26: Of Han Solo and Leia

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recap: April has Asperger's, which is a form of autism. Ryder has temperament issues. Ryder is tempted by the idea of getting money from streetfighting. April has just insulted Ryder's father. I'm bad at recapping, but I hope that this can induce some memories from the earlier chapters. :) 

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26: Of Han Solo and Leia

Mr. Black was readmitted to the hospital six days after Meanie April submerged. Mom said that this readmittance meant that Mr. Black was no longer part of the living world again in a short time. I didn't know which made me feel worse: the fact that the last correspondence between me and him ended in such a sour note, or the fact that Ryder would have to leave after his death.

Ryder hadn't talked much to me either. I asked Quentin about this, and after recounting every single details (including how many times Mr. Black blinked after I told him those Mean Words), Quentin surmised that it was perfectly in Ryder's right to be mad at me.

"You're just being a bitch back there," my brother had called me a lot of names, but never the B word. "But that's good, you know? I've been afraid that you'd be the type who'd, you know, be a doormat and let people step all over you. But then you actually have an inner bitch, and that's normal."

The consolation was designed to make me feel better, but it actually depressed me very much, to the point where I started to spam Ryder a lot of text messages that dwelled around being apologetic.

For some reason, 'I'm sorry' never really came out, though.

I'm just so stupid.

Typical text from Regretful!April towards Upset!Ryder:

'Did you know that the tv show 'Biggest Losers' have created more long-lasting relationships than 'The Bachelorette' and its female counterparts?'

Typical reply from Upset!Ryder towards Regretful!April:

'No.'

'I also read that the three things most difficult to say are 'Thank you', 'I love you' and 'I'm sorry''

'Ok. Have you eaten?'

'I have. I had macaroni and cheese today with extra cheese. What about you?'

'I haven't.'

Sometimes, it was far worse when someone wouldn't yell and got mad at you after you've done something wrong.

Because that would mean that he had given up.

And I never wanted him to give up on me.

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It was on the seventh day after the last time I saw Ryder when the bell rang. I hoped that I would see him by the door when I opened it, but that would resemble a scene right out from a typical Romantic Comedy . And my life, unfortunately, was not a romantic comedy.

Because instead of Ryder, it was actually his friend.

"Uhm," my mind went to a temporary state of frozen solid because I couldn't quite remember who he was. "The one from Linda's funeral."

"Do you seriously forget my name?" the blonde asked. "It's Alex."

"Hi, Alex. I'm sorry I have a bad memory."

He dismissed it with an easy smile and a wave of his hand. "Don't worry I don't remember your name either. I keep referring you as Ryder's Girl inside my mind."

"It's April," I reached out my hand, but then retreated it when he was about to shake it. "Um, and I don't like being touched by strangers."

"And I'm slightly offended," Alex's mouth slightly curved downwards, and yet there was unmistakable amused glint on the green of his eyes. "So I heard that Ryder's father went back to the hospital last week?"

I nodded. I stared at Alex's very shiny leather shoes and his slim-fit black pants. I wasn't one who followed the trends of fashion, but I knew expensive, fancy clothes when I saw one. And this Alex character was dressed like he was rolling in cash.

"Is Ryder's inside?" he asked.

"No, Ryder's house is next door," I told him. "I'm his neighbor."

Alex pouted. "Really? I always confused which house was his."

"Not here."

"Yep," and yet he wasn't going away. "So, is he home now?"

"No, he and the rest of the family hasn't been home since Mr. Black was readmitted to the hospital."

Alex's hand went to the back of his head, there was discomfort on his face, which he hid pretty well.

Apparently, I talked about that out loud.

"Well, I can't really deal with those kind of things," he actually bothered to comment on my musing. "You know, the mushy, intense-y, feelings-y... stuff? It creeps me out."

"I can actually relate to that!" I said, excited that someone actually shared my discomfort about anything that involved more work in the cardiovascular and tear-glands area. "So why are you here? I thought Ryder doesn't like you. Or have you two made up?" I added as an afterthought.

"You go straight to the point, that's nice. Nah, I'm here for you, actually. The little confusion thing about which house was his was a lie. I'm kinda here to bring you to where Ryder is now."

