Comfortable Madness First PDF 4-13-18

Fair Warning
Coy had something to say and he couldn’t say it to me. His
friends and my friends would have never understood that we had
anything to say to each other. They would never understand that we
had something in common. So Coy couldn’t talk to me at lunch or
in class. He couldn’t even talk to me in the hallway. Because he
had something to say to me, he wrote a note and the note read:
You’ve decided to keep it. Good for you. Meet me in the gym after
school.
I tossed the note in the trash and waited for Tayla to come
find me. She found me at my locker. I waited for her and she came,
and she looked at my face.
“Something up?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Your face says you’re lying,” she said.
“I have to meet Mr. Skarey after school,” I lied.
Tayla looked at me and decided to believe me. I didn’t
know what she would have thought if I had told her the truth. She
was just getting over the whole baby’s father thing. She didn’t quite
believe in Gid but she was willing to let it sit for the moment. I let
her let me believe everything was okay.
The rest of the day passed with the slow grind of knowing I
was going to have to come up with a reason to send Tayla home
without me without her knowing that I’d lied to her. Classes passed
like sand over burned skin. I was brittle and nearly broken by the
time the last bell rang. Tayla found me.
“I can wait,” she said.
“I’m okay.”
“You shouldn’t have to walk all that way,” she said.
“I need to get away,” I said. “Just for a moment.”
She let me go and walked out to her car. I went to the gym.
Echoes played along the cinder block walls. Coy waited for me in
the bleachers. The room was empty of anyone but us.