Playing with Fire

Chapter 5

“Don't worry. Worry is useless. I worried anyway,” - The Fault In Our Stars, now in theatres. 

Chapter 5

When I woke up the next day, I felt infinitely worse than usual. Aside from the fact that I almost didn’t get a wink of sleep, I was struggling with an enormously ugly fact: right now I was a pariah at school, and also a lying cheater. My mother had been waiting for me downstairs with a box of cereal and a scowl in her face because I wasn’t home before my curfew.

The single text inside my phone also reminded me of another person that I’d pissed off badly. Matthew sent me exactly one text asking me where I went. After I explained to him that I wasn’t comfortable having a double date with Noelle and Kevin, he gave me the silent treatment.

I started to really hate myself when my heart leapt and I saw another text message from Marcus. He was coming to pick me up to school, the message said. I was closer and closer to becoming the caricature of a female villain: vindictive and revolting. Nevertheless, I texted back an okay to him.

After a really chilly breakfast, I didn’t bother to kiss my mother goodbye and just got out of the house. Usually I took the bus, but today I saw a Volvo in front of the street.

“Hey you,” Marcus’s face appeared after the window rolled down.

“So was your sleep?” he asked as I got into the car.

“Non-existent, too much pressure and I felt so guilty for having two boyfriends.”

“Don’t forget the part that we’re brothers. You’re basically encouraging fratricide for either of us.”

“Thanks a lot, asshole,” I lightly punched his arm.

“Then again, I don’t really think that what we’re doing counts as cheating, you know, since we haven’t even kissed,” there was a smirk when he said that.

“I kissed Matt two months after we first made it official, a few days before he went to college. I think you might need to wait a bit longer before I get physical with you.”

“I’ll get that kiss in less than a month,” he said as he relaxed himself into the seat.

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“I just am. You seem like you’re crazy about me.”

I rolled my eyes. “I can break up with you right now.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m absolutely sure.”

Unexpectedly, he started to chuckle in amusement. “Let’s try 90 mph,” he said.

A few seconds later, I was screeching inside the car because it was moving in speed that was borderline suicidal.

The time it usually took from my house to the school was twenty minutes, but it was cut to about ten with Marcus’s crazy driving. The next ten minutes, however, was spent panting and trying to regain my wits back.

“Really, don’t break up with me now,” Marcus said as he rummaged through my backpack, looking for a water bottle. “You’re crazy about me now, but I’ll go crazy if you break up with me. That was just an example of the things I do when the wires inside my head snap.”

“You’re … demented,” was all I could manage.

“You’re still using SAT words so I guess the drive really was not that ‘demented’,” he laughed and he gave me the water bottle. I immediately drank half of it.