"I... I don't know if I'm ready to go to the hospital now," I said, biting on my fingers. I was afraid of many things, and my fear for Ryder hadn't subsided completely. I didn't want to see his upset face, and yet somehow I felt worse at the thought of not seeing him being upset at me. This whole confusion scared the Jedi out of me and I wasn't ready to deal with any of that. 

"Who says he's in hospital right now?" Alex raised an eyebrow. I noticed that whereas Ryder's eyebrows were dark and thick, Alex's were lighter in color and a little thinner. But what they lacked in color and shape was made up with how Alex used them. He did know how to move those eyebrows. Up and down and arched and pulled. I was actually transfixed seeing them.

"Hey, sweetheart? Are you listening to me?"

"Hearts are not sweet, you know? They actually taste quite awful," I had to tell him that because there were too many people calling their Precious Person sweetheart while ignoring the ugly truth about hearts. "And I'm listening now."

"Ryder's having a fight in about," he checked his watch, which also shone in its expensive glory. "Forty five minutes. I wanna take you there as a surprise for him."

That information didn't register too well into me. Ryder was having a fight? Right now? But I thought he wouldn't have one anymore.

"You need to see your boyfriend in action. He's a beast, that guy. I figured you'll allow him to fight after you've seen him in one. You know that he needs money, right?" Alex said as he leant against the door. He smiled ruefully as he continued. "Especially later, when... his living circumstances change."

"That's a good euphemism for 'when his dad dies'," I said. "I wouldn't have been able to come up with that."

There was that lopsided smile again. "So are you coming?"

"To Ryder's fight?"

"To Ryder's fight."

I was silent as I contemplated this, but Alex was very devilishly persuasive.

"Have I told you that he looks crazy good looking when covered in sweat and grunting? I'm a straight man but even I have to admit it."

"What kind of good looking? Han Solo or Luke?"

"Uh... Han Solo."

Three minutes later, I was inside of Alex's Lexus and upon seeing a Chewbacca bobbing head on his car, I started a full on one hour lecture on Wookie's civilizations.

Alex never once complained about my lengthy monologue, which was a really great gesture of him.

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Alex finally stopped the car at a shady looking street in the edgy neighborhood. You knew that you were in not the good part of the neighborhood when there were billboards that advertised cheaper phone calls for your jailed relatives. 

"Seems like a really cliche place to run streetfights."

"Just so you know, the criminals run this place."

I could feel my whole body tensed up. "Like, mafias and stuff? Ala the Sopranos?"

"Right. Mafias. Hooligans. People whose father leave them and become drug dealers. Those kind of people." He was quiet for a while, and I was left gnawing on all of my ten fingers, before then he let out another laugh. "You do realize that I was lying the whole time, right?"

"No." I said, still undecided whether it was a good time to exhale in relief or not. "But you're lying to me also upset me big time."

"Seriously, are you always this gullible?"

My first instinct was to nod, but then I had a feeling that he would further deepen my embarassment if I admit my tendency to trust all kinds of people, so I was stuck between nodding and shaking my head.

"Don't worry, the people here do have rough lives, but most of the time, they're nice. Plus, participating in a fight tires them out, so they have no energy left to do any dangerous felony."

I tried to sense if it was another lie or not. It seemed hard to believe anything he had just said, considering the amount of vandalism that were going on all over the walls of the houses here. I could hear the faint sound of people cheering and shouting, and Alex gestured me to follow him.

Alex's body warmth became alarmingly close. "Stay close. God knows what Ryder will do to my face if you get touched by any of these people."

"But if any of 'these people' ever ambush us and threaten to hurt us, will you actually protect me?"

"No. I'll just dash and give you to them as an offering."

"Yeah, you seem like the type who'd do that."

"Thanks for the compliment."

"You also seem like the type who'd consider that a compliment."

Alex snorted another laugh. "You are not being sarcastic. We're here now, and again, stay close to me," he said as he pulled me over to him.

