Cole comes to the rescue. . .

So to pick up from last time. . . From Jessica still.

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I didn't know where I was going. I didn't even make it to the street before I felt someone wrench my arm almost out of my socket. The beating of my heart was loud in my ears. I whirled around, my hand raised in a fist to give my sister the worst black eye she's ever had. My eyes burned, through tears or hate I didn't know. But as I did so I didn't see the bright red hair that looked like flames that normally came from my sister's head, but the short, black spiked cap of Cole's hair.

I couldn't stop my fist. There was too much momentum behind my swing. But, thankfully, he moves quickly and slid gracefully away from my wild strike and he let go of my arm.

"Oh, my. . ." My hands flew to my mouth. "I'm so sorry."

"I hope you thought I was someone else," he said with a slight smile and rain dripping down his face.

"I. . . I. . ." I couldn't get my words out. Stupid. I'm so stupid. . .

His eyebrow cocked and he took me all in with a quick look. "Are you okay?"

My chin started to quiver and I dropped my gaze, not answering. I could feel my mouth opening, but no sound came out. His hands moved upward even the slightest bit, as if to offer a hug. Without realizing what I was doing, I was in his arms. Tears escaped from my eyes and meshed with the rain that fell. Whether his invitation was intentional or if I over stepped my bounds, I didn't know. But I did feel his arms lightly wrapping around me, his cheek rested gently on my head, and his hands ran up and down my spine comfortingly.

I didn't know what I was doing. After the night before, I should have been running for the hills. After the dark, I should have kneed him and sprinted back to the police station. But I just needed to be held. It didn't matter if he'd tried something before, it didn't matter if I hardly knew him. I needed someone. I needed to be cared about and felt like I was loved for even a brief moment. I knew he would probably leave and I would continue running, running from everyone and everything that I knew. But for that moment, I didn't want to be alone.

Then he did something I didn't expect.

"Come on. Do you want something to eat?"

Without an answer on my part, he escorted me to his car, the black one at the back of the parking lot. He opened the door and I slid inside. The seat was cold, but dry. It smelt like it had before. The leather was soft under my wet clothes. I wipped my face dry, and cleaned off the little bit of make up I had. Cole got in next to me and reved his engine.

He drove out of the parking lot and down the road to a fast food resturant that was close by. I could tell he was looking me over closely again, his eyes ever scanning me up and down.

"Do you want to go in or take it somewhere else?" he asked politely.

I glared at the building. I didn't want to be around people. He got the message without me saying anything again and pulled to the drive through. Before long, Cole handed me a soft drink, which I sipped without tasting, and we drove out. We went without speaking for a while before he shifted in his seat to get something out of his pocket.

"Here." He plopped something heavy into my lap and let his hand slide again onto the gear shift in the center console. It was my cell phone. "It must have fallen out of your pocket when you were getting out of the car last night. Some girl called. . . Ah, Kaycee? I think her name was. What?"

My eyes started filling with water again.

"What did I say?"

"It's nothing," I whisper. The words barely come out even then. "Don't. . ." Don't worry about it. Just let me alone. . . NO! Don't let me alone. Please to leave me. . .

He pulls the car over to the side of the road. The rain has let up slightly but there is still a light tapping on the roof of the car. "No, there's something wrong. Will you please tell me?"

This is such a change for him. Why am I near him? I ask myself. After hurting me. . . like he did last night. Scaring me and letting me run like that and not coming after me to apologize? Why did I hug him. . . ? Why does everyone else hate me. . . ? Why did she say those things. . . ? Am I really horrible? Awful? I am. I'm nothing. I'm indecent. I'm awful and horrible and I shouldn't even be here anymore. I shouldn't be sitting here. With him. I should be. . . My own thoughts trail off.

"You should be what?" he asks, his voice soft as velvet and so close to my ear.

I shrink away and he looks me deeply in the eyes. He wasn't supposed to hear that.

FREAKING MALL SHOT!!!

