Almost Alive (20 page)

             
I smirked.  “I will.”  Maybe I was selling out in order to get a boy, and maybe I wasn’t.  I liked to think of it as strategizing. 

             
Maria had brought an outfit over.  It was a short leather dress and fishnet stockings.  I would never pick it out myself, but after she made me try it on, I felt really hot in it.  I don’t know why I had to be someone else to finally feel that way, but at least I found my confidence.

             
“You look great,” Maria said.  “He’s gonna flip when he sees you!”

             
“I know, right!”  I felt really great, different than I ever had before.  I was determined to make Julian see that he and I made sense.  I wasn’t afraid of what could happen, and he didn’t need to be afraid either. 

             
“Here are the keys to my house.”  Maria placed the silver key in my hand and instead of feeling the nervous butterflies that I should have felt I had an odd sense of desperation.  I needed Julian to want me, and I was going to make him want me. 

             
I smirked deviously and stared at myself in the mirror.  I wasn’t afraid of the ravenous woman that I saw, because I knew she could change the world.  Whatever cost she had to pay, she wasn’t scared.  She only cared about what my heart wanted.  “I’m ready.”

             
I walked out of my room with my heels purposely clanking on the wooden floor.  Mom was still up in her room, but her boyfriend had gone down into the kitchen for a drink of water.  He spotted me while I was walking out with Maria, and he stared a little too long and longingly.  It disgusted me a little bit, but a plan quickly came into mind on how I could separate him and my mother.  If he had sex with me, then Mom would know that he didn’t love her.  I’d be doing us all a favor if I sabotaged their relationship.  Maybe it would even get my parents officially back together.

             
“Save those smoldering looks for my brother,” Maria said in my ear.

             
I hadn’t noticed that I was flirting so much with my lips and eyes until she brought it to my attention.  I ceased pursing my lips and giggled as I followed Maria out of the front door.  I felt fierce!  I didn’t know that much confidence existed in my personality.

             
“I’m gonna go out.  Julian should be home not too long after you arrive.”  She squealed.  “Have fun tonight.”

             
“I will.”  When I arrived at Julian’s, I decided to park a little ways down the street so he’d be completely surprised when he came in his bedroom and found me inside and waiting patiently on his bed. 

             
The house was empty when I came inside.  The lights were off, but there was enough light pouring in from the midday sun for me to see.  I snuck upstairs and tried my best not to do anything that would make my presence known.  I did sneak into Maria’s room and took a couple of candles to set the mood.  I figured she wouldn’t mind.

             
It was a little difficult trying to set a romantic atmosphere in Julian’s room.  After all, it had bible scriptures plastered everywhere.  However, I didn’t feel convicted about what I was trying to do.  It was simply weird that there was a bunch of writing on his walls like a crazy inmate in an asylum.  I never even considered that what I was doing was indeed wrong.

             
I patted his bed to see how soft it was before sitting down and crossing my legs sexily.  I realized exactly how short my dress was, but I shrugged.  It’s not like I was about to be wearing any clothes anyway. 

             
I only waited a minute or two before the bedroom handle turned and he came in sweaty from an afternoon jog.  “Michelle?”

             
As he examined me, I did the same for him.  I didn’t consider that he was sweaty as a turn off.  I was quite riled up about how his muscular body glistened in the light.  He had great, toned legs and his arms and chest were really being showcased well in his tight, black tank top.  I smirked and got off of the bed, determined to remove every piece of fabric from him.

             
“What are you doing?” he asked horrified as he pushed me back.  “Where are your clothes?”

             
“I thought you might like these better.”  I went in for his lips, but he pushed me back again.

             
“You have a spirit of lust on you!” he yelled.

             
I rolled my eyes and went in for the kill again.  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

             
He pushed me once more.  “No!”  His nosed scrunched up in disgust.  “I see it on you, Michelle.  It’s like…A black tar, but worse.”  He held his stomach as if he were about to vomit.  “Who put this on you?”

             
“Stop it!”  I was starting to feel embarrassed, and I didn’t like it one bit.  “I don’t have lust on me, Julian.  I just want you to know that I can be who you need me to be.”

             
“What?  Like Eleanor?”  He began to get so angry that I swear his eyes were shaking.  “Maria did this, didn’t she?”

             
“Don’t!” I warned.  “She’s only trying to help me.”

             
He rubbed the temples of his forehead in pure frustration and growled like a beast.  I could tell that he was just exhausted with everything, especially me.  “You can’t be this stupid, Michelle.  You can’t be this trapped and deceived.  I can’t stand for you to be this…Idiotic!”

             
“Excuse me?”  I didn’t know what else to say.  I was angry, but I felt my heart as if it were physically being torn apart.

             
“You have to fight back for yourself, Michelle.  I can’t keep pulling your weight.  It’s too much.”

             
“Why?”  I smirked and placed my hand on his firm chest.  “Is it because you’re fighting yourself every step of the way?”  I could feel something inside of him pulling on something that was on the inside of me.  We were connecting, and I think I knew how dark it was, but it felt beautiful at the time.  I finally didn’t fear the unknown.  I embraced it.  Deep down, I knew he wanted to embrace it as well.

             
“I’m not gonna lie to you, Michelle.  I like my soul too much.”  His eyes looked so tragic as he fought me.  He was tired.  He might as well have embraced his feelings as I did.  We were inevitable.  “I do want you.”