The unfamiliar touch of his hand on my shoulder made me squirm. If there was one person who I'd allow to touch me unannounced, then it'd be my family plus Ryder. Alex may not complain about my excessive rambling about Wookie's and he appreciated my blunt character study of him, but he wasn't anywhere near the level where he could touch me.

"Don't do that. Don't touch me."

He just ignored me, but he did stay a little further away from me. I would have surmised that he was a bit offended with my request, but I couldn't bring myself to really dwell about this because my whole attention was drawn into the fight that was going just seven feet away from me. 

To be totally honest, I couldn't really see anything, since the mob of people was really dense, and a lot of them were taller and broader than I was. I had a really hard time sneaking a peek. 

"Having a hard time sneaking a peek?" Alex voiced out my concerns.

"Yeah," I said grudgingly. "All I can hear is grunting and yelling in this kerfuffle. I can't even single out Ryder's voice so I don't know if he's winning or losing."

"I'm just going to put my hand on your back," he said as he slowly placed his hand on my back, "and then help you go through these monkeys." He tipped his head as he added another comment. "Kerfuffle. Pfft."

Alex was good at searching for loopholes. I thought that being slimy and foxy helped him to see all kinds of holes, whether on people (emotionally) or people (in thick crowd). Most of the guys who participated in the cheering were covered with tattoos and smelled like they didn't know that they had to use soap at the bathroom, and yet Alex acted as if he knew how to deal with them, in lieu of his preference to high fashion and the Rich Face. It took us a while, but we finally could get into the very front of the circle, and I could finally see who Ryder was fighting.

The moment I laid eyes on his enemy, I felt like it was a bad idea go to the front row.

Because the man was at least six foot tall, weighed twice as much as Ryder, and had inhumanly sharp teeth. He also had the tendency to growl like an animal.

The people around me were chanting, and AnimalMan and Ryder were deep into their wrestling. Of course, being the bigger of the two, AnimalMan was winning. He had Ryder in a headlock, and one of his feet was on snaked around Ryder's lower body, preventing any movement. I had never looked at Ryder covered in that much sweat and veins, and the sound that came from his bared teeth didn't sound like him at all.

A lot of cursing and taunting were being thrown at the two superstars, and that seemed to rile them up. AnimalMan's baldhead shone at the dim ray of the streetlight as he clenched his muscles around Ryder's neck, causing him to choke. My hands went to my own neck as I saw the horrifying display of my Precious Person being ripped to shreds by a guy who looked like a People Ripper for a living.

"Ryder!" I couldn't help screeching.

Ryder's dark eyes found mine, and they widened in surprise. His lack of concentration gave a chance for AnimalMan to spin him around and gave him a jab on the stomach. 

At this point, everything went in slow motion. I took in all the details in Ryder's back. He wasn't wearing any shirt so all sort of bruises and cuts that he had were exposed. I could tell that he was experiencing agonizing back pain and shoulder pain and all over body pain and maybe minor disorientation because AnimalMan's knuckle made a dangerous sound as it clashed against Ryder's torso.  

And yet, for some reason, Ryder managed to turn his head to me and yelled my name. "Why are you here?!" I thought that was what he yelled afterwards.

"You don't turn your back to me, buddy," like I had imagined, AnimalMan's voice was nasally hoarse. He grinned his sharp teeth again, before landing another jab on Ryder's face.

Ryder doubled over, but he didn't fall. As the chanting of the people took a new level of loud, he turned his back to his opponent again and faced towards my direction. There was a trickle of blood running from the side of his mouth, and it made him all the more slanderous when he shouted, "Alex, you bastard!" 

"We're not finished here," AnimalMan let out yet another supposed-to-be-badass-comment. Ryder had less than a second to react as the bigger guy tackled him to the ground.

"That... usually doesn't happen," Alex commented beside of me. "Usually he'll be the one doing the tackling." I almost forgot that he was beside me. In fact, I almost forgot where I was, and the sea of people around me suddenly alarmed me. And then I could see Ryder being kicked on the ground, and it hurt so much seeing it, because it felt as if it were me who absorbed all the pain. 

