Into the Deep by Lauryn April Page B

that she had taken a seat on the far side of the room. She glanced at me as I entered then turned her head.
     She better not even try to sit by me , she thought.
     So I sat on the other side of the room in a seat as close to the door as I could manage. I tried not to listen to her thoughts as Math went on but found I couldn’t help myself.
     She was the only one I trusted to tell her that I’d been seeing Brant and then she betrays me .
     I felt a stab of guilt but I also picked up on something else. She’d just thought that she’d been seeing Brant. She only told me she’d hooked up with him and just what that meant exactly she hadn’t clarified. I realized then that she hadn’t told me the entire story, and to some degree that made me feel worse.
     Guess I can really stop hoping that we’ll get back together now.
     I tried to talk to her after the bell rang, tried to apologize, but she walked past and refused to even acknowledge me. After that my mind was a daze through both Lit and Bio as my entire body sat fuming with rage. I couldn’t think about anything but what had transpired that morning and it all made me so angry. I was angry that Tiana hadn’t told me the whole story about her and Brant, angry that Brant had hurt her, angry that I had hurt her. I was mad that I had told Brant about the things that have been going on with me and hadn’t told my friends, mad that I felt like I couldn’t tell them, and I was mad at the fact that this had happened to me to begin with.
     All of it made me want to explode, made me want to scream, but I felt like there was nothing I could do about it. Tiana wasn’t talking to me. I couldn’t get rid of Brant as he was the only one who knew about my ability, as well as possibly the only person willing to talk to me at all at the moment. I couldn’t dispose of my ability and on top of it I still had to somehow stop the school from getting blown up.
     By the time I walked out of Bio, my nerves were a knotted ball. I felt like a compressed coil ready to spring. So when Brant grabbed me by the arm and yanked me down an empty hallway, I had to curb the instinct to punch him straight in the nose.
     “I don’t want to talk to you right now,” I said.
     “Yeah, well, you’re gonna listen.”
     “I don’t care what you have to say. Tiana…”
     “Tiana what? Told you that I’m a dick? That I got some then got gone, yeah? That I won’t talk to her anymore?”
     I didn’t nod, I just glared at him.
     “Did she tell you why I won’t talk to her anymore?” No probably not, he thought. “Well I’ll tell you… Tiana and I were seeing each other, for almost a month.”
     “What?”
     “Yeah, she left that part out, huh?” Brant looked around. The halls were filled with students as they met with friends before lunch, stopped in classrooms to talk to teachers or went to grab things from their lockers. “Come on, let’s talk somewhere else.”
     I followed him out. We avoided the common and walked out a side door. I kept my arms crossed as we moved, still not fully ready to trust or believe him. We stepped outside and Brant dug his hands into his pockets searching for something. Then after a moment he pulled out a pack of cigarettes, Marlboro Reds, and tugged one out of the box. He had a cheap plastic blue lighter that’d been stuffed in the pack among his smokes. He pulled it out as well and lit up. I watched as he inhaled, the end of his cigarette glowing orange.
     I thought Tiana was different. He exhaled and ribbons of white smoke spiraled up into the sky.
     “So talk, that’s what we’re out here for isn’t it.”
     He took another drag of his cigarette. “A few weekends ago, there was that big house party on Longview Drive.”
     “Nicolette’s house, yeah, I was there. Ti said you and her hooked up that