Page 33 of Poison Aches

Fear flashes in her eyes. A small smirk creeps up on my face.

I’m warning her in advance.

I’m not going to sneak attack her like a coward.

I want her to know that she’s on my shit list and one day, she’s going to rue the day she wandered around and messed up my entire life.

The girl pulls back and stares at me… but this time, there are large teardrops hanging at the edges of her eyelids, as if debating whether to let them fall or keep them reined in like the crucial memories she’s locked away.

Is she feeling sorry? For me?

“You’re still not a monster,” she whispers again.

I frown.

“You’re really not that smart, after all,” I grit out, tilting my head to the left, trying to figure this girl out.

“You won’t be sick forever,” she croaks, making me smirk. Yup, she’s pathetic.

“But I won’t live forever either.”

We stare at each other.

The longer I stare at her tears and the pity in her eyes, the more I feel uncomfortable, so I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.

“I count,” I blurt out.

“What?” she whispers.

I clear my throat and try again. “I count them.”

“Your heartbeats?” she guesses.

“Yes.” I don’t want her to start crying, so I blurt out a fact that I’ve known since I was four years old. “On average, a human heart beats sixty-five times per minute depending on motion or rest. Mine never makes it to that average.”

She stares at me, her little nose scrunched up in a little frown.

“What?” I demand.

“Two things,” she starts. “One, if you spend all your time counting your heartbeats, then how lonely are you?”

The question is asked in a soft, low voice but it feels like it came from the other side of the sky…loud and crashing against my ears.

My mind goes blank for a second.

And then, the anger makes a full-fledged return because she just hit the nail square on the head.

How lonely am I?

The loneliness that I’ve been subject to all my life, she’d never understand… but then again, in this moment, only one thought runs through my head.

She’s the first one to ask me that.

I’ve been friends with Noah, King, George, and Astraea for about a couple of years now, but none of them know nor do they ever ask.

They do notice that I’m strange and that I have a stutter and that I’m generally a quiet kid, but my loneliness… without my mother, it’s more pronounced now than it’s ever been.

And the good, comfortable thing about them is that unlike this girl, they don’t ask. They just… take me as I am and keep it moving like that.

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