Displacement // Shawn Mendes

Six: Cold

(Yes, the name of this chapter was purposefully named cold; you'll see why.)

As soon as the bell rang, I nearly sprinted out of my chemistry class as fast as I could leave. With my headphones in, I listened to old melodies I would one compose. Most were unfinished, but anything would help to get me out of this songwriting hiatus. I looked ahead, deeply invested on my task at hand; I motioned my hand in a way that made me seem like a weird band composer, or something. I saw Rey - well, Reyna - walking in front of me, fumbling through her bag as she carefully stepped down the stairs.

"Hey," I said, snapping her out of her searching. She looked at me and gave me a small smile, before turning and continuing to look through her neatly organized backpack.

"Hey, sorry. I'm just looking for something." She said, her hair falling in front of her face as she peered down. I scoffed. Way to state the obvious.

"I can see that," I chuckled. "Anything specific?"

"Some stupid chemistry papers. I completely forgot where I put them." She looked up again to turn the hallway corner, which also happened to be the direction I was going. "I'm such an idiot." She mumbled quietly, but loud enough for me to hear through my non-headphone ear.

"The ones with the directions for the antimatter project?" I asked her, remembering the papers she'd given me around three days ago. She closed her backpack, swinging it back around her shoulder as she shut her eyes, snickering at herself. She looked up at me, a smile still planted on her face.

"Yeah, I completely forgot I gave them to you." she said as she fixed her dark brown hair. It was almost black, nothing like Camryn's long mix of golden and light brown strands mixed inside her mainly medium brown hair. "Like I said, I'm an idiot." She continued, which elicited a chuckle from me as we continued walking side-by-side in an uncomfortable silence.

"So, where are you headed?" She asked me, and I suddenly realized there was nothing playing through my headphones, and I wasn't headed to where I originally wanted to go - that being far, far away from this place.

"I don't really know." I took off my headphones, shoving them inside my pocket along with my cellphone. I could see Rey applying a coat of chapstick, the same one she'd always applied to prevent herself from mouthing off. She put it back in her pocket and tucked a piece of hair behind her left ear, and it took everything I had inside me to stop myself from asking her what she hesitated to tell me.

But, a short while after (excuse me for sounding like a broken record), I saw Camryn. The impact hadn't been as major as it once was; an outcome of my attempts to forget about her entirely. I felt time go by quickly, not slow down as it once had - which left my mind attempting to hold onto this moment, in which she was smiling with her friends like she once had with me. I felt my eyes darken evidently, not with anger or lust, but with despair. It pained me deeply to see her smile whilst she'd left me gasping for air between the quiet sobs I let out when all the lights were off and the house was quiet, the only light from dawn slowly creeping in through my shutters; despite how unwanted it was.

"Wow," I heard Rey mumble, elongating the "ow" syllable of the word. She proceeded to pull out the small tube of chapstick from her back pocket, this time applying it with a small smirk on her lips. I looked down at her with my eyebrows furrowed. Her eyes met mine and she gave me a smile, knowing completely that her shady remarks had upset me and left me dying to know what lurked inside her mind.