My Classified Life

Chapter Forty: I Found Narnia

“Keep that up much longer and you’ll fall through the floor.” Dylan said to me, he was annoyed.

I was nervously pacing my house back in the U.S., I hadn’t gone through another breakdown since the plane, but that doesn’t mean I wasn't going to have a nervous breakdown.

I’d been pacing for a very long time, Dylan just sat comfortably in a chair and his eyes swirled around as he watched me pace, switching my rotation when I saw fit. I had to do something to shake off some of my nerves and excess energy. Ironically, as I paced I would reach out my hand and take my energy drink can off my the table, take a big gulp, and put it back down and continue walking while the red drink burned my throat as it went down. It didn’t really make sense what I was doing, but I didn’t care.

“Shut up!” I countered, equally as annoyed.

He waited a beat while I kept pacing in our trophy room, the thick carpet bulging underneath my feet while he sat on a wooden chair with his back facing the limitless books at our disposal. And yet, none of them seemed to have any information on breaking in and stealing something from a secluded building in Siberia. I’d only gone in there to think, believing the familiar aroma of the old books would calm me. Dylan being in the room just felt weird, every time I saw him in different places of my house it was strange. He just stood out. He never intruded, though, which helped with the weirdness.

My constant pacing must have actually been bothering him because he snapped at me, harshly and loudly, “Would you just stop it!”

My feet froze in their place and I felt my foot involuntarily start to tap, the only noise it made was a faint squish in the carpet. He seemed to settle down from his outburst.

“Sorry, it’s just…” he paused and sighed, “that was really getting on my nerves.”

“I think we’re both starting to get on each other’s nerves.” I muttered under my breath.

I saw the familiar curve of his brows as anger rose within Dylan again, “You didn’t seem to mind me so much when you were getting all snuggly on the plane!”

I averted my eyes away from him and stared at my naked toes, a deep red crimson rose to my cheeks as quick as wildfire. The fact of the matter is, Dylan is a guy, and I’d been taking it too slow and too long for his liking. My sudden closeness and then platonic retraction was making him very angry at me, lashing out at time like now. He felt like I was toying with his emotions, stringing him along and using him as a friend while promising more than that. One minute I was close and open, and then like a loaded elastic rubber band gun I sprung away quickly. The plane incident had pushed him over the edge, especially after I heard a man beside us comment about how cute of a couple we were. Then when Dylan tried to hold my hand in the airport, I'd adamantly resisted.

I knew he was somewhat right, I shouldn’t be acting so hot and cold. But, I couldn’t help it sometimes. I just needed some time.

I still stared at the floor when Dylan scoffed and continued with his verbal assault, “Fine, don’t talk about it, then. Let’s just get back to what you’re comfortable with.” The way he said ‘comfortable’, in a sick and gross way, fired up my resistance.

“Jerk.” I mumbled, fully knowing he would hear.

It was always like this lately, the fighting and harsh words. Soon it would build up to full on screaming at each other, the stress of this entire mission was weighing down on us both.

I stormed out of the trophy room and set out to wander the house. Dylan didn’t follow behind me like he used to, the only sound in the house was the light tapping of my footsteps on the floor.
A crazy idea had been forming in my mind about all the days I couldn’t find my mom, how I know now that she was doing her research and trying to discover what Dylan’s family was up to. But I couldn’t help but wonder where she hid, and if we had a secret lab like he did that even I didn’t know about.