Page 34 of Lessons In Grey
Amusement danced in his eyes. “No, but I have sisters. They get the same way when they forget to eat.”
My glare softened as I forced myself away from the wall, praying my legs wouldn’t give out on me. “You have sisters?”
He nodded. “Three of them. Three brothers too.”
My heart ached in a loneliness I was intimate with. “Christmas’s must be Hell,” I said, walking by him. The hall seemed far longer today than it normally did. I pulled out a gummy worm and slid it along my tongue, the rough texture of the sour crystals soothing as the pain pushed through my jaw. It was the best kind of pain.
“They are…eventful,” he said, glancing over. He was quiet for several steps, his eyes warming the side of my head. “Why gummy worms?”
I chewed it slowly before swallowing, my mind working slowly, my thoughts still muddled, but clearer than they had been for a long time. “When I was a kid, I was having a really bad day. Nothing truly eventful happened, it was just…” I ran my tongue over my bottom lip, watching as the door loomed closer. “My brain was against me that day. More so than before. I got home from school, and I was just tired. The kind of tired that can’t be remedied by sleep or a hot bath. I was 14 years old. I walked into the living room and turned on the television, and this…” My lips flicked up in a smile that lasted no more than half a second.
I stared at that door, picturing the scene in my head with such accuracy, I could have sworn the door had shifted into a television. “This man popped up from what looked like the top of this…this blue box. ‘Have you got any apples?’” I said in probably the worst British accent anyone had ever used. “It was smoking, and he was wet, and there was this little red-headed girl looking at him as if he were the craziest man in all the universe. Which he was,” I went on, looking over. “But she didn’t actually know that.
“Anyway,” I went on, turning back to the door. “I just stood there and watched this sequence of events. He was asking for food and spitting it out and it was all very funny and light-hearted and purely good. Just as he said ‘fish fingers and custard’, Charlie came in carrying this abhorrent amount of berry-flavored Trolli sour gummy worms.
“She tossed a bag at me and fell into the couch, looking up at me expectantly. ‘Well, are we going to watch this guy puke or not?’.” Another smile flitted across my lips only to disappear a moment later as if my mouth no longer had the strength to hold it up. “He never puked, but Charlie and I, we sat on that couch and watched the entire first season ofDoctor Whotogether.”
I swallowed, sliding my hand against the outside of the package still in my pocket. “I hadn’t eaten for three days, and the sour crystals on the worms, they just…it felt like they were scratching all of the bad on my tongue away, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I had a real friend.” I winced, my face burning.
Goddammit, how did he do that?
“You mean the Doctor?”
I pressed my lips together, thoroughly embarrassed. I had never told anyone that, not even Rachel. Fuck, being around him was dangerous. This was dangerous. It was like he had some sort of power over me, and I hated that. I hated it so much, it mademe want to scream.
I adjusted my hat and turned away from him, smearing my lips together. I needed another layer of lip gloss.
“You’re going to ignore me now because you just confessed something personal, aren’t you?”
I worked my jaw, frowning. “I hate you.”
“You hate what I do to you,” he responded as we finally reached the door. “I can live with that. For now,” he added as I pressed the button on my phone. “Emily,” he started as I made a move to leave.
Despite myself, I paused, staring down the hall, knowing that just around the corner, people were walking about, trying to get to class. We could be caught any moment, and if we were, rumors would start spreading about how I was stepping on Remi’s toes. I couldn’t deal with that while I was trying to deal with this and trying to focus on my work.
“That raggedy man gave you a sense of hope when you had none. That’s not something to be ashamed of.”
“Having an imaginary friend is something only children should have,” I muttered back angrily, although I was thoroughly shocked that he knew what Amy Pond had called that brilliant man.
“Who made up those rules? Killers of creativity,” he answered himself. “If having him as your imaginary friend, just like Amy, helped you keep breathing when you thought you were suffocating, why should you be ashamed of that? Why should you listen to anyone’s opinions on something that kept you alive?”
I chewed on my lip, my heart thudding, the shame from all those years pulsing through me angrily. It was as if he had just given me validation after a lifetime of hiding. Validation for that little girl who had spent nights rewatching those seasons, who had sobbed for days when he regenerated. Who had mourned as if she had truly lost a friend.
Goddammit, I fucking hated him so much. I hated him for doing this to me, for…for forcing me to feel things I didn’t want to feel. For keeping that stupid, nonsensical promise he had made to me last week. He was such an asshole.
“Please leave me be,” I said, staring at that corner. “I can’t afford to lose anyone else.”
~~~
This was good. There was no way in Hell he would find me here.
In a random hallway, sitting on a bench, out in the open. It was perfect.
He would never think to look in such an obvious spot, I was sure of it.
I had managed to get copies of my notes from people in my other classes, and eighth hour needed to be spent copying everything down and working on the homework I hadn’t finished yesterday.
Not for the first time, I questioned why this college was the only one in a thousand-mile radius to still do written homework. Fuck them for not making at least that online.