So I've been trying to write this freaking part in the story for forever! It's turing out to be one of the "roof scenes" as Shelby would put it. I don't know exactly what is going to be said, but I do know that Kaycee will turn into a complete jerk in the process. But then it still doesn't seem right. . . Something isn't right with it. Maybe it. . . wow. . . It's supposed to be written from Airo's point of view. That changes a lot of things.

Alright.

I'll jsut skip it for now. I know that Kaycee is going to make a big deal about hanging out with Jessica for now. Many people around them are going to stare and not know what to do when Kaycee actually explodes on her old best friend. Kaycee tells her that she's a liar--Jessica tells her about her brother and the party and the girl that he was making out with--and that she's worthless and flaky, that she doesn't want to be around people with that kind of image. What kind of image? The kind that screams--her voice raises higher and higher by this point--that "I'm loose! That I'll be pregnant within the year and drop out because I'm no use to the world. I probably won't even keep the baby and have someone beat it out of me because I'm to cheep to have a clinical abortion. You're awful, Jessica. You're not worth my time or anyone elses for that matter. You should just leave and never come back. No one likes to be around liars and hos." She flips her blond hair away from her shoulder so it swings down her back. She's a completely self-righteous doosh.

Airo let Tobias know what was going on, and Tobias ran with it and probably ran with it too long.

Anyway, so here we start from Jessica's point of view after Kaycee started to walk away.

* * * * * * * * * *

I couldn't even watch her walk away. I didn't see how she stroad down the food court like she owned the place. Her heels clicked as she went. The whole room was silent except for her leaving. As soon as she rounded the corner all eyes turned on me. The sizzling of the friers and a small wimper of a child were the only things to be heard. Then my chair. It scrapped as I slid it across the hard green and brown tiles. I felt something warm and wet drip onto my hand as I stood. I didn't look down to see how many tears had fallen onto the table.

Without much more of a warning to the people in my path, I spinted to the closest door, my hands covering my eyes as I did so. All got out of my way but a small group of teenagers, probably a little older than myself. The girl standing between the two boys yelped as I plowed into her. Her bags fell to the ground. One of the boys grabbed for my arm, but my hand slipped from his and I ran past him.

My ears roared and my eyes were clouded with tears. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't think. I just ran out the door and toward the road as her words echoed though my head. The hate was still there. The fiery, burning resentment. My feet hit the pavement until I couldn't hear them under the pounding rain.

The noise around me was all but consumed by the rain and her words. Loose. . . Drop out. . . Awful. . . Liar. . . Drop out. . . Awful. . . Loose. . . Liar. . . Awful. . . I passed stop lights, houses, cars, fenses. . . so many thing, all without seeing them.

My knees gave way and I found myself laying on something soft, mostly. There was something pointy in my hip and my arm was pinned under my own body. My fingers started to tingle. The rain fell on me like waves lapping over me, drawing me deeper and deeper into the water. If I was going to drown, let it be now. Get it over with. . . Please. . .

*****

The next thing I knew it was warm. Warm lips move away from my hand and the man standing in front of me bowed. He was tall; with an almost olive complection from spending too much time out in the sun; his eyes wer alight and full of life; a large, crooked nose that looked as if to have been broken more than once sat above full lips that smlied. "Take care of yourself, alright? If you ever need anything" he passed me a card "don't hesitate to call." He winked and glidded down a stark white hall and quickly ducked around a corner.

I blinked after the older. . . well, gentleman that had just disappered. He wasn't ancient and covered in wrinkles as I'd expect someone to have acted like that to be, but he was quiet a few years older than me. Maybe a few years older than Gabriel.

I felt my face fall.

My hand slid under the blanket and hid the card he had given me, which I hadn't even had the chance to look at, and looked away from the corner as my sister sprinted into view.

This is not what I need right now! I screamed in my head and started to stand. The blanket that was wrapped around my shoulders nearly fell to the floor as I stood and started to move down the opposite hall my sister was coming from.

