The Knight in Leather Armor

ch.22 Nothing gold can stay

“Oh, hi Liam,” I greeted casually.

“Hi,” Liam replied tersely.

I looked over his shoulder and saw that Harry had already hoped into his truck and sped off down the road.

“Are you ok?” I asked him, slightly worried by his sudden hostility.

“Why would you care?” he mumbled angrily.

“Sorry?” I asked for clarification.

“Nevermind,” he shook his head, but his eyes still held a dark swirl of brooding anger and frustration. It scared me a bit. I thought I could count on Liam’s smile to brighten my day, any day.

Liam walked me to class in complete silence. It was almost as if he was forced to do it. He was so overwhelmingly quiet in class, too.

“Liam, could you read Ponyboy’s part?” Mrs. Fitzgerald asked, even though she meant for him to just do it.

She tapped her long, scraggly fingers against her copy of The Outsiders- my absolute favorite book.

Liam nodded. He didn’t even bother to look down at the book, he just read, staring straight at me.

“Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay,” he recited in a cold, passionless voice so very far from his own.  

Even Becky noticed and gave me a weird look. I wanted to catch up with him after class, but he left the moment the bell rang.

“What’s his problem?” I asked Becky rhetorically.

“I told you he wouldn’t wait forever,” Becky replied matter-of-factly.

I rolled my eyes in annoyance- at both Liam and Becky. As much as I was relieved he probably wouldn’t ask me out again, I was still worried about his really weird behavior.

*****

I saw Harry leaning against the hood of his truck in the parking lot after school.

But I felt someone’s gaze burning into my back. I turned around and saw Liam standing next to his BMW with his lax bro friends. But he wasn’t talking to them. He was completely ignoring them. He was staring at me. Staring with his deep brown eyes, which had suddenly seemed fiery red the way they cut into me.

“Are you ok, Angie?” Harry asked me as he tilted my chin up to him.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I brushed off.

Harry opened my door and drove me home.

*****

I did more homework faster and earlier than I had ever done. I guess I was trying to get my mind off of Liam’s shadiness. Plus, I was trying to stall going to sleep- in case I had another horrible nightmare, while also hoping that Harry would come over. After how quickly he left last time, I decided not to keep my hopes up too high.  

It was past midnight by the times I realized u had finished all my work for the next two weeks.

I changed into my PJs and pulled the covers over me. I shifted around uneasily, trying to get comfortable under my frigid, lonely covers.