They were really cute together, and I couldn't feel but a bit jealous of them. I had that once, but we couldn't show it like that no matter how much we wanted to. All we could do was hold hands, and embrace in secret. We'd exchange rings on the park swings after everyone had gone home and kiss in the treehouse we built in Mia's backyard.

I had caught myself thinking of her a lot more lately. Maybe with my new sense of freedom, I had started second-guessing everything, that happened with us. Everything that I did, and all the things I wish I had, but never could. There were a lot of things I regreted, but Mia was the biggest of them all.

I had chemistry with Jess as my first class. We were going over the Ph scale, which I found extremely boring. We just dipped the paper in different sorts of fluids and then it changed color. I knew how it would change, we all did, but still, it was some sort of miracle every time it went from orange to yellow.

I was just about to tell Jess how bored I was when I saw how fascinated they were. She was staring at the paper changing color and making notes. They had a mesmerizing glimmer in her eyes as she studied the textbook finding answers to the questions popping in their head.