Straight Boys - Chapter 22: Chapter 22

"Andrew!"
"Zachary!"
"Corbett?"
The three girls Zachary and I had left in the gym were all jogging down the dimly lit hallway towards us. Mandy and Taylor hadn't noticed Corbett, or they chose to ignore him, while Gretchen scrunched her nose in bewilderment.
Corbett, only glancing at the three cheerleaders, shrugged them off before he locked his stare back onto me. I was slightly behind Zachary still, but I guess that didn't stop him from stepping forward again to jab at my shoulder. "So I hear you got kicked off the team. I guess I was right. Who's captain now, Rodriguez or Ashton?"
I roled my eyes and shook my head, utterly done with his bullshit, and I wasn't the only one. Mandy, opening her mouth, would have probably given him a piece of her delicate mind if Gretchen didn't beat her to the punch. "Come off it, Corbett Connors. You're just mad that you didn't get it." She licked her lips in contempt. "Maybe," a thoughtfully sarcastic look filtered through her features "if you hadn't gotten into a fight with Andrew, you would have been crowned captain... like it matters though."
"Shut your pretty little mouth, Yondi. You're only defending him because you slept with him."
"Alright hey!" Taylor, holding her hands up, silenced the two bickering teenagers. I was surprised it was Zachary, but he was too busy holding back his fists so that he himself wouldn't get suspended if a teacher finally decided to come out of the gym.
"You," the red head pointed at Connor. "Don't talk to my girl like that. I'll tell coach about the way you seem to be treating your cheer team, which will earn you a month of suicides probably. And you," her arm did a ninety degree turn to point at Gretchen. "Stop acting like you can take on a 6 foot 2 mountain of muscle. We need you for the cheer competition in three weeks, not in the hospital with a broken neck."
Gretchen rolled her eyes but shut her mouth. I couldn't say the same for Connors. He, with his eyebrows drawn together, crossed his arms. "Stop acting like you're such a high and mighty queen, Taylor. All you are is a ditsy princess attached to her prince 24/7 like a leach." Although I hated to admit it, Connors was right. I couldn't help but agree because it was the truth and nobody can disagree with the truth no matter what it was. So, I couldn't help the tiniest of smirks that pulled my lips up. I couldn't help it, and it seemed to have caught Corbett's attention.
That prick smirked, too.
"Look at that. Somebody has a sense of humor around here!" He threw is arms up and chuckled to himself. He, running his fingers through his blonde hair, fixated his glinting eyes on me. "Too bad somebody is a compete bitch." I scoffed at his terrible insult.
Corbett Connors was an asshole and I was having enough of it. I may hate a lot of people, but in that hallway at almost midnight, I hated Corbett just a little bit more and dare I say it, Taylor Haynes just a little bit less. She was, after all, indirectly standing up for me, so I couldn't dislike her too much than I already did. Maybe I could gain a little more respect for her, but I still wouldn't consider her a friend. Far from it actually.
Only Zachary if I was being honest. And that small amount of information may not have bothered me in that moment, but it would scare the shit out of me. It would. When my mind was a little more stable and I could actually think about it, I would be scared. I would be scared because I'd never felt this before. When I would have time to think is when I would actually start to realize details that I shouldn't think about. I would start to realize a big picture that has always been there, but I hadn't really stared at until now.
But I wasn't going to stare at the big picture for now. I couldn't. I was too wrapped up in this spell of trying to deal with not only Corbett, but also my family. I was trying to juggle too many pins, and maybe they would come crashing down on me if I slipped up, and man was I bound to slip up, but till then, I would keep juggling, keep my mind going, just for the simple fact that if I let go, insanity would definitely find me. It would catch up to me and cut the last bit of thread of coherency and take me away.
Not yet, though. Definitely not yet.
At least, not with the sight of Zachary Rogers completely letting go himself.
With his fists unraveling themselves and too long strides displaying before my, Mandy's, Gretchen's, and Taylor's eyes, Zachary had successfully bunched up the blazer Corbett wore and pushed him up against the lockers in record time. The bang that resonated down the corridor rang in the air as he spoke up finally. "I swear to God, Connors, you're pushing me over the freaking line and I don't know if you'll ever be able to pull me back if you keep talking."
Connors grunted, trying and failing to wrench Zachary off of him. "Get off of me, Rogers"
"Not until you fucking promise you'll leave and never bother Andrew again." Corbett paused for a second, letting his eyes roam towards me. Gretchen and Mandy both shuffled next to me as if they were going to protect me, and it may have worked because Corbett looked away. His blue eyes, as cold as ice, glared at Zachary.
