No Turning Back - Chapter 33: Chapter 33

I never knew anger was such a passionate emotion. But then again, maybe that's because I'd never really experienced it before. Sure, I get upset from time to time like all people but I'd never been genuinely angry before – until now anyway. Now, anger was the only thing I felt. I couldn't feel loneliness since no one in my house would leave me alone. My aunt, Ashley and Zac all took turns babysitting me when I got home from the hospital. Ashley explained that they just didn't trust me being alone due to the state I was in. I then bluntly asked her whether she thought I was going to try to kill myself or something. She had blushed softly and replied that they were just worried; I wasn't acting like myself. While that was true, I didn't know what they wanted me to do. I tried extinguishing whatever anger I was feeling but I found that I couldn't. It was too strong and my body was still too weak to really do anything about it.
My aunt tried to make sense of my foreign behavior by trying to blame it on my medicine as well as my high stress level and the trauma I'd experienced when my dad nearly beat me to death. She was studying to be a psychiatrist so she tried really hard to put her education to work. Daily, she would try to have little therapy sessions with me to help me recover my old mentality. I would usually talk her about everything that's been going on. I told her about the stress my parents had been putting on me as well as my relationship with Jayden. Once I got to the relationship part that was when she seemed to start putting two and two together. She told me that my newfound anger was more than likely a reaction to the fact that I'd been holding in so much yet when I'd let it out: everything went wrong. I was angry at the world, per to say. I despised the fact that I came clean and I had no reward for it. I loathed my parents and Jayden for not accepting the things I'd done for them. Hell, apparently, I hated myself for even trying to be perfect for all of them. She told me that my anger was just a sign that all the stress was gone, leaving my bitter feelings behind since nothing turned out the way I wanted them to. The bitter feelings had always been there but they only expressed themselves now because there was nothing there to hide them anymore. She explained that it was normal though; I was going to be alright. I just needed some time to let my emotions simmer down.
After my small diagnosis, Ashley did ease up on trying to get everyone to babysit me. She would spare me a couple hours a day while she was at school to let me be alone. Then, she would bring Melanie home with her and my best friend would spend the afternoons with me. She usually brought me my schoolwork so we did that together. My doctor had recommended I didn't go to school for a week or two because they wanted to watch my broken rib. He told me that the bone had almost punctured my lung so he wanted to keep an eye out to make sure that it healed smoothly. He also told me to take it easy in which my family translated into the thought that I wasn't allowed to leave my bed. I didn't mind that too much though. I was still in a lot of pain despite my painkillers that I had to take every three hours. So, during the day, I would mostly just lie in bed and read or watch TV or listen to music. It was a relaxing two weeks for me.
When I returned to school, my arm was still broken so the kids who teased me took that as a sign that they could mess with me and I wouldn't do anything. I tried to ignore their remarks as I walked down the hall but when I once again saw my locker decorated with inappropriate, degrading words, I felt my subtle anger simmer under my skin. Melanie helped me tear the stuff back down but I was still a bit pissed off about it. "Just ignore it," Melanie told me. "Take the high road."
"I did take the high road. You see where it got me," I replied, motioning to my red casted arm.
She sighed. "I see someone's still a bit cranky."
"My aunt said that I've made progress with trying to get it to go away. I'm not as bad as I was before."
"Oh yea, like when you decided to throw your iPod across the room because that Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley song came on and you got so mad because it reminded you of Jayden? I remember that."
I rolled my eyes at her. "Whatever. I'm trying the best I can."
"I know. I see that you are." She smiled softly. "You're going to be back to normal in no time." She leaned up to kiss my cheek softly. "I'm going to go meet Damien at my locker. Are you going to be okay?"
"Yup. Go ahead and make out with your boyfriend." I smirked down at her and wiggled my eyebrows. She blushed deeply before hitting my good arm. Her soft smile grew a bit though at my comment before she skipped off down the hall. I continued to get my books out of my locker, trying hard to ignore some of the insults that were yelled at me as people passed by. None of them actually touched me until some of the senior jocks grabbed me by my good arm and pinned me up against my locker.
"I bet you like this don't you, faggot," I heard one of them say as they began to teasingly grind on me. I bit my lip as a growl threatened to escape my lips. Some of these kids forgot that I was the president of the school therefore I could take some privileges away if I really wanted to. I could make the rest of the school year a living Hell if they wanted to keep testing me.
