2.9: The Poison Called Jealousy

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2.9: The Poison Called Jealousy

There were several reasons why school today made me feel bloated.

#1. Drama.

Literally drama. I took drama classes thinking that I could learn something akin to acting. That was the brochure was talking about, and I naively trusted mistyped words on some flimsy papers.

What I found was a group full of people ready to drop their tears in command.

Julia Roberts had no candle compared to these crowd. They could talk about EGGS and they'd start to cry as if the EGGS were their blood siblings.

I even quoted one of them:

"I cracked my eggs FIVE METERS AWAY FROM THE STOVE, Steve! Five meters away! It was a premature death! It didn't deserve this! It had given up life as a cute, healthy baby chick to be one with me, and I wasted its sacrifice!" cue teardrop, then waterfall, and a lot of clapping from the listeners, me included.

I was actually thinking that she was a genius. For she was able to trigger such emotions in just 15 seconds for a single, cracked, store-bought egg.

#2. A lot of invasions by Aliens

What I meant by Aliens were these... strange... overly friendly... people.

They all had this identical smile, where your lips were stretched from one end of your face to another, but somehow the smile didn't really reach your eyes.

They all knew my name, called my name and greeted me when we bypassed each other at the campus. Worse, they felt the need to touch my shoulder when they cornered- no wait, be kind April, I meant talked to me.

Oh the horror.

In the end, my phone contact list was expanded, involuntarily, by 20 more names.

I felt bad but I forgot most of the names right after they punched their numbers in.

#3. The creature walking like he knew he was a God's gift to the earth, respond exclusively to Alex Malefeci. Or was it Milleflue? Or Maleficent?

Whatever his name was, his presence caused great disturbance.

It was a different kind of disturbance from Ryder's presence. Ryder made me nauseous and felt a violent tingling on my stomach. Ryder also made me feel all kinds of warm on my chest, a feeling that so far, only my family had been able to give me.

Alex... well, Alex was a different case. His kind of disturbance was the hyperventilating kind. Jumpy kind. The kind that made me feel like a small rabbit being stalked by a giant fox.

"Hey April!" he tapped my shoulder.

Or turtle. At least rabbit had great reflexes. With turtles, any kind of animal could touch it with ease.

I knew that it was obligatory for me to reply a greeting, but then since he had talked to me about Ryder that one morning, I felt the neccesity to avoid him. I didn't even know why. I just felt jumpy and he constantly made me-

"Earth to April?"

"For all the love of weasel's piss on your gravestone!" I screamed/jumped.

Jumped. He made me jump a lot.

"My God Oh, sorry!" I managed to correct my Yoda-vention because I knew that he would find it amusing... and not in a kind way.

"So what're your classes today?"

"Drama... History... uh, a bit of Film."

"What are the odds. I take Film classes, too."

"Wow," I said. Wow.

This would be the first time I attended Film class, and I had been looking forward to it all week. Ryder told me to stop and calm down with all the hysteria whenever I started talking about Film classes. And then I found out that the Big Bad Fox would be taking the same class as me.

Just immediately, my shoulder sank.

"I can literally hear your inner dialogues to yourself," Alex said.

"Y-You can?" okay, so I'm going to test this, can you hear this, Alex? Can you hear my thoughts?

"Yes, I can."

OH MY STARS!!!!!!!!!!

How about this? How many fingers do I have up behind my back?!

"There are two..." Alex was saying more, but I was already too disoriented to concentrate on his words.

I checked my hand just to be sure. Two.

This guy... was a threat to my mind and my sanity.

"T-Two..." I said. "You said two."

"Yeah. Two classes that we have together on this semester."

My ears were a mess of little ringing and humdum because of this realization. I mean, all the films had suggested the supernatural things were real and there were some people who were born gifted. But I never would have thought that-

"Did you hear me? We have two classes together." Alex tilted his head so that he could take a better look at me.

Against my better judgement, I looked up to his clear green eyes.

They weren't kidding when they said that green eyes were a rarity in us humans. For a moment or two there, I thought that I was lost inside a dense, green forest.

"So I take it that you're really not that interested in talking to me?" Alex said lightly, in a way that suggested no menace.