"What are you, his best friend? I thought we were friends."
"Yeah, well, that's until you fucking beat the shit out of Andrew over here."
"Fuck you!" Corbett pulled back his elbow and shoved it into Zachary's jaw. It caused Zachary to let go of him and fall back a few feet, almost into the lockers against the other wall. Taylor and Mandy yelped rather loudly, while Gretchen quietly cursed next to me. This kicked my adrenaline into over drive at this point, and I rushed forward to grip at Zachary's arm to steady his wobbling form. All the while, Corbett Connors stood breathing heavily, keeping his eyes glued to me in a glare, but he didn't come close to me. He didn't move at all. He just stood there, staring, and not saying a single word. He just kept ventilating his air rather harshly.
A soft voice from my side broke the makeshift silence. "Just get out of here, Corbett." It was Mandy. She didn't look as heated as before, mostly tired now.
Corbett seemed to have listened to her words, unlike before when it was Gretchen and Taylor. He seemed to really listen because his eyes looked as if they softened around the edges, and his face relaxed a little too. He then sighed and left, turning his tense back on the five of us. But then, like it was an after thought, he turned around and, with fire behind his eyes, yelled from his walking form from down the hall, "This ain't over. It'll never be over until I say so!"
And then he was gone.
Gretchen was surprised, more so than the rest of us. She, along with Taylor, Zachary and I stared Mandy down with questions buzzing in our minds. She was the one that asked first, though. "How in the Hell did you do that, you little devil?" Mandy modestly shrugged with shyness as if it was nothing and replied with with the same demeanor behind her words. "He's my cousin. He knows if he even touches me, his mom and my mom would kill him. It's only a plus that we've been close in the past."
That was a surprising fact to hear.
It was so out of the blue, that it actually caused Gretchen to drop her jaw. To Zachary's right, Taylor looked as if she just heard God whisper some of his secrets to her. "No wonder you guys look so alike. I just thought it was a coincidence."
Mandy chuckled to herself as if she knew every secret of God's, like she knew something the rest of us didn't.
"See!" I jolted my head away from Mandy when Zachary finally spoke up after getting hit in the face with a brick for a fist. "What a couple of great friends!" Of course he would find time to joke about something during a serious moment.
I was about to give a  retort to his comment, when my phone rang. For the first time in the past like five minutes I noticed I was still clutching Zachary's arm. He wasn't wobbling anymore. Hell, he hadn't been for about four minutes. I had been clinging to him for no reason. My hands, which were wrapped around his elbow and resting against his shoulder, suddenly felt like they were holding priceless artifacts. My neck felt like a heater was pressed against it as I noticed my body was angled into his, with my chest pressed against his arm. So, like I had robbed a museum, I dropped the artifacts and took a few steps away. The closeness was unnerving, yet I was grateful I didn't have to acknowledge that. I thanked whatever god did exist for my phone to ring in that exact moment.
Inhaling deeply, I fished my cell out from my back pocket and looked at who was calling. It was my dad. He was probably wondering why I hadn't come home yet. Maybe he was finally catching on to the lie I had told him.
Pressing the accept button, I held the phone against my ear. "Hello?"
"Andrew! Andrew!"
"Dad? What is it, why are you yelling?" He probably caught onto my lie. God damnit.
"It's - Andrew. She's ... you're. Come to the hospital!"
I stopped breathing. I stopped blinking. I stopped everything. My heart. My movements. Everything stopped, except my mind. My mind hopped from one scenario to the next, one bad ending to the next. I immediately assumed the worse and that made me freeze me; and Zachary was the first to notice. "Andrew?"
"Dad..." My voice was shaky. I was shaking. Was I shaking? I think I was. My voice was shaking, so I talked slow. "What. Happened?" But I could barely get the question through my teeth. My throat was closing. Everything was closing.
"Andrew. Buddy, hey." My eyes snapped open to see Zachary so close. I had taken quite a few steps away; how did he get so close in so little time? Had I even stepped away from him?
"It's Lola! She's awake!" Awake. Lola is awake. I think I dropped my phone and stumbled back against the lockers, but I didn't really feel any of that. All I could feel was my heart pumping blood again and Zachary's hands grabbing ahold of my shoulders.
"Andrew!" The high pitch didn't sound like Zachary. In fact, it sounded like Mandy. It was. Through the haze that was my vision I could see blonde hair and gentle blue eyes full of concern. "Andrew, what happened?"