"You're not exactly my type," I muttered as I elbowed them off of me. I turned around to see them raising the three boys raising eyebrows at me.
"Ohh, I forgot you were with that dirty Hispanic kid. Jose or something was his name, right?" The one standing in the middle stated. I scowled. "You like the minorities, don't you? I guess that's because you know that you're not good enough to be with someone as good as your own kind."
"Shut up and get away from me," I told them.
"Or else what," the boy on the end challenged.
"Or else I'll put a bullet through each and every one of you," I heard Jayden say. The three boys quickly looked over to my ex-boyfriend to see him leaning against the lockers beside me with his arms crossed and his vibrant eyes sending a deadly glare. "Leave him alone," he said coldly. The three boys in front of me had paled at the sight of him so they immediately bolted down the hall at his command. His green eyes flicked to me as they did so. "Are you alright," he asked softly.
"I'm fine," I replied simply as I turned back to my locker. "Thanks."
"How are you feeling," he continued to speak. "Since you're back in school, I guess that means you're doing a lot better."
"I'm fine," I repeated. I glanced at him to see he was staring at me, his head tilted slightly. It was almost as if he was expecting for me to elaborate on my statement. I didn't know what more there was to say though. I felt fine despite the slight pain in my side since it was still healing but I could deal with it.
"I have something for you," he said as he shrugged his bag off his shoulders. He dug through it to pull out two colorful, handmade cards. He handed them to me and I looked down at them. There were words written in crayon that said "Get Well Soon" as well as small drawn pictures. "My little sisters made them for you. They've been asking about why you stopped coming around so I told them that you were in the hospital."
"Hmm, but not the real reason?"
He sighed. "No, I didn't tell them that we broke up. There's a lot going on at the house right now so I didn't want to give them any negative news. The only thing to distract them was making these cards for you. They wanted to come to the hospital with me to visit but I didn't want them to see you in the condition you were in."
"Understandable."
"Um, you can come by the house later if you want and see them. They really do miss you."
"I'll see. My aunt kind of has me on lockdown."
He nodded. "Okay. Just let me know."
"Alright." He stood there for a moment, opening and closing his mouth as if he wanted to say something. He didn't say anything though. Instead, he just gave up whatever battle he was having in his mind and just walked away. I tried not to dwell on the possibilities of things he was going to say and just went along with the rest of the day. When I finally got home, I went upstairs and flopped down on my bed. I didn't feel myself fall asleep but I did realize it when I woke up late that night. The rest of my family was asleep by the time I woke up so I just ate the dinner my aunt had made before doing my homework and such. I noticed Jayden had called me a couple times when I was asleep so once I was done everything I had to do, I decided to call him back and see what he wanted.
"Hello," Jayden answered, his voice hard.
"You called me," I said. "Is everything alright?"
"Oh...yea. Everything's fine. The girls wanted to talk to you but they're asleep now so..."
"Sorry, I fell asleep when I got home. Tell them that I say hi when they get up in the morning."
"Will do." We sat in an awkward silence for a moment before he spoke again. "I um...I guess I'll see you tomorrow in school."
"Guess so." I was about to hang up when he suddenly spoke again.
"Daniel wait," he exclaimed quickly. "Are you still there?"
"Yes."
"Can we talk?"
"Sure..."
"Look, about us... I've been thinking and I realized that I've been an asshole about our breakup. I shouldn't have been so harsh about it back at the hospital and-" He paused suddenly. I crinkled my eyebrows together in confusion before I heard some yelling going on from a distance on his end. Jayden seemed to be listening to it, staying alert as if something was bad was about to happen. I listened with him to the voices that got louder and louder. I recognized his mother's voice yelling along with what I was guessing was her boyfriend. They were yelling in Spanish so I only had a partial idea of what they were saying but I did have a clue in knowing that it wasn't good. "Never mind. I've got to go. See you around, white boy," he said before hanging up. I was a bit confused by his sudden nonchalance but I shrugged it off. My anger was turning into my deeper emotions that I didn't feel like putting up with so I tried not to think about it. Whatever Jayden was going to say didn't have to be important at the moment. If he was going to tell me once then there was a good probability that he would come close to trying to tell me again. I would just have to be patient and wait for when he was ready. Hopefully that wouldn't take all too long.