The Knight in Leather Armor

ch.44 Beautiful lie

There was nothing new in school. Liam still watched me with a longing suspicion. Becky glared at me through a web of mascara. I stared at the board, taking notes blindly.

Fitzgerald yanked at her tearing beige slacks as she stood up from her desk and trudged over to the front of the room.

“Cell phones away,” she hissed with the wave of her withering red-painted fingers.

But what the class heard was: “put it on vibrate and text when I’m not looking.”

“Now it’s that beautiful time of the year again” she grinned, revealing her stark-white canines.

The class looked around uneasily. The most beautiful time of the year was summer and sitting inside this classroom was far from the infinity of a cool July breeze or a catching lightening-green fireflies in glass jars.

“Mid-Terms” she cheered as she held up the red pain she used to fail people.

The kids that were awake glared at her, while the others waited for our jail sentencing. What will it be this semester? Two all-nighters? Maybe three or more because it’s junior year?

If Fitz didn’t get into another argument with her drunk of a husband, she might actually grade us decently.

“The assignment is relatively simple” she brushed off as she passed out a rubric with the prompt.

“You can choose from any novel we’ve read this semester, choose a character and write in their perspective if they were to be alive in today’s society” she announced.

I heard a few groans and sighs. But I was actually quite interested in the assignment. I could write about Dally Winston from Tulsa in 1967, to Dally Winston in Westwood, 2013.

Ideas started to bounce around in my mind and I jotted them down on the margins of the paper.

“I want it in MLA format and 4-5 pages in length. It’s due on the first of May. That should give you enough time” she explained.

Dally Winston. Oh, Dally Winston.

“He had a cruel hatred of the world….”                 

***

Between Midterms and my shifts at the restaurant, it became increasingly harder to see Harry. And every time we did see each other, it wasn’t the same as before; it was like something had broken between us since that day at the park. We couldn’t bounce back the way we had after the other torments and struggles we’ve been through these past few weeks.

And as for Louis, he hasn’t said a word to me since that day at the park. It feels like he’s waiting for me to grow unbearably anxious- so anxious that I come crawling to him, begging him to do as he pleases and get it over with. But I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to let him win. 

***

Harry leaned against his heaving midnight black truck after school.

He was wearing black Ray Bans. And he never wore sunglasses. And his leather jacket was buttoned up tight, like he was deathly afraid of someone seeing the flaws of his past, which were etched onto his skin like an old war map I so desperately wanted to trace to find his gold.

He was so simply beautiful like Soda. So dreamy like Pony. But so-so damned like Dally.

Quickly, but casually I walked to him.

He glanced around the lot to check the coast before taking my wrist and leading me to the other end of his truck. The sunlight didn’t reach this end of the parking lot, but I could still see Harry’s shadow hiding behind him. His impending shadow.