Teenage Dilemmas [UNDERGOING MAJOR EDITING]

Chapter Twenty Three || Mike is High on the Feeling of Relief

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

Khalil Gibran

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Bridgit

As the class finally touched down in Anchorage Airport, there was a cheer on the plane that we were (almost) home.

With 52 pairs of feet bloated from the lack of movement hobble to the bus waiting outside the airport, everyone was glad to be out of Paris.

So, I sit on the bus now, with a small diary on my hand, one I should've written all about the experience in beforehand. I scribble down all the things I remember from the trip with my pink fluffy pen, James sleeping with his head rested on the window.

'Dear Diary,'

My wide, messy, loopy handwriting scrawls the two most over-used words in diary writing history.

'Today, I went to the Eiffel Tower. It was cold and boring and high.

It was so high of the ground that I would've thrown up over the happy, newly-wed couple on the bottom floor.

I would've thrown up on the couple if it weren't for James. He worries me, the poor boy.

He makes me nervous.

He makes me think of how lucky I am.

He steps on my heart.

He made me remember that I am loved.'

My pen stops writing and it hovers, millimetres away from the lined paper. I close my eyes and take a long breath out, then open them, still sitting on the bus I have been for the past two hours.

I look to James, still sleeping with his head rested on the side of the bus, jiggling in time with the rattling of the window. His mouth remained closed and he breathed through his nose. I wonder what happened if he had a cold?

The whole setting almost takes me back to the plane trip, except my feet didn't feel like they were a being stabbed by a million pins.

I open up the book again, resting it on my lap as we drove along the highway. I put the pen tip down on paper and begin to write again. As I begin to write the curl of my 'L' and the bus shudders, running over something on the road.

I groan and look at the long, black line that has been drawn cross the page.

"What are you writing?" I hear James' voice next to me and I shut the book.

"Nothing." I shove the pocket sized book in my bag which lay in front of my feet.

"Are you sure? It didn't look like nothing." James sits up straight, his back and neck cracking.

"It was nothing important."

"It looked like something important." James insisted looking towards me and pushing his glasses up to the top of his nose.

"Can I see?"

"No." My answer is short and blunt.

"Okay." James sighs and rests his head back onto the window.

"Thank you-" I blurt and the bite my lip.

"For what?" James asks, confused.

"Yesterday, at the restaurant." I blurt again, wincing at James' sour expression of the event where he got his black eye.

"I don't want you to ever speak about again." James shook his head, looking away from me.

"Why?" I ask, poking at the bear, sticking my head into danger.