Suddenly, I was gasping for air as I tried to give her an answer. "It's - I... n-noth-ing. Nothing." I didn't want to tell her the truth. I didn't want to tell anyone of them the truth. All I wanted to do was get out of there and get to the hospital to see my sister. "I need to go." I blinked away the blur in my vision and pushed Zachary off of me.
"Where are you going?!" I didn't know who asked that, but I gave them the only answer I could think of. "I need to go!" It wasn't very enlightening, but I wasn't some enlightened thinker. I was Andrew Parsley, completely and unprofoundly a boy in need of being there this time. A boy that wasn't going to miss anything else. Not again. Not ever.
"Parsley, wait!" I was out the front entrance when I heard the baritone drone of Zachary Rogers. I didn't wait for him, but his voice was getting closer every step I took towards my car. By the time he was able to grab onto my shirt to pull me to a stop, we were in the middle of the parking lot. It was dead silent out here, save for the only live sound coming from the gym. It was there that music blared so loudly at a quarter past midnight.
"Let go of me, Rogers. I need to go!" I tried to push him away, but to no avail. He only held on tighter, his fingers digging into my shoulder from under my shirt. He was definitely wrinkling the fabric with his grasp.
"Not like this! Not in the state you're in. Andrew, you can't go like this, not until you calm down. - Andrew! I don't want you to end up in the hospital. Calm. Down! - Listen to me, Andrew Parsley! I heard everything when you were on the ph - stop fucking pushing me!" I paused. I stopped struggling when I heard Zachary yell out the f-bomb. He rarely - if not ever - said that word, but when he did, it held so much more emotion than anything he could say. It held some sort of authority behind it when he would say it, as if it could demand respect. I paused because Zachary had heard what my dad was saying on the phone; because he was listening.
I inhaled deeply, keeping my eyes firmly on his. His eyes held so many different emotions that I couldn't keep up. Mine probably held just as many, if not more, so it was a battle to see who could decipher the most between us, but I think I was losing. The brown irises spoke volumes, yet I couldn't decipher a single word. And as they moved from my eyes, down my face, all around, searching for something in me, I could still see the emotion filtering through. From under his bent eyebrows, his eyes looked at mine, and I looked back, trying hopelessly to figure them out. I was never too good at reading people, but he seemed to have mastered it sometime in his past. He mastered hiding his emotions, too. "You're crying."
I hadn't realized that, but when he figured that out, I had felt the tears then. I swallowed the lump creating a nest in my throat and looked away. "So what. My sister is awake. I need to go see her."
Rogers slowly started to unhinge his fingers from my shoulders. He said firmly as he was doing so, "So... let me drive you."
I looked back at him in surprise. "What?"
"Let me drive you. You obviously aren't in the best condition to be driving right now, and nobody wants you to end up in the hospital with your mom and sister, so let me drive you." I had to contemplate his words, but some deeper part of me knew he was right. It knew he was right and that I was wasting time standing here thinking, when I could have been at the hospital already. So, in a haste and jumble of words, I said yes and went back to walking as fast as I could to my car, practically running. Zachary was close behind.
My sister was awake, so I'd be damned if I wasn't going to be there to see her with her eyes open. I didn't care that I had left Mandy by herself. I didn't care that she and Gretchen and Taylor too were left in the dust, left in the dark about what was going on. I needed to get to the hospital because my sister was awake. She was fucking awake! I had to be there, to see her. I needed to see her, and I didn't care how I got there. I just wanted to be there. I was genuinely grateful, however, that I had Zachary taking me. I would have regretted going alone, and he knew that. I would have regretted it if I had had an accident. I was glad that he was there to help me. To save me.
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My my my! What a surprise we have here!! Another update within the same month! Practically a week from the last! That hasn't happened since...
This book first started!
But hey, I had a random bout of inspiration so here you lovelies go.
It's almost midnight where I'm at so meh. I guess I can go to sleep.
But as always VOTE and COMMENT! I LOVE you guys and hope you enjoyed.
And also Questions? Corbett and Mandy eh? Whoops. How about Gretchen? Corbett in general? And man... Lola is awake. I had been planning this scene out for ages so I'm glad I finally had a chance to actually get it out in words. Again, not edited, so I guess I got it out in some words.
I don't think I'll edit till I'm done so whatever.
Anyway, anything else? Any thoughts about what the Hell is going to happen next? Yeah I do have a habit of leaving you guys on cliffhangers but what can I say. I'm evil and love to watch people squirm uncomfortably!
Nah. I'm just good at cliffhanging.
And I would again like to reiterate that I own none of these pictures and GIFS that I use - only the collages. Credit goes to the awesome and very talented creators.
But I love you guys and hope to see you next update!