Electro [hs]

Fifteen

Fifteen

I put my hand over my mouth before I get a chance to squeal or gasp, or make any kind of noise. Then I shut my eyes and I keep them shut tight, so that I can convince myself that I have no idea what's going on. I can't see anything, I can't hear anything and nothing is going on outside of the closet as far as I'm concerned.

But there are tears prickling in my eyes.

And all I can think about is Electro, and when we'd joked about the other couple, the one having sex in a dark room in the Electro complex- and how we two, Harry and me had pressed up so closely against one another that I could have died and there and be so happy about it.

Jesus, and I thought I was fucked up. Of course I'd be attracted to someone even more fucked up. Let's hear it for beers, for the fucked up and weird, they'd said at Electro. Like it was something to be proud of. This is too much. Too much.

If they stay in here much longer, I think wildly, I'll just open the closet door myself and leave. I don't care what happens after that- I just can't be in the closet surrounded by clothes that smell like him while, something is going on outside. Their tryst (is that what I call it? I don't even want to name it) however, is brief.

Harry murmurs something, Colleen murmurs something. I feel sick again. Sick, sick, sick. And they leave. I am able to wait five minutes for safety but that really is all I can manage. After that I push my way out into the room and let out one choking sob.

Unable to stay in the room, or even the house a minute longer, I burst through the front doors.

The others are still sitting around in a circle of lawn chairs. The air smells like coal embers and cigarettes and food and booze, but now that blissful combination is nauseating. I wonder if Mercedes knows, or Niall or Liam or Zayn. Has he been lying to them all too? It doesn't seem to matter because right now I want nothing to do with any of them. I met them because of Harry, they remind me of Harry and if I look at Harry right now I will cry.

It's not quite heartbreak. It's more this bone crushing kind of disappointment.

I like him so much.

"Charming," says Niall with relish, "You look terrible."

"Home," I manage to choke, "Sick. Gotta....home."

"Need a hand?" Harry puts a hand on my shoulder and I nearly jump out of my skin. I have to fight not to hiss, don't touch me. But instead I simply shake my head.

"Awwr feel better Charlie," says Mercedes sympathetically. Niall says something about work tomorrow evening for a night shift, they all say goodbye and I barely listen, barely return them as I mumble and mutter anything that will get me out of there as soon as I possibly can.

I think I'm safe, rounding the trailer park and headed towards my house when I hear, "Charlie! Charlie, wait!"

A hand closes around the back of my shirt and I feel a tug. It's Keelin.

"What do you want?" I say

"Don't you think we should talk?" she asks. I draw a blank and she clarifies, "About us. And what happened at Electro."

I blink.

"No," I say frankly. Because I don't. I push past her and keep going on my journey towards the trailer.

And then a weird kind of numbness takes over. That's all I can describe as it when I get back to Ben's.

The last time something this bad had happened to me was prom night, the night I'd tried to kill myself, screwed that up and got myself sent here to begin with. Back then, I'd been so hysterical; stomping, punching mirrors and sobbing my guts up. Perhaps it's because that kind of pain is so exhausting that I'm just too tired to feel, or perhaps I'm learning to live with the gut busting agony and so now I'm pretty much numb to it.