I took that as an invitation to try and kiss him, but he pressed his hands into my shoulders and held me back.  “
I do, but not like this.  I’m not gonna have sex with you—or anyone for that matter—until I am married.” 

“How will you know if someone is right for you unless you have sex with them?”  I laughed.  You needed to know how someone was in bed before you committed yourself to them
for supposedly forever!  “You’re putting up a shield, Julian.  This is all because of Eleanor—”

“
I loved Eleanor, but she’s dead.”  As much as it hurt him to admit that, he did recognize that as truth.  “I’m not incapable of moving on, but you’re supposed to be my student, not my anchor.  Don’t sink me, because if it comes down to my soul or the both of ours, I will let you drown.”

             
And there it was.  He was exactly the monster I thought he was when we first met each other.  “How can you be so selfish?”

             
“How can you be so blind?” he yelled, and it felt like the loudest thing in the entire world.

             
I didn’t know how to get through to him.  He was a coward.  He was always going to be a coward, and I didn’t know if I would ever be able to reach him.  “Don’t be afraid of what I can give you.”

             
He turned his head from me, and I sensed that he had hardened his heart into cold, impenetrable stone.  “Get out.”

             
I gaffed.  I just couldn’t believe that after all the hard work I put into becoming his ideal woman that he would toss me away like trash.  “Fine.”  I pushed passed him and rushed out of his house.  I didn’t want him to make me cry and in case he did, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing my tears.

             
I held myself together on the outside, but I had so much turmoil raging inside of my heart.  I concluded that it was best to just let things go with Julian, but I swore up and down that I loved him.  Maria was right.  He couldn’t get over Eleanor. 

             
You have to move on.  Find someone else who will love you better.

             
But I didn’t know how and I didn’t know where I was supposed to go to find that certain special someone.  I drove around town for a while looking for some way to relieve my internal agony. 

             
Why don’t you try cutting yourself?  People must do it for a reason.

             
Maybe it would take my mind off of the pain of being alone, but someone would find out.  I didn’t want a big intervention that would land me back in therapy.  I would have rather died than went back to my therapist and dealt with my parents freaking out about my sanity again.

             
There’s no need to kill yourself.  Just find someone who wants to love you.  That’s all you need.

             
Yes.  That was all I needed.  Without even thinking, I drove to school and parked in the student lot.  There were a few cars, but clearly no event was going on.  I didn’t know what I was doing there, but I waited a while for absolutely nothing.  When I got sick of waiting in the car, I lay on top of the hood and stared up at the dimming sky.  It was such a beautiful sunset and yet I had no one to share it with.  If such beauty was to be followed by the night, then why was the darkness seen as such an evil?  Wasn’t it just as real as anything else?  Didn’t it deserve to be free as itself with no remorse of its nature?  That’s all we humans wanted.  We wanted the freedom to be ourselves without being judged for the nature that lived within our hearts.  How could we help what we were?  How could we help that no matter where we were we would eventually be embraced by the darkness?

             
“Michelle?”

             
I sat up and pulled my tiny dress down a little bit so Michael wouldn’t see my crotch.  I felt a little bit like a freak, but at least he was a friendly and familiar face.  “What are you doing here?”

             
“There was an emergency meeting for the football team.”  He laughed pitifully to himself.  “I’m not the team captain anymore.”

             
“I’m sorry to hear that.”  To be honest, I didn’t know that he was the captain at all.  “Why?”

             
“The QB and some of the other guys got with the coach.  They tried to make it seem like it was about my performance, but I know it’s just drama.”

             
“Drama?”

             
“There’s too much to explain.”  He sighed and leaned his back up against my car.  “It’s all a bunch of stupid crap that’s not even a big deal.  It’s just guy talk that they took too seriously.  To be honest, everyone has hated me since…”

             
I knew, because he didn’t want to say.  “Since you and I made out?”

             
He crossed his arms and nodded.  “Liz has ruined me, her and all of her friends.  Now I don’t have anyone.”

             
“I know the feeling.”  I felt awful for ruining his life.  He was probably going to marry Liz before I tried to seduce him.  They seemed like the type of high school sweethearts that would make a life together.  He might have done a lot of crappy things, but I generally got the feeling that he was a good guy.  Maybe I screwed that all up.

             
“You look like you should be out somewhere having fun.”  He had a smirk on his face after studying my look from my hair to my heels.

             
“I look like a prostitute,” I said while struggling not to laugh at how ridiculous I was.

             
“Only the classiest kind.”  After he had an amused grin on his face, I very well couldn’t keep myself together, and we laughed.  It was nice to just laugh again.  “What’s up, Michelle?  Why are you here?”

             
I wanted to tell him a lie, but I remembered how wasteful that was for my soul.  Besides, Michael really didn’t have the right to judge me.  “I thought I was in love with Julian.  I thought he was in love with me.  Looks like I was wrong on both counts.” 

I shrugged, because there was no explanation to anything concerning him and me. 
“I don’t even understand why I started to like him.  It doesn’t make sense.  We’re so different.  I should like a boy like you, not him.”

             
“Me?” he asked surprised, but with a hint of gratitude.  “I’m the jerk who lied to you about having a girlfriend.”

             
“Yeah, but what were you gonna do after I threw myself at you?”  His behavior was just what any guy would do.  Only a tortured soul like Julian would deny me.