AllFreeNovel
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I stand so I’m slightly higher than both boys perched on my table. “You think I fucked with you, Timberfake?” I snort and shake my head. “I’m way more creative than that.” I lean down and pick up my bag. “Anything else? Or am I free to leave?”
“You can leave… and then stay gone,” Presley says and his buddies laugh like he’s hilarious.
“And miss out on seeing your gorgeous face?” I ask with a sweet smile as I hitch my bag up my shoulder. “Good plan, actually.”
When I leave the cafeteria, I punch the first locker I see, hurting my hand and slightly denting the metal.
I’ve handled far more infuriating moments than this. This is nothing. I have got this. I can deal with this.
It’s just so enraging. God, I wanted to punch him in his smug model fucking face.
Furious, I stomp through the hall and out of the building. I need a moment. I need something. I need to get away.
I round the building and pass the next, they’re so tall, so big. So many windows for so many students to throw themselves from.
If only.
“Up,” I whisper and look for the way.
I want to go up.
Passing faces I don’t know, I run as fast as I can, charging past groups and around kids. I skid around the back and onto the grass and find it, my route.
I don’t know if anybody sees me and I don’t care.
I launch myself onto a dumpster and bounce on the plastic lid, giving myself an extra inch or two of air. My foot connects with a protruding wall as my fingertips grasp the edge of the first-floor roof. Pulling myself up and over, I roll and land back on my feet and run at the next wall, scaling it until I’m hanging from a window. I lift my leg onto a pipe and carefully stand on it, overlooking the grounds. Nobody seems to have seen me, nobody ever looks back at the school during their break and why would they? It’s not a place that brings much joy to any of them. And I seem to be at a part that people don’t come. Probably from the scent of the dumpster.
I grip the metal pipe, it’s strong and sturdy and easy to climb. It takes me all the way to the top of the third floor with a few windows for leverage. There’s a flat roof and I laugh when I see a door that likely leads back down. I could have just taken the safe route but whatever.
I’m so high up. I love it. The breeze is colder up here, stronger. My heart is racing and adrenaline is coursing through my veins. This might be the highest I have