Before I Forget

Ghost Town

Sky didn't come to school the next day.

Hawk did - despite only having slept an hour or two so that his whole body was tense and restless and hyperactive. But he couldn't stay home - Mom had been mental after hearing him and Sky's yelling match on the front steps last night and to avoid seeing her, Hawk had quietly slipped out of his room and left for school too early, skipping breakfast.

The upside was that Mom hadn't heard the part of him breaking Demetri's arm - Hawk didn't even want to imagine the amount of trouble he'd be in if Mom knew that. But Mom had heard what Hawk had yelled at Sky about being with her only to get some pussy—

Jesus fucking Christ—

As if Hawk hadn't felt shitty enough already.

He didn't want to think about Mom's tears, about how disappointed she was in him, but there the thoughts still were, they lingered at the edge of his consciousness and currents brought them to the surface every couple of minutes, making him feel like someone was hitting him in the head with a baseball bat.

Hawk felt like a complete piece of shit.

Breaking Demetri's arm - well, that he could at least justify to himself. Demetri had started a war, a war that had been raging for months now and finally Hawk had managed to finish it. It had been the right thing to do, but—

But still, the snap of a breaking bone, the strangled cries of raw pain that had escaped Demetri's throat as he lay on the ground, haunted Hawk and he couldn't shake them off as easily as he had pretended in front of his friends.

And then there was the worst.

The things he had said to Sky couldn't be justified, no matter how hard he tried.

Hawk's chest clenched with disgust and anxiety as he glanced at the empty seat next to him. The English classroom was full, the lesson had started already, and Sky wasn't there. That empty seat felt like a slap on the face, and Hawk brought a hand to his cheek, he tasted the iron and copper of blood as he ran his tongue over the inside of his cheek.

Why would anybody be with you? To get some pussy.

He couldn't believe he had said that. But he had wanted to finish that fight, to finish it so that it would be over for good because his life was over already, Sky had dumped him and they were never getting back together, so what right did she have to show up at his front steps, tears in her eyes as if she still cared?

No, he'd had no choice but to finish it. Just like he had finished Rickenberger, and Demetri.

So, you won, asshole. You fucking crushed her. Feel like a winner now?

He let out a silent groan and slumped over the table, leaning his head in his hands as the teacher started talking. He heard none of it, he didn't even take out his pen or his notebook. He couldn't have cared less. All he could think about was the look on Sky's face when she had slapped him, the angry tears on her cheeks, the way she had shivered like the wind was blowing right through her, when she had rushed away from him, and now—

She wasn't in school. He was sure it wasn't just this class. He hadn't seen her at lunch either, it had been just Moon and Yas and Sam, glaring daggers at him from their table, Sky's spot had been just as empty as the one next to him right now, and it made Hawk so anxious he thought he would throw up.

He fished his phone from his pocket and glanced at it under the table, not to draw anybody's attention to what he was doing. There were no new messages or calls, not that he had expected there to be. The last message from her was still the "Thank you" a few days ago when he had beaten up Rickenberger for her. He stared at those words for a couple of heartbeats, nausea making his head light, his ears ringing. Rickenberger was still in bed, he assumed. He had beaten up that asshole for what he had done to Sky - and he wasn't regretting it - but now, had he not hurt Sky a thousand times worse?