SHADES of GREEN ↬ m. wheeler

X. INFINITE

CHAPTER TEN
━━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━━
❝INFINITE❞

　
　

WELL INTO THE night, Jade had finally reached her last bit of homework. She sat on her bed, back aching from hours of slouching over her lap, using her French notes to fill out the study guide. Next week was midterms. She liked to be well prepared.

　Plus, the comment the neon girl had made about educations had deeply offended her, somewhere in the back of her mind. She chewed at her lip as she worked, trying to keep that voice out of her mind. Trying to forget the feeling of Esme's lips, and the way the latter had, on Monday and Tuesday, acted as though nothing had happened. As if she had forgotten.

　But Esme hadn't been that drunk. Not drunk enough to swerve when she drove Jade home. Even if she had been drunk enough, it would never dim Jade's discomfort. She liked to believe that she had wiped away the kiss when she cleaned off her lipstick. Liked to believe that it didn't count as a real kiss.

　Jade didn't realize how much harder she had bitten into her lip until she tasted blood. She released her clamped teeth with a sigh and ran her tongue across her sore lower lip.

　Biting her lip had always been a bad habit. It was worse when Jade was nervous, and even worse when that nervousness was intense. She had been nervous enough lately that her lips always seemed to bleed by the end of the day, although she couldn't think of any reason why it had gotten that bad in the first place.

　Hawkins. It was Hawkins itself, Jade was starting to believe. Ever since she had moved, she had been instilled with a constant feeling of anxiety. At school, she was always moving, always bouncing her foot or popping her fingers, swinging her legs or twisting her hair around her fingers. She was always biting her lip.

　Unless, of course, she was with Mike. The only time she got nervous around him was when she was thinking about how much she liked him.

　Right now, she felt calmer than usual. At the right end of the room (or Jade's right), atop her desk, rested her old record player; she'd gotten it for her eleventh birthday. It had once belonged to her grandmother. Jade's memories of her were fuzzy but somewhat clear; Genesis Oaks had died shortly after her husband, when Jade was a little girl. The severe depression had given her cancer.

　Ritchie Valens' soft voice whispered through the room, singing Donna—possibly one of Jade's favorite songs ever. His voice wafted through and sweetened the air, creating an atmosphere just as soft.

　All of that shattered when Jade heard a low tap at her window.

　Jade froze. There were no tree branches that could lean close enough to brush her window. She heard the tap again, louder this time, and slowly turned her head.

　She had tensed all over, prepared to bolt. The tap sounded again. Finally, Jade's eyes fell upon the window—and she gasped sharply at the sight of a white hand pressed to the glass. It was dark out, but she could make out an even darker form behind the glass.

　"Come on, Jade, it's freezing out here!"

　Jade's mouth fell open. Instantly, she slipped to the floor and dashed for her closet. After hastily slipping a jacket on over her tank top, Jade ran to the window. Her feet were light and the floor was carpeted, so there was hopefully no chance that her mother would hear. Because if she did, Jade was screwed.

　Despite her mother's speech about being at the age to start doing things most teenagers did, she doubted she would be happy about Mike Wheeler sneaking into her room through the window.