Scarred

Chapter 8.

Eliza

Do you think a cream colour or a sort of teal color would be best for my room?" The faint sound of talking nibbles in my ear, but my mind is in a complete different planet to even register what is being said to me.

"Um... Lize? Eliza!" My best friend accompanies her words with a small slap on my arm, causing me to come back to life.

"What?" I adjust my position on the suede chair I am seated on, opposite to my best friend in the new textbook smelling secluded cafe we often take homage in.

"You haven't listened to a single word I just said have you?"

"Would you believe me if I said yes?" I say, hoping the smile on my face is cute enough to win her over.

She laughs abruptly before her face becomes a clear canvas. "Okay so, this is weird. You've been acting weird all day, and then you literally just zoned all the way out just then. I don't think I need to ask you to start talking."

"Olivia..." I start, before I realise that I actually have no idea where to begin recollecting the events of my life over the last few days. It's weird that I haven't told my best friend, she's usually the one person I always immediately tell even the most intimate details of my life to. It's like the addition of this new person in my life has clouded my entire sensibility and sense of speaking my thoughts to anybody but myself.

"Wow, you're zoning out again. Have I suddenly become boring to you or something?" Her voice injects my ears again.

"What? No okay, look... I don't exactly know where to start but... There's someone else living in my house."

"Your mother..." She squints her eyes at me, as if she's hearing a complete other language come out of my mouth.

"Okay, I'm not that spaced out. No... You know that boy I was talking about the other day? The one that you said you see on your way to college?"

"The one that lives on the street?"

"Uh... Lived on the street. But yeah, that's the one," I quickly add, to diffuse the extremity of the first part of my sentence.

"Wait, what? Lived?"

"Lived. He lives with me now. And my mother."

"Wait... Let me just get this straight. The boy that was rude to you on your first encounter with him is the same boy you let into your house?"

"He's nicer now." I immediately wince at the nature of the lie that just escaped my mouth. Olivia's face reveals to me that she knows how little truth there is to that is as well. "Okay, he's not," I add. "But I feel really bad for him."

"Um, can we just rewind back to how it even got to the stage where he's living at your house? And why you haven't mentioned it to me... Once."

"I'm sorry, it's been so hectic. It's only been since yesterday, though." She scoffs. "Okay, so I went back to go see him a little bit after I told you about him. And he had just gotten into a little thing with another homeless guy and I felt really bad because it probably happens to him so often. I just started thinking that anything could happen to him out on the streets, and I had the chance to change that... So I did."