Nate Part 2

There’s so much fear inside me, as if there are vultures circling my head, hovering over the rotten flesh that is my mind. What if she forgets me? What if she finds someone to love? What if another guy comes along, breaks down her walls, and she realizes she can have someone more normal in her heart? A boy less problematic?
How am I going to move on if I lose the only calm that has ever graced my life? She is like a canvas painted with the brightest colors in the world, the perfect landscape. I’ll never find someone as beautiful, with such soft skin, or intense eyes that only Isabela has.
My head is being crushed by insecurity, but it’s my chest that aches, overloaded.
What if she doesn’t want me anymore?
Isabela told me to bring a condom, but I didn’t obey. It hurt so much to see her thinking about that, as if she somehow needs to give it to me. I’m dying to bury myself in her, feel every piece of her, hear her moans, but I won’t do that when she’s so vulnerable.
I want to dream and believe that we’ll be together for a long time. And when Isa is older, as she has always wanted, we’ll have sex. Then, it will be perfect. I’ll give her a night worthy of her. Not today, at a moment when we’re both emotionally wrecked.
I want to be the guy who deserves her love. Even though all the shit I do tells me I’ll never be that guy.
Another thing that won’t leave my mind is how I’ll live in peace knowing that Isa will continue to suffer abuse at home. I’ll flood the police and the Council with more reports. Screw it! I’m going to do something crazy. Maybe I’ll talk to her grandmother. Maybe I’ll tell everything! I have to find a way to help her escape that house. That abusive family.
My phone buzzes repeatedly. I pull the device out of my jeans pocket, staring at the frantic notifications from my class group on WhatsApp. I open the app and, before looking at the hundreds of message notifications, I check if there’s anything from Isa:
My Sun: I’m on my way.
Me: Hurry up! I want to kiss you until our lips are raw.
My Sun: Did you see the school group? Please stay calm!
I’m almost there!
What is she talking about? What the hell happened in the school group? Then I see Bianca sending me message after message. What the hell is going on? My heart starts racing, and my mind goes straight to my sister. I feel something strange in my chest, worried about her.
Witch: Nate, oh my God! Run home, hurry! Our dad said he’ll take you away soon. It’s going to get really messy, dude! She exposed you to the world, Nate. Everyone knows about your mess!
I feel my whole body go numb. What? Everyone knows my mess? What does that even mean? I sit on the sheet, dazed, trying to steady my shaking hands to hold the phone, which vibrates with notifications from the school group.
I take a deep breath, then finally open the group. And when my eyes scan over the messages, it’s impossible to control the outburst. I scream so loud that my vocal cords might burst. I feel the adrenaline, the rage, everything coursing through my body. Hatred contaminates my veins, spreading like a viscous black substance, consuming me entirely.
When I click on the link to that blog, as my eyes scan over the posts, everything I feel boils down to a single emotion: betrayal.
I trusted her.
I loved her.
How could Isabela do this?
Why would she?
Fuck... It has to be Isabela. The way it’s written makes it clear that only she could use that tone, those slang words, the jokes making fun of certain people at school, the detailed narration of things I only talked about with her. Everything we confided within these walls is exposed in a blog for the whole school. There are details about the times I was arrested, the burned-down boarding school, that my favorite song was “Demons” because there’s a demon inside my body, so many things that were ours...
The tone of the words is acidic, sour, as if it’s exposing me, mixed with widespread bullying against various other people at school, especially Caíque and the girls she was jealous of who used to hit on me.
What did you do, Isabela?


"It seems like an anonymous thing, but it didn't even need to be signed with her name. I know everything about this damn girl, even the wordplay she uses. I grab one of the small candle jars beside me and throw it against the wall. I hear the object shatter, and that sound of destruction feeds me.
Let’s leave the damn world just as fucked up as it is inside me!
I pick up the baseball bat resting beside me on the sheet and walk over to the jukebox. I hit the object with the bat so many times that my arm weighs and hurts. Then I go to the drinks barrel and kick it, bending the blue plastic around my foot until my limb complains, making me doubt if I dislocated a bone in the process.
I remove all the restraints of my inner demons. I free them and allow myself to just be the bad guy I’ve been trying to kill. I destroy the whole den while screaming to the point that my entire throat burns. And when the damn girl appears before me, with red eyes and that cursed white lace dress flowing as she runs towards me, I grab her before she can hug me.
My hand is tight around her neck, and she doesn’t even try to break free or defend herself, just cries, staring at the heaviest hatred dancing on my face. I push her against the couch, forcing her to sit. The air escapes my nostrils in such a way that I sound like a beast.
“Why did you do this to me, damn it?” I yell, so close to her face that saliva escapes my mouth and lands on her lips.
“No... It wasn’t me...” she stutters, crying so much that her voice barely comes out. She tries to shrink away, terrified. “Please, love, believe me! I didn’t do that.”
“I trusted you, you bitch!” I yell, punching the upholstery next to her face. Isabela flinches, holding her head, letting out a frightened scream. “I loved you! I trusted you to tell me that shit, and you managed to fuck up my life. For what?” She doesn’t answer, just shakes her head, sobbing tears that I’m sure are fake and dirty, trying to cover her ears. I stop her by pulling her hands away. That face I love, so beautiful and yet so rotten. “Answer me, damn it!”
“No, Nate. I didn’t write that blog. You have to believe... believe... in me,” she sobs, trying to hold my face. But I don’t allow it, yanking her filthy hands off my body as if her touch burns me.
“You narrated exactly how we met, what I wrote on the bathroom wall, about the bullets falling to the ground at your feet, the bottle I stepped on, things only the two of us experienced,” I state, shaking my head, with a stupid tear escaping my control and landing on her face. “So it’s about this, Snitch? A revenge because I’m leaving? Do you think I chose to leave you?” I accuse, out of my mind, feeling like the veins in my eyes are about to burst. She sobs so much that she chokes. “You made the blog and regretted it, right? That’s why you’re here crying? Or was that always your purpose, to mock me?”
“I didn’t do that shit, Nate!” she screams so loudly that it almost shocks me, her skin turning red. She pushes my chest in anger. “Why would I put things about us on a blog if I don’t want my stepfather to find out about you? Stop being stupid!”
What the blog says is that we have an affair. Nothing deeper or more serious about her. If it weren’t for Isabela, the blog’s author would have exposed way more about her in that shit.
“So go ahead, explain it to me, Isabela. Please... Make me believe in you!” I plead, holding the face of the girl who was mine, feeling so much pain that I wonder how I will recover from this.
I thought nothing could screw me over this much, that I couldn’t feel worse pains than my boarding school traumas, but here I am, screwed over a girl."