The rhythmic swinging of Perrie's high pigtails hypnotized me like a pengolem rocking back and forth in front of my face. Her high pitched laugh shattered through the loud shouts and yells of the other students in the courtyard. I watched her from the bench in front of the metal stands. I tried to peek out of the corner of my eyes, pretending to be looking at the textbook in front of me, but I wasn't fooling anyone. It was hard to not openly stare at her.

She was dressed in a black t-shirt and green shorts. Her shoes matched—the color of a sour apple candy. She and her friends were hitting a tetherball back and forth. The metal pole was weaving back and forth under the force of their hits.

More people surrounded them, watching form the sidelines or either wanting their turn. It was obvious to anyone looking in that this was the popular crowd. They were dressed nice, they were good looking in one way or another, and they participated in the boring school activities that seemed more like parent sanctioned parties where they could hang out.

I pick them all out. Our school was large, but our class—12C—was a small portion at around fifty. We had grown together in the same class since we were in elementary. It also helped that everyone that hung around Perrie would be locked into my memory.

When I felt that I had been looking for far too long, I stared down at my book. I fingered at the pages, but I wasn't reading any of it.

Perrie was the only girl at the moment who was playing tetherball. The other three guys playing with her was blond bronzed skin guy that played football named Matt, a black guy who as Matt's best friend named Philip, and a thin but fit guy named Roger.

They were the same guys that hovered around Perrie like flies. They all thought they had a chance to get with her knowing that she never dated anyone in school. Everyone knew that she was off limits only on her own accord. It wasn't that she was saving herself or anything like that. She just didn't find any of the guys that interesting.

They weren't worth her time.

I fully agreed. It wasn't just something that I made up in my mind either. I'd heard it from her mouth in passing. She'd been telling her best friend Kaylee that she wasn't looking for a boyfriend. She was perfectly fine being single.

Though, she did take the occasional date to a dance.

I grimaced.

But it wasn't because she wanted to get closer to them. It would just be odd if she went alone. No one to dance with...

I forced my eyes closed. I took a deep breath.

"Whew! I'm so pooped!"

I jolted as I heard Perrie's voice right next to me.

"How much longer do we have until the bell rings?" Kaylee asked. She wiped her forehead free of sweat.

Roger checked his phone. "About five minutes."

"I'm going to get a drink," Matt said before trotting over to the bathrooms by the concession stand.

"I'll come with," Roger said, following Matt.

Everyone that had been playing tetherball went with them.

Kaylee was heading in that direction, but stopped when she noticed that Perrie wasn't coming with her. She turned on her heels and cocked her head. "Are you coming with?"

Perrie was panting with her hands on her hips. She shook her head. "I'm good. My legs feel like jelly so..."

Kaylee gave a half shrug before she walked away. I watched the exchange from the corner of my eyes. I wasn't even trying to pretend to be paying attention to my book now. It was too hard to when she was right there. I was filling my lungs with her air. We were both breathing the same air and how could I ever recover from this moment?

Perrie stretched her arms above her head. I saw a glimpse of her smooth skin above the waistband of her shorts. My cheeks burned as I turned my head. My eyes found a random spot on the field and I stared intensely until my eyes began to water.

"Can I sit here?"

My gaze was cut off by her. She was standing in front of me. When I looked up, I felt my soul leaving my body when our eyes met.

Every time was the same. I wanted so badly to talk to her, but there were no words. I could have full blown conversations in my head, yet, when it came to actually participating in a real one, my throat closed up.

She tilted her head, a confused look crossing her face. It was only then that I realized that I had been staring at her the whole time and hadn't said anything.

Slowly, I nodded. I hid my hands under my boo to hide the uncontrollable shaking. Even if I managed to get a couple words out, they would have been trembling and I didn't want to have that embarrassment hovering over my head.

This wasn't the first time that I'd found myself close to her. However, this was the first time where she spoke to me, looked at me, and was kinda alone with me.

It wasn't really alone because there were over fifty more people milling around us, but it felt like we were alone. It was just us sitting on a bench.

There was no way that I could ignore her now. With a few inches between us, I could just imagine her warmth and the smell of her perfume. I don't think it was my imagination. I'd always dreamed up what it would be like to be right next to her. I didn't think it would be like this where I was a complete mess.

That was usually how it went though. I couldn't talk to anyone without breaking down most times.

The words on the page were blurring together. They overlapped becoming a jumbling mess, like tangled string that I had to fight through. I couldn't help it when my eyes kept going back to her. She was just sitting there, staring out into the field.

The bench rocked from the movement of her swinging feet. She hummed under her breath, looking around like she was just admiring the scenery.

I tilted my head to get a better look at her.

She was out of this world. She was no longer here. The small content look on her face was calming. A tug within my chest almost pulled me out of the river of anxiety that had threatened to pull me down into its current. I could breathe more easily and I swore the air around us had become crisper.

Like drinking cold filtered water after going without for days.

