Four Months

26. Wounded Animal

I sat on my couch eating a bowl of cookie dough ice cream. The tv played in the background but I couldn't focus. I kept replaying Kaiden kissing that guy in the hall. By no means was I upset or disapproving, but confused I was. I couldn't understand why Kaiden wouldn't say anything to anyone. I replayed all the times I've seen him with a girl wrapped around his arms. How he would boast about his sexual successes. Why was it so hard to tell his friends that he also liked guys or only liked guys. The hiding wasn't necessary when he had the support. On top of that, I now had a new secret to keep from Ashton. That his best friend likes men. I slipped saying Levi's name around Ashton but he stopped asking questions in the car.

I never answered Levi's question. I couldn't really. I felt like I've avoided everyone I know. And I still am avoiding them all. It's been a while since I've talked to Leona but I was scared to pick up the phone. Would she understand like Kaiden did, that me and Ashton just "needed some time." But who else was there for me to run too. I'm avoiding every male in my life and Leona is the only option. The only person who I could even think to call right now. So I did it.

I picked up the phone and opened the messenger app. I tapped Leona's name and started typing. Then I deleted it all. I need to call her. Not text. No matter how upset she is, I need to know how she feels about me. If she hates me that is. I clicked out of the tab and talked the dialing app. I typed in the first 6 components of her number and hit the dial logo.
Then I quickly hit the red phone sign.

How could I call her after everything? Was it safe to invite Leona over? Would Tanner go after her as well? I couldn't risk it. Any of it. Despite my lack of
pride and faith in her forgiving me I was truly concerned about the well-being of anyone close to me. I simply didn't not want to fathom the possibility of anyone getting hurt on my account.
Tanner was dangerous. He needed to be contained, yet he walks around free. Free to harm those that cross him wrong. His minions were so far in his ass they started to resemble his feature in solitary ways. Ways I, myself, didn't ponder to analyze. So I kept to myself. Drowned in my thoughts.

Apart from Tanner problems. I had a new problem. It was such a new add-on I didn't have a category to place him in. Him as in Levi. My new... spectacle. A spec in my life. One that I could easily reside from, but I kept being drawn back. He smelled new. Of something fresh and more pure. I couldn't sense any baggage hanging out his trunk so I feel that it made me feel certain type of protection in his presence. A presence that said "you cannot harm us,
Or me, or her." I wasn't sure yet if that presence caused any alerting type of greater or good. It just caused something. Something.

Something like... the queasiness in my stomach every time I stepped into a room alone. Something similar to a feeling of when your playing outside, and although your parents aren't four feet behind you, you can still feel their protective gaze even if they were 400 feet being you, and that gaze would inevitably still make you feel... safe. But I forgot what that felt like. Safe. There was a price on my head and it was only a matter of time before It was a stake. A reward for the first person to bring my head back on a platter. I felt like an activist, or a distant persona of MLK. Someone who held an importance that had a stake over their head. The stake being their head,
With the same conclusions of foreseeing my own death. I felt it. I felt my time being crunched. My hours being shorten. My life earnings loosing its value but uprising its price. I had a stake over my head. I felt the coldness when I walked outside of vulnerability. No matter how many layers I had on I felt each inch of my skin pinch with coldness. I had a price over my head.

I never knew what it was like to know what your death would look like. To know who would you kill you. And give or take a few speculations of how exactly you would die. Was this the moment everyone before me ceased to take advantage of? The moment of telling someone. Who would I tell? How would I explain that I've foreshadowed my own death? That I've seen it, in every way and version that the universe and it's parallels have chosen for me. Who would miss me? I wondered if I meant enough to Levi now, and how hurt his heart would be when my name came across the bottom of the screen on the 6 o'clock news. Will my parents be altered for life? Did I still matter to Ashton? Dead or Alive.

Is it suicide to allow the art of death to play at feet without sweeping it away? I felt as if essentially I was killing myself by not going to authorities. His status was just so high I couldn't understand why anyone would be slightly interested in listening to me convict the wealthiest man on campus of murder and treason. I wouldn't believe myself if I was coming forth with the truth. The absolute truth that is, because the truth is a wounded animal can only last so long after the absence of care.

I was the deer. I treaded lightly across the mossy green meadow. Satisfied with my surroundings, that provided me with a beautiful view, a safe holding, and a fruitful tree. But I was pulled, drawn to the edge, like a fawn now I've become. So I follow the darkness, finding the edge of the world where the grass stops and meets a line of hard gray area.
It's so easy to turn around, I want to turn around. Although it's impossible when you've seen this much. So I cross the road, and like a fawn does, I get distracted by the thing that flashes and serenades me at once. Run. Move. Get out of the way. The things I tell myself, yet I don't understand my own language now. And the collision happens, I'm hurt,
defeated and defenseless. I limp off into the woods and being the wounded animal I am, I don't call for help. I lay there aimlessly in a pool of my own dark desire. Why doesn't the deer call for help? Is it to torture itself from a sin only confided within itself.
Why is help so sundered and spilled in every direction? So, essentially the question I ask myself is who will save me from myself if it cannot be me.

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