tangled up in blue

35

my tears are becoming a sea- m83

2021 edit- just letting first time readers know that i havent edited this chapter yet, so there may be inconsistencies as originally, noah was 17 and graduated at the end of the book (it was a v fucked up education timeline lmao im sorry) 

AN- i heard you bitches was looking for ME!!! sorry for the chapter delay but it's finally out, just like noah!

tw// homophobia, SA

Very few people in the world knew what dying felt like. I was one of them. I'd drowned before, and because of Jace, I'd started to forget. But in that moment, everything came flooding back. The colour of death. An unliftable weight crushing the air from your lungs. The realization that in the end, everyone was completely alone.

I remembered what it felt like to drown, because it was happening again.

I could vaguely hear someone's voice saying my name. Lee. My best friend. He was saying my name, and it was an echo. I'm at school, and everyone's staring at me. A crowd of faces. Staring. Whispering. Laughing. I heard someone mutter the word 'disgusting,' and I flinched. Helena. I've hurt her. Everyone knows.

"Noah?" Lee asked again, finally making me look at him. My face was pale, blank, washed white with grief of everything I was about to lose.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, my eyes watering.

I turned before anyone could stop me, not that they would. The large hallway was full of people, and not a single one of them cared enough to stop me. I had to push past bodies to get through, the faces a mixture of pity and judgement. I fell to my knees when Colton shoved me with a laugh. "Knew you were a pervert," the blonde sneered. His broken nose still having a bandage from the lake where Jace beat him up should have made me feel better, but it didn't. I just felt like even after all of that, he'd still won. My face crumpling under the cold gazes of my peers, I tried to pick myself up.

A slender dark hand reached under my elbow and helped me to my feet, making me flinch for the second time. When I stumbled back, I came face to face with Brandy. She'd helped Chesca bully me my entire life, and yet she was the only person looking at me with concern. I didn't have time to think about it. I had to leave. My feet carried me through the rest of the hall, until I was running as fast as I could. The further I got from everyone, the more it felt like I was moving in slow motion. The very air that I moved through was pulling me back, reaching out its hands and clawing at the last shreds of my heart that hadn't yet fallen apart. They tore out the piece Jace had claimed. They ripped apart the part that beat for my Mom. My sister. My friends. My Dad. The world was eating me alive and calling it love.

Now in a large empty hallway, I imagined river water seeping in around my feet. I imagined that the lockers and classroom doors were just like the reed's and skeletons of objects that lay long forgotten at the bottom of every lake. My feet were lifting from the floor, my white shirt billowing out until I looked like the only living thing for miles. Not for long. I knew that feeling, the one you got before you stopped breathing. My innocence died as a scream in the back of my throat. The vast and empty blue swallowed me whole, made me its martyr, turned my lungs into a cage and abandoned the little life I had left to rot inside them. There's someone I love, I thought as my tears bled into the endless water. There's someone I love, and I can never love him again. I wanted to die. I wanted to live. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to suffocate me. I wanted my Mom. I wanted to run away with his hand in mine, two hearts heavy with sin, but full of each other. Instead, I let myself float. This time, there were no flashing red and blue lights on the surface. There was no man diving towards me. There were no hands beating the life back into my chest, stealing the water from my lips. I was alone, standing in a high school hallway and pretending to die.