The minutes were short. They were already short enough, but they were even shorter because it meant my time with her had come to an end.

"Ew!"

The almost shriek pulled my attention away from Perrie. It was a shock that went through me that ripped me away from the haze that covered me from head to toe.

I turned toward the sound. They were coming back. All of them. Kaylee shoved Philip.

Philip's mouth was bulging with water which was dribbling down his chin. He covered his face as he tried to hold in a laugh.

He chased Kaylee around the group while the others laughed. Philip sprayed the water out of his mouth and all over Kaylee.

She looked down at her shirt in shock. The disgust was evident on her face. After the shock settled, she glared at Philip, her arms raised in the air as to avoid touching her wet shirt.

"I'm going to kill you!"

Philip laughed as she chased him this time. He towered over her and while she got a few hits in, he was just laughing back at her.

The group made their way over to where we were sitting.

And then, the best thing that had happened to me today became the worst.

There was no way for me to escape the group as they stood in front of the bench to hanging around Perrie. They were talking, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. It was useless crap anyway, nothing that I cared to think about or store in my head.

But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that I couldn't get my fucking ass off the metal bench to escape their judging eyes.

None of these people liked me.

They hated me.

Kaylee gave me that same disgusted look that she wore when something seriously freaked her out. Matt raised a brow at me like I was nothing but a bug, Philip blatantly ignored me, and Roger was too busy looking at Perrie's chest to take an interest in the loser sitting next to her.

Which was me. I was the loser.

My hands were shaking even more now that they were surrounding us.

There was no us though. It was just me. Perrie was off in her own world. She wasn't a part of them. She was something completely different than all these people surrounding her.

That included me as well.

She was better than everyone here. Everyone knew that on some kind of level. They could feel it when she walked by them, when she spared them a look, and when she smiled. They all saw that she was otherworldly.

The bell rang.

"Finally," Perrie laughed. She stood.

The group hung around her like bees to honey.

Kaylee grimaced at me one more time as she took Perrie's hand in her own. The guys fell around the two of them, protecting them from anyone who tried to get into their little group.

And just like that, she was walking away from me. The small moment between us was like dust in the wind. It didn't matter on a grander scale.

I looked back down at the book.

My hands were gripping it tight. Too tightly.

The corner of the page was ripped.

I forced myself to close the book and put it down.

As the rest of the class exited the field to go to the lorckerrooms, I stayed on the bench waiting for aching in my heart to go away.

***

I was doing it again. The thing that I promised myself that I wouldn't do.

Right then, I was waiting for Perrie to come out of the school entrance. I was standing beside the bench that was in the front of the building, pretending that I was waiting for someone to pick me up. If anyone paid attention to me, they would know that I walked home and that my grandma didn't even own a car.

No one cared about me to find that out.

That didn't matter though. My problem was that I was following Perrie again. Usually, the wouldn't be a problem. The true problem was that I wasn't doing it anymore to make sure she got home safe.

Kaylee was going home with her. The two of them had mentioned in class that they were going to go shopping later on and have a girls night. Which meant that Perrie would be fine. She would have someone there to make sure she got home safe and that she wasn't alone for the rest of the day.

That was enough for me to know that it would be fine to go home. I didn't need to follow her.

But...

My twitching hand clenched my backpack strap. I picked at the piece of frayed fabric, hoping that it would ease some of the tension that was taking over my body. It didn't do shit because I was flying high on the perverted feeling inside of me.

It was wrong how I could feel a sort of giddiness in knowing that I could follow Perrie and not get caught.

That was the thing that I was trying not to let myself get captured by. It was so fucking creepy and actually disgusting how I couldn't stop myself. The addiction was getting to be too much. I was going to lose myself in it and I didn't want to think about what could go wrong if that happened.

After what felt like eternity standing there while battling with my thoughts, Perrie and Kaylee walked out.

They didn't see me as they crossed the road and headed in the direction of Perrie's apartment. It was the same route that I was familiar with and that eased some of the tension within me.

But that didn't mean that I wasn't still disgusted at myself. I quickly gathered my things, cursing myself the entire time I crossed the street and followed in their footsteps.

Time slowed as I fell into the same rhythm as any other day. This was the easy part. When I was just following the same path that she went, it was easy to pretend that I wasn't following her. I could get lost in the soft sounds of my steady footsteps and the light jingle of the zippers on my bag.

I was just walking and that was it. I was a normal person that didn't do creepy fucking shit in my free time.

The silence that fell over me was comforting. I could see Perrie and Kaylee's small forms in the distance. They were far enough that they wouldn't see me or hear me, but they were close enough that if something happened I would be there in a few seconds if I ran fast enough.

I let them get a further away from me, guessing that they were safer since there were two of them.

Which pounded into my head that I didn't fucking need to be here.

The minutes felt like they were getting longer. I looked up, making sure that I could see them—see her—and when I was happy, I looked away again. My thoughts drifted to last night.

