Returning To You

I spend the weekend holed up in my room, not talking to anyone. I watch my favorite Disney films—Beauty and the Beast and Mulan—on an endless loop and tried to pretend nothing happened. By Tuesday morning, I feel slightly better and even consider facing Paige in Econ, but I chicken out at the last minute. Instead, I go to a cafe across from campus and try to study for my trig final. “There you are!” I jump at the sound of Paige’s voice behind me. I spin in my chair to face her, but she’s already coming around my table to take the seat across from me. “Do you have any idea how hard you are to find? Karen and I have been looking for you everywhere.” I swallow, my throat dry. Embarrassment and guilt are coursing through me. “I’m sorry,” I squeak. She waves her hands dismissively. “You don’t have to apologize for anything. I should apologize. I should have known better than to freak out on you like that.” Confused, I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean, you should have known?” She sighs. “You have panic attacks, don’t you? That’s what all the shyness is about. And the freaking out in our dorm. You were about to have an attack.” I’m so dumbfounded I can only stare at her. She smiles slightly. “I saw you that day in Bartlet’s class. After he called on you, I watched you. The way you were breathing and clenching your palms? You were trying to avoid an attack, weren’t you?” My surprise is so great I forget to be embarrassed. “How did you know that?” Her expression falls a little. “My little sister gets really bad panic attacks. Just about anything can set her off. I’ve watched her react that way more times than I can count.” “Wow,” I mutter. Her seemingly random befriending of me suddenly makes a lot more sense. “That’s why you talked to me, isn’t it?” She shrugs, looking uncomfortable. “It’s not like it was some kind of charity effort or anything. I meant it when I said it seemed like you needed some fun. But you did remind me of my sister, and that’s probably why I wanted to make sure you were okay.” I feel the tears on my cheeks before I even realize I’m crying. She wanted to make sure I was okay. When was the last time someone could describe me as okay? Paige hands me a napkin so I can wipe my eyes. The tears keep coming, though, as if a damn of some kind has burst. “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice shaking. “You don’t have to stay.” She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, like I’m leaving. We’re friends, Daisy. Friends don’t just walk away.” “We are?” I don’t know why her words surprise me so much. She obviously wouldn’t have spent so much time looking for me if she didn’t consider me a friend. She smiles. “Duh. You don’t share pad thai and Engaged with someone and not end up friends with them.” I grin through my tears, suddenly feeling better than I have in ages. I have a friend. Who would have thought? “So here’s the deal.” She lays her hands flat on the table. “Karen and I both feel terrible. We hate that you’re thinking we would use you to get close to the band. We want you to know that if you come, we won’t say a word about you introducing us. We promise.” “I’m not coming,” I say quickly. “Why not? You said you like their music.” “Besides, why would you pass up the opportunity to hang out with me and Karen?” She shoots me a grin. “We’re like, the coolest girls ever.” I laugh. “True. But I can’t go with you. There are… there’s history with us. Me and Andy. I can’t see him.” Her eyes widen, and I can tell it’s killing her not to ask me what kind of history I have with her favorite rock singer. I sigh, knowing I have to tell her. In fact, the idea of confiding in Paige actually doesn’t make me feel sick, which is weird in and of itself. “We were good friends, actually. Like, really close. Since we were kids. And then he left with his band to record their album and go on tour, and… things got complicated.” “Wow,” she whispers. “I want you to know that I’m very compassionate toward your issues but… holy shit! I’m sitting next to someone who is close friends with Andy Biersack.” I laugh. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t lying when I said I haven’t talked to him since he left last year. Everything changed after that, Paige.” “He ditched you,” she summarizes. “No, it wasn’t like that. I’m the one who cut off communication.” She stares at me. “Sorry, but are you fucking insane? Why would you do that? Have you seen him?” I smile sadly. “Remember when I said that things got complicated?” She nods. Oh, what the hell. I have to tell someone besides Dr. Jacobs someday. “I was really lonely when they left. Andy had this plan that I would join them on tour for the summer when school got out, sell T-shirts or something. But in the meantime, this guy asked me out. Justin. I thought he was nice.” I take a deep breath. “I was wrong. Really, really wrong.” She wrinkles up her nose. “I’ve had a few of those myself.” “Yeah, well, he dumped me. And that’s when the rumors started. He told people stuff about us… private stuff. And it became a pretty hot topic around school.” She holds up a hand. “You don’t have to say anymore. People talked shit about me in high school, too. Bastards. Karen calls them slut-shamers—people who think it’s okay to make fun of girls for having sex but idolize the boys involved. It’s so stupid and hypocritical.” I gulp. “Yeah, but in my case, he had… there were pictures.” Her mouth drops open, and I feel a flush creep up my neck. She could rail against slut-shamers all she wanted, but there was no way I could tell this story without feeling like the world’s biggest slut. I need to just get it over with. “I thought he was just messing around when he took them on his cell phone. I freaked out, of course, and told him to delete them. He