22.

-HER-

I show up for breakfast downstairs looking tired. Dad gives me a momentarily look before disappearing behind his newspaper. Mum serves me breakfast quietly. The twins have already left for work. I force myself to eat before leaving the house.

“Don’t be late today,” I hear mother calling from behind as I leave the house.

“I’ll try not to,” I mutter more to myself.

I try to process my emotions while I am on the bus. I am not feeling very good today and I wonder why. I am considerably tired too. The weekend’s around the corner and I am very desperate for it.

Since I went to sleep early last night and woke up a bit late this morning, I forgot to look at the routine. I could only hope the classes end early today and I could find myself a way to get home early.

I meet Lisa at college. She’s waiting for me at the entrance of the building. She is unnaturally quite today. She only mutters a good morning to me and I return it without bothering to start any small talk either.

Together, as we enter the building and head towards the huge staircase, I see him. He is with the brunette and they are climbing downstairs.

Oddly, I don’t feel anything weird. I feel nothing for him… which surprises me and confuses me at the same time. He is too busy listening to what the brunette is speaking beside him. He just seems to be very much into that brunette. I recall her name to be Brooke.

Feeling my eyes on her, Brooke looks at me. Her eyes meet mine for a moment and they stop. I almost miss a stair and fall when she smiles widely at me, which she shouldn’t have. He turns to look at me too before the look of recognition climbs on his face.

Brooke whispers something in his ear before his eyes gleam with interest. With a smirk, he climbs downstairs with the brunette. There's that same knowing look on his face which has been bothering me very much lately.

“Hello, Cybele,” he chimes when they pass me. Brooke’s smile grows wider at me. Meanwhile, I am frozen on my steps and looking at them. When they finally disappear, I come to the realization that Lisa has been watching the whole exchange.

“What was that?” She mutters in bewilderment.

“I don’t know,” I shrug. She gives me a pointed look before continuing to climb the stairs. I couldn’t help but compare what just happened to the dream that I had this morning. Both were somewhat weird.

I wonder what she might have whispered in his ear. They seemed happy to see me but why?

The day has hardly started and my head is already aching with all the thinking I am being forced to do. There is something that they know about me but I don’t. This is starting to haunt me.

I think this is what kept me awake at night.

A part of me wants to skip the classes and go straight to his office. I want to find out so many things but I don’t know how to. I just find it hard to communicate with him with all those weird feelings I have for him.

“So, what went down yesterday?” Lisa asks me as we finally reach the floor where our class was. Acting to be catching up on my breath, I first gather my thoughts and decided how much I want to let her know. It’s not like I want to hide things from her… it’s just that I don’t want to tell her things that I am not very sure about.

“Nothing much. He made me sort some stacks of papers and keep them away,” I answer as we head to the class.

It has started to become a routine for me now and I am afraid that I am getting habituated with getting all the weird and nasty looks from Holly’s group and the people.

I ignore them as usual and concentrate on my work. I seem to be getting good at doing this day by day.

“I don’t understand one thing,” Lisa speaks up after we have completely settled in our seats. The professor hasn’t entered the class yet and everyone else is talking too.

“What?” I turn to her. Her warm brown eyes are trained on me as she asks, “Both of us vandalized the office. Why did he choose only you to set it back in order?”

This question hits me hard. This makes things even more complicated. I don’t know how to react to that question. I am trying to find that out myself.

“I don’t know but I think we should first focus on how he came to know that it was us,” I tell her instead to escape her question. She nods before looking at Holly’s group. They are busy talking amongst themselves.

“And most importantly, if Holly gave our names,” she added. I couldn’t help but agree with Lisa. I think Holly knows a great deal about all the whole situation but how do we know it from her?

I am sure she’ll be very reluctant and nasty if we go to her and straight-up ask the question. We’d need to find it out the other way, which is through him. Though, I don't feel very confident about the results of the latter either.

I turn to Lisa when she sighs deeply, “I am sorry, Cybele. We have failed you,” She whispers.

“What? No,” I tell her, shaking my head before adding, “Even though things did not go the right way, I am still grateful to you guys to even risk doing this for my sake,”

“But what’s the point when it did not affect Holly? You’re the one suffering again,” Lisa draws out. My head is starting to ache.

“Well, we dug a hole for Holly but I ended up falling in it,” I shrug.

“Well, then let’s dig another one but this time we’ll make sure Holly’s the one who falls in it,” Lisa mutters as we see Holly glance at us. A look of disgust instantly climbs on her face instantly.

I think this is getting more dramatic and certainly more complicated.

I just feel like going home.