"It's because of me," I said to myself. Ryder was a good fighter, I knew that he was. He won once when I saw him (chapter five), sending his opponent airborne in the air in a winning uppercut. From what I had gathered from Alex's testimony, Ryder wouldn't be losing like this normally; he wouldn't be lying on the ground, trying to protect his head and his vital areas from being ravaged by a guy who were twice his size. I knew that he was strong at being offensive, but then again, most people who were fast and nimble weren't usually good at being defensive and sustaining damage. 

It's coming again.

The compressed feeling, the sudden short of air, the invisible needles prickling at my head. Only this time, when I tried to back away, there was no wall or a safe place, there were only more people. All of them looked dangerous, all of them ready to deal damage. 

"Hey, are you okay?" Alex asked, but by then, I was gone too deep. I crouched on the floor, my knees up to my chin and I tried to lock every sound, every movement, every life out of me. And yet I could still painfully feel every single person here, I could still hear the sound of AnimalMan's knuckle connecting against whatever part of Ryder's body, and him screaming my name. The noble thing for me was to repress this episode of anxiety and get away from here. But I wasn't a noble person, and I certainly wasn't strong.

"What's wrong? April?" someone asked. "Hey, hey! What are you doing?" he shouted, but it wasn't directed at me.

At the same time, I could feel a man's hand wrapped around me and in a single swoop, I was up in the air. There was a hurricane inside my mind, thundering, knocking everything, rendering me incapable of thinking clearly. I was too disoriented and too short-winded to actually take a look to know who got me.

But then, it didn't matter, because whoever had me on top of his shoulder got tackled. We fell together on the ground, and I could see from my peripheral vision that there was another crowd circling against us. There was the sound a punch dug inside that person's head. And another, and another, and another. 

And then I could feel his familiar smell enclosed upon me. There was the smell of blood and mansweat around him, but Ryder was now around me.

"If anyone dares to touch my girlfriend, I'll kill you!" Ryder announced. "I'm not even joking. That guy over there will need a lot of money to repair himself at the hospital."

"Are you okay?" Ryder asked me. "April?"

"Gimme a minute," I said. I took deep breaths, focusing my mind to go to my Happy Place, which was the telephone booth of Doctor Who. It proved to be hard because there were lots of strangers watching me do it. "I might need a hug."

"I can do that!" one of the strangers chimed.

Ryder shot him a glare so magnificent it could have burnt a glacier to crisp. As the random guy cowered and faded to the background of even more random guys, Ryder took one of my arm and slung it on his shoulder, while he held me closer to him. But he didn't stop there, his other arm found the back of my knees and he lifted me up to the air. 

It took me a while to actually realize what was happening to me: I was being carried Princess-style! It wasn't particularly uncomfortable. In fact, I liked the feeling of walking on air and having Ryder's arm around me. 

We went to his (Linda's) car and he put me on the passangger seat. He sat on the driver's seat and rested his forehead on the steer. 

After my shortage for oxygen finally subsided, I talked to him. "You're covered in blood."

"Mine is probably only half of it," his reply came without him even lifting his head.

"Thank you for saving me back there. You know, at one point during that panic attack, I thought that the people around us were turning into werewolves and-"

"Why the hell are you here?!" Ryder didn't let me finish. "Don't you know how extremely dangerous this place is for a girl?"

I was very conscious about his anger. "It's... I... Uh. Alex said-"

"I'm going to beat him!" Ryder was ready to open the car door, but I grabbed him by the elbow because he didn't look like he was ready for another fight. 

"Don't, please! Judging by his choice of clothes and shoes, Alex would be devastated if you break the temple that is his body."

Ryder's eyebrows rose in recognition. "That makes me want to shove my foot to his  face even more."

"And Alex managed to get me here because he said you'd look crazy good looking when you're fighting."

At this, Ryder was quiet. Even though he tried so hard to not get affected with how the world viewed him, he always did. He was as self-conscious as I was, maybe even more, and yet he hid behind the mask of aloofness. "That's still not a good reason. One of the guys tried to kidnap you, for Christ's sake. I didn't even want to know what he was going to do with you."

"According to the movies that I've watched, guys who reside in this part of the neighborhood usually regard

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