promised me he did.” I stare down at the table, willing the churning in my stomach to stop. “I’m the dumb-ass that believed him, I guess.” “Don’t you say that.” She reaches across the table to take my hand. “He’s the asshole, Daisy. It’s not your fault. You’re not the first girl who trusted the wrong guy.” The touch of her hand feels odd because I haven’t allowed any physical contact for so long. I savor the sensation for a moment before freeing my hand by using the excuse of picking up my coffee. Tears threaten, and I blink them away. “It seems like there was a certain group of girls just waiting for something like that. Probably the ones who were jealous of my friendship with Andy.” I smile sadly. “He was always such hot shit, you know? Even back then. Everyone wanted a piece of him.” She grins briefly. “I have absolutely no problem at all imagining that.” I take a sip of my now-cold coffee, wondering exactly how much more I should tell her. “It got… it got really nasty. The pictures were all over the Internet, on people’s phones. They even photocopied them and passed them around at school.” I swallow hard, willing myself to keep it together. “Then they started sending me messages. Texts, stuff online. They threatened me and called me terrible names. Encouraged me to just… you know, be done with it.” She swears softly. “Daisy, I’m so sorry that happened to you. People are assholes.” I shrug. “Yeah, well, I didn’t handle it very well. I left school before graduation, and I wasn’t really ready to start college in the fall. I was supposed to go to Ohio State, but it was just too close to home. And I knew a bunch of people from school were going there.” Like Joanie. “So you ended up way out here in the mountains,” Paige says. “I’d certainly say you got your distance.” It wasn’t some random coincidence that I was going to school in Tennessee. This university was the closest one to Horizons, the hospital my dad had put me in after everything got so bad. When I was finally released, it seemed like a good idea for me to stay here, close to my doctors. But I figure spilling my guts about being a giant skank is enough for one day. She doesn’t need to know about what happened after. I nod and say, “Yeah. It’s pretty far.” “I’m glad you ended up out here,” she says, placing her hand over mine. She pulls her hand back after a moment, as if she can sense I don’t like being touched, but I appreciate the gesture all the same. She grabs a napkin from the dispenser and begins to shred the edges. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, what does all of that have to do with Andy? I mean, I totally get that it sucks, of course. But why does that mean that you couldn’t talk to him anymore?” I pull my sleeves down a little, liking, as always, the comfort it provides me to pretend I can shrink from sight, if only a little. “I was embarrassed. I didn’t want him to know what people were saying about me… or for him to see anything.” I shiver a little. My worst nightmare in those early days was that he might see a picture of me online. Later, the nightmare changed to him finding out what I did afterward. Either way, it seemed prudent to cut ties with him. “He never found out about any of it?” I shrug. “Not to my knowledge.” “Wasn’t he still friends with anyone at home?” I shake my head. “Not really. Not anyone he would be in touch with. Once they got to L.A., they were busy with the album. Then they went out with Kiss, and things got even crazier. There wasn’t a lot of draw to come back to Cincinnati, you know?” She nods. “Did he try to talk to you?” “He used to call, yeah. When things got really bad, I stopped answering. Then I moved and stopped going online. So that was pretty much the end of things.” “Wow,” she whispers. “Do you think he’s mad at you?” I try not to think of the day I finally returned one of his calls. We agreed, years ago, that we would go to prom together when the time came. It was our way of promising each other we’d avoid all the silly drama of high school romance, focus on the things that mattered to us—friends, music, and having a kick-ass time. When he dropped out of school so he could leave with his brothers, it became an even more vital promise—that we’d be reunited, that we’d have one last celebratory event to remember our high school years by before he went off to conquer the world. Calling him to cancel had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done. But there was no way I could have let him come home, not then. “Daisy?” I give myself a little shake, willing myself to stop thinking of the sadness and betrayal in his voice, of the way he had begged me to tell him what was wrong, why we weren’t talking. That was the last time I talked to him. Not long after that, I left Ohio forever, my old address, phone number, and email abandoned. “I think he’s probably pretty mad,” I say, my stomach turning at a new thought. “That is, if he even thinks about me anymore. His life is so different now. He probably forgot all about me.” “I doubt that. He’s way too sensitive and sweet to forget about an old friend like that.” I raise an eyebrow. She looks abashed. “I mean, at least that’s the impression I get when I see him on TV.” I laugh. “Yeah, well, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? He’s on TV now. And all over the Internet and the radio. You saw what happened when a few people turned to look at me in econ. I obviously do not have the capacity to get anywhere near his world.” “I think you underestimate yourself,” she says. “When you’re comfortable with someone, a lot of that stuff goes away. You’re already acting much more natural with me, and we’ve only known each other for a week.”

Notes

Cx It took me forever to write this. Especially because I'm focused more on my other story (Be My Bad Boy) Enjoy c;