Because of You

Shades of Red

The sound of rain was deafening. It smacked against the windows, running in rivulets down the panels of glass. I turned up the radio to drown out the sound, but still, the rain shrieked. It pummeled my ears and I raised the volume as high as the knob would allow, the words of Danny Boy becoming indistinguishable as it bellowed in my head.

Yet, it still wasn't enough. The rain kept coming. It drowned the outside world in a thick, heavy deluge.

Worry made my chest grow tight as I stared out the window, unable to see anything through the sheets of water. "Dad?" I asked, hearing the fear in my voice.

Crack.

A fissure in the glass appeared, splitting down across the windshield. If I were in the driver's seat, I would've pulled over and I looked across at my dad, stunned he didn't seem to notice the terrible weather. He couldn't see, and I knew with every part of me that we were going to crash.

"Dad?"

But suddenly, it wasn't my dad sitting there anymore. Within the time it took me to blink, his dirty blonde hair had turned brown and unkempt. His eyes darkened from blue to a burning auburn.

I watched, confused, dazed, as a cold foreboding bled into my insides. He looked over at me.

"Finn?"

And that's when everything shattered.

*************

I jolted awake, sweat plastering my shirt to my back, remnants of the nightmare still clear and unfading in my mind. My breathing was rapid and I tried to slow it, balling up the fabric of my comforter.

I knew before I even got out of bed that my mom was already gone for work and I dressed slowly, trying to shake off the terror of the dream.

Today, for the sake of not looking exactly like I felt, I swapped the sweats for jeans. But I still wore a baggy shirt, one that Thalia eyed distastefully when I arrived at school. She usually made comments on my attire, but since Finn, she'd refrained, hugging me instead and asking how I was before jetting off to class.

I sighed as I walked to my own. Once seated, Mr. Owens announced a pop quiz and I tried to calm my sudden jumble of nerves. I found it comically coincidental that the one time I actually chose not to do my homework last night was the day our Trig teacher presented us with a pop quiz.

Once the papers were handed out and I flipped it over to reveal the sets of problems, that nervousness morphed into outright panic. It was instinct to feel pressure about a quiz, but I pulled myself back enough to realize that now it didn't matter. For once, I was ignorant of the answer to the question lying in front of me and the feeling was almost . . . liberating.

Screw it, I thought, and jotted down the first thing that came to mind.

**********

"Clarke, have you been okay?" Thalia asked me a couple days later, as class broke out and we went to lunch. I'd just gotten back my grade from the pop quiz from Tuesday and I shoved it deep in my bag before Thalia could catch the red D painted on the front. It was the first grade I'd ever gotten that was lower than an A- and I knew that if she saw it, she'd grill me on what went wrong.

I nodded as enthusiastically as I could. "Yeah," I said, pulling out my lunch money as we entered the cafeteria. "I'm okay. Just like I was yesterday. Just like I was the day before that."

She teased her bottom lip, watching me intently like she expected me to simultaneously blow my top or crumble. "We've been best friends since kindergarten," she uselessly reminded me. "So I can tell when you're lying."