"No, it's just-"

"Let's try again. How's your day so far?" amazingly, Alex had the patience of a Buddhist monk when dealing with me. 

"Good, you?" I tried to probe on the ends of my hair, but then it was course because I couldn't afford the nice shampoo Mom usually bought me.

"The professors were testing me today," he sighed, and then looked at me in the eye. The gesture was too abrupt that I immediately turned my back to him.

"Okay, I'll just pretend that the back of your head has eyes," Alex said slowly, patiently. "A lot of Korean horror comics have that kind of ghosts."

He started talking, and his tone was polite, if not a little bit distant.

Despite that, I was still jumping approximately three times whenever he laid eyes on me, touched me, or even tried to make a conversation that lasted more than three back-and-forths.

"You know what? I'll just be gone," he finally gave up and raised both of his open hands. "I mean, I know that you find it challenging to concentrate on me, but I'm having a bad day, and I-" he stopped himself, and then just walked away.

He was so unlike Ryder that his absence made me feel guilty and still jumpy. Ryder would give me two or three more chances to repent myself. Alex just clicked his heels and went.

The rest of my day went from bad to sour right after this interaction.

-

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-

Despite my bad day, there was a silver lining! I'd be meeting Ryder today! And not on my townhouse, oh no. He didn't really want to meet me after the last quarrel back in the townhouse. That meant there was five days' worth of Ryder-deprivation in my system.

But today he said he was ready! He wanted to meet me, he wanted to meet me, he wanted to meet me!

I waited for his truck to appear at around 16:00, just like he promised, and although he was about 23 minutes late, I was still excited and practically jumped up and down in glee when I saw his green old truck pulling over.

"Ryder! My drug, my addiction, finally I don't need to experience anymore withdrawals!" I blurted out.

Ryder let out a small smile. "I miss you, too," he said. "Feels like a year."

I noticed that there were subtle differences towards him. He was wearing long-sleeved t-shirt and jacket and boots that were covered in grimes. More scruff, and I noticed that he hadn't bothered to take care of the slight five-o-clock shadow on his chin. It looked good on him, though, gave him a Matt Bomer-kind of look.

I let my hand run across his chin, feeling the coarse short hair of his stubble tickle my hand.

"You like it?"

"It's distracting," I said. "I like it. Do you do this too, when you're by yourself?"

There was a little smile I really longed to see on his lips. "You know me too well."

-

"Here we are," Ryder said, after mostly being quiet on the twenty minutes road.

For the first time after months, he finally let me get into his grandmother's workshop. When I got in there, the place was nothing like I imagined. I was imagining grand, huge, all metal kind of workshop. The kind that sports car or huge car or military tanks got into.

What I was presented was a much, much more modest version of that. It was small, and apparently, it was an extension to his grandmother's house.

"It's not... much," he said, as if knowing what I was thinking. What was it with men and their ability to hear my thoughts?! Were they psychic or was I the one who have subtitle scribbled all across my forehead whenever I think?

I looked again. It was small, and in a glance, I would have missed that it was a car workshop if not for the huge Sign 'MR AND MRS BLACK ANTIQUE CAR WORKSHOP! SINCE 1977'

"It's unique," I said truthfully. "Did your grandmother refuse to have the sign changed?"

"No, even after my grandfather died, no." Ryder said. "She's as stubborn as a mule."

"And you're as stubborn as Dr Gregory House," I smiled.

He took my hand, and once again, without failing, the surge of warmth caressed all over me. It had been too long, and my pain had been too bad. Sure, we Skyped everyday from 9-10PM, but then again, it was different with the real thing.

"I really really miss you," I said.

"I know," he whispered coarsely. "I just.. I feel like I need to take a breathe."

"Thank you for bringing me here, I feel like this is... like this is your shame."

There was a bitter smile on his face, but nevertheless his eyes were warm. "Most people would have chosen the word 'secret', April."

"It's a far more flattering word, yes," I nodded sagely. "But I know that it doesn't really describe what you feel about this."

"I went from being able to buy anything that I want, to have to work here and just get little crumbs on what I used to have," Ryder admitted. "It's kind of shameful."