There had been an attack. Right outside Perrie's apartment. I guess that was another reason why I shouldn't just stop keeping an eye on her. It seems that whoever was killing girls had caught sight of Perrie.

But what confused me as that they attacked me. Did they know that I was always around? Did they think that getting rid of me would make it easier for them to get to her?

It hadn't been that hard for them to overpower me. I'd gone down like a bag of bricks. The only reason why I wasn't dead right now was because that guy had saved me.

Thinking of that guy, my face flushed. I couldn't help thinking about the awkward situation I'd found myself in when he all but dragged me back to his apartment. It was strange—maybe just a coincidence—that he lived so close to Perrie.

Mitch was his name. I hadn't forgotten about that. How could I forget when he'd been so close to me?

My stomach felt weird when I thought about how delicate he'd been when he cleaned my wounds. They had been nothing more than scratches, but he'd seemed so serious about them that I didn't have the strength to tell him to fuck off. Also, it didn't help that I wasn't physically able to walk back home without it taking me hours.

I also didn't want to take the chance that the attacker was going to come back for seconds.

Perrie had been safe inside though. She'd been safe the entire night. When she was inside her apartment, I couldn't do anything to help her.

It was also a blessing as well. The boundary between her being inside and being outside in the world was what kept my...sickness from spreading.

There was more than one reason why the killer needed to be stopped. The other reason other than the obvious was that once the killer was gone, so could I be gone.

Because I already knew that if I stayed here for too long, the boundaries I set weren't going to be enough to stop me from taking this "protecting" to the extreme.

I managed to pull myself out of the dark thoughts when I heard something. I looked up, spotting Perrie and Kaylee in front of me, safe. Confused, I looked around, but before I could see what was happening, it was too late.

I was pulled back into a headlock. For a moment, I thought it was the killer actually back to settle the score.

"Looks like we've caught ourselves a little creep!"

My eyes went wide as I saw Philip and Roger grinning at me. The person choking me from behind was Matt.

It was Matt who had called me a "little creep". Even if I was able to speak, I wouldn't have denied it.

I gagged as Matt's arm tightened up around my neck. My eyes almost rolled into the back of my head as I gasped for a breath, but nothing filled my lungs. I forced myself to look at my other two attackers. Philip looked just plain angry which was understandable and Roger looked like he was about to get his birthday wish earlier.

My hands clawed at Matt's arm, but he was protected by a thick jacket. He didn't even flinch as my nails dug in deep. They would have drawn blood if they'd been on skin.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" Philip was standing in front of me now. I could see his eyes and they were pulsing with rage.

I shook my head, but it barely moved with Matt's hold on me. I tried to gasp out something though it was mute.

Matt loosened his grip on me when I was sure my head was turning purple and was about to explode. I sucked in as much air as I could though Matt still had a tight hold on me and was still cutting off most of my air.

"Oh my god! What are you doing?" Perrie almost slammed into Roger she was running so fast.

Her face was blurring. I hadn't noticed that there were tears in my eyes until now. I could just make out the scared and horrified look on her face as she gazed at me.

Roger threw his arms over her to hold her back. She struggled against him as she tried to get to me, but she wasn't strong enough.

Kaylee was right behind her though she didn't look as frantic as Perrie did.

My heart sunk as I realized that there was no way that I would be able to take on all of them. Even with Perrie trying to help, I was a goner.

Matt laughed. "It's the loser that's been creeping on you all semester. We're teaching him a lesson for following you out here."

A realization fell over Perrie. "He was following me?"

Roger let go of her. She stood limply at his side. Kaylee went over to her and placed her hand on her shoulder.

"Come on, Perrie. Let's get out of here."

At that moment, Philip slammed his fist into my gut.

I let out a loud groan, hunching over as much as I could. The pain shot through my stomach and I gagged once more. It felt like my guts were being pushed up through my throat.

"No!" Perrie shook her head. This time it was Kaylee that was trying to hold her back.

Philip and Roger descended on me. They slammed their fists, taking turns, pummeling my body. There wasn't a piece of me that wasn't aching with pain as they turned me into nothing more than a punching bag.

"Get off of him!" Perrie managed to wiggle out of Kaylee's grip.

She ran in between me and then, throwing herself right into the pathway of their assault.

It happened so fast that I couldn't comprehend it.

Roger had thrown one more punch, but it was too late for him to stop it.

His hand connected to her cheek.

She fell back onto me, her hand searching for something to grab onto.

"Fuck. Perrie, I'm so sorry," Roger frantically said. He tried to touch her shoulder, but she flinched away from him.

She cradled her face.

"Just...let him go."

Matt dropped me without a second thought.

All four of them ran to Perrie's side as I crumbled to the ground.

Through the circle of them, she look down at me.

She was sorry.

But what for?

She hadn't done this to me.

I gave her nod, hoping it was enough to convey my thanks, before I ran off.