"Well, excuse me for coming all the way over here to bail you out of jail!" Angela yelled, her hands must have flown to her hip that was cocked to one side. I didn't even need to see her to know what she looked like. It seems like she pulled that pose more often than not when she was talking to me.

I took my first look around the building I was standing in. It didn't look like a jail. It didn't even look like a childrens hospital. No hard, metal bars; but also no dainty little pictures of ponies either. It was a paisty white hall from ceiling to floor tile that carried little to no decorations. The only other person down this hall was a rather solitary looking boy sitting in a chair that was bolted to the ground, his wrists in handcuffs. He had scars running up and down his arms and a very sad look on his face. His eyes were dark and lonely. His blond hair messy, almost dirty.

"I really don't think those are nessicary, sir," a cop said as he left the room next to the chair.

"It's nessisary if I say it is. He's my son and I know how to handle him." This man was gruff, with dark brown hair that probably would have been a completely different shade if he'd washed the oil out of it. He wore a wife beater and dirty, baggy jeans that was barely being held up by the whisp of a belt under a rather large beer belly.

The cop, with a lean and wirey frame, looked sadly down at the boy with suicide marks down his arm and spoke to the man. "Well, he's ready to be taken home now, sir."

"I'll say it is." The father grabbed swiftly at his son as soon as the father's handcuffs were off the boy--who was my age--and hauled him down the hall toward me by the nap of his neck. When the coller of his shirt moved, the rope marks were easier to see where the shadows of his scruff didn't shild them. These where new.

His eyes wouldn't stop staring at me, even after they passed me. Curtis. That was his name. Curtis. He was known all around school for being a cutter, for not even being ashamed for his scars. The story was that even the best concelor in the state couldn't help him. He wouldn't open up to anyone. No one wanted to be his friend after what was said he did to his other friends before he moved from Oregon down here to California. About, why his mom isn't there. . . There were some very strange stories about his mom: that she was a dancer in Vegas, she ran off with her therapist, that while they were hiking as a family his dad pushed her off a cliff, that she committed suicide and drove her car off a dock, or Curtis threw her into a revine after she tried to fix his hair for prom. No one knows, but then again everyone knows some truth.
But no one knows for sure or is even willing to ask.

Cutting Curtis Moore's dad pulled him away hard and around the corner. I followed them until they were out of sight and my sister came around the corner with Gabriel.

I should have made my escape sooner, I thought and turned down the hall again to where Curtis had sat before.

"Wait just a minute!"

The cop from before came out just then to see why my sister was screaming. Her red hair probably flowing galently behind her to make her seem like the good guy. And it worked. He stopped me with an outstretched hand as I was about to slip past him.

"Hold on there," he said and tried to pass a smile.

I glowered at him and tried to shake him off. His grip tightened and wouldn't let me go.

My sister caught up to us then. "What do you think you're doing? Dad is worried sick and Mom is frantic. If they were down here now they'd rip you a new one."

The cop at my arm looked at my sister with a cocked eye. I could see the words floating across his face: Not another one of those families. . .

Angela didn't catch it. "I had to beg them to let us come down here so then they wouldn't make a scene."

"And you're doing such a good job at keeping this quiet aren't you? Leave me alone, Angela." I shook off the cop and he released me this time.

"No, you're coming home, now."

"What if I don't wanna come home 'now'? What if I wanna go and hang out with friends or something?"

She scoffed at me. "Yeah, right." I glared at her trying to mask the hurt that just coursed through me.

"Get away from me. My day has been--" I almost swore there, but stopped myself. I hated those words. The fact that I almost did so just then meant it had been a really bad day. "Just stay away."

The tears started to gather in my eyes again. I turned and sprinted away down the hall, around the corner and toward the exit on the otherside of the building. She doesn't understand, I know she doesn't. She doesn't even wanna try. All she wants is to order me around and scream at me.

I reached the door before my sister could come after me. The rain had stopped outside, but in my heart it could stay thundering for months to come.

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