"It's not shameful. I went from being in home with my family and 43 Teddy Bears and you, to a bad replica of my room, three roomates who don't know the concept of private space, and only one Teddy bear," I said, and immediately after I said it, I knew that my hardships were different than his. Lighter than his. "I still have you, though."

"And I you."

We sat on the old wood bench on the workshop, staring at an old Vespa that Ryder obviously had been working on. I noticed that the front of the bike was completely obliterated.

"It's my grandmother' friend's," Ryder explained just after he noticed my staring at it. "He wanted me to bring back his 30 year old best friend back to live after a wild crash. I say it's impossible, but Granny said to keep trying."

"Even I know that it would be impossible to be anything but an unmoving Figurine."

Ryder shrugged. "It's kind of the only job the workshop has in the last month, so..."

I stared at him, at his hardened face, at his roughened chocolate eyes. They were so dark right now that I almost couldn't recognize him. He kept squeezing my hand, and I knew that I should be the one who squeeze harder.

He needed it.

"Can I help you, at all?" I said. "You can ask me anything. You can even make me will myself to develop the Force and I'll try to do it."

Ryder opened his mouth, but before any words came out, another voice called out from the outside.

"RYDEER! NAINAI! YOU THERE?!"

It was a female voice.

There was a definite difference in Ryder's hand as the voice started to echo within the room. At first he squeezed hard at my hand, and then, he immediately released it. I was in the middle of grabbing back my source of warmth, when I heard a clicking high-heel sound getting louder and louder.

"Ryder? Hullo!" the voice called out again.

The first glimpse that I caught of the owner of the voice was a tuft of pink hair, just like Sakura in Naruto.

And then pale white skin, just like Snow White.

Her eyes were slanted like Mulan, covered on black eyeliner.

She dressed in black leather from top to bottom, but somehow she managed to find the least amount of leather covering her skin. Short black jeans, cropped top, leather jacket. She looked like she belonged in a CW Tv show instead of Ryder' grandmother's small workshop.

And when her stare fell on us, she smiled.

At that moment, I saw the most beautiful girl in my whole existence of life.

And she lunged for a hug from my Precious Person.

"I've missed you!" she basically screamed into Ryder's ears and my ears. "Why didn't you tell me you've been in Greenville all these months?!"

Even though my ears were ringing because of how loud she was, I was still in awe. Because even her screaming voice was like music.

As I stared at her, her pink hair long and slightly coarse, her legs long and toned, her arms covered with tattoo, I noticed something.

The bird tattoo on the back of her hand was identical as the bird tattoo Ryder had on his torso.

For the first time ever, I felt extremely uncomfortable around Ryder. Ten times more uncomfortable than before we met, even. My chest burnt, my eyes started to sting, my whole body was hot and I felt like the top of my head was ready to combust little lava water.

So this was jealousy. Ugly and painful, just like the Maleficent's heart.

-

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Author's note:

I can't believe I've done this. Two updates in a week, guys! OMG. Hope I can keep up with this speed for the next :D This one took exceptionally fast because somehow my mind were filled with lots of ideas. Ryder and April are in a rough patch, obviously, but we'll see what happens :) I swear I'll make it good.

And one particular comment in my last chapter bothered me. In fact, it bothered me so much I deleted it before I got the time to reply it (and now I forgot the username, couldn't get it right sorry).

I'm sorry if my writing wasn't the same as before. I'm sorry if my updates were sporadical and you all couldn't really rely on me. I'm sorry. I was still in college when I first started this story and I was so... naive. I was so detached and unaware and... I hadn't experienced real pain. Now that I'm 25 (yes am old) I'm kind of different than before. It's hard for me to conjure words because of my crippling depression last year, I'm still trying now not to cringe whenever I type something. I'm trying to get to sleep at night and not stare at the ceiling, thinking bad thoughts. It's a progress and I think I'm getting better, but sometimes I fall off the wagon and I need to take care of myself first because now, I have people relying on me. Unfortunately, this means writing takes second priority, but that doesn't mean I will forget to write, forget you guys who have supported me and gave me a lot of opportunities (I got more than 20 job offers because I mentioned I had more than 150k followers on wattpad lol). I will always be indebted to you guys for making me realize my dream and my passion as a writer. And I'll always try to write more and update more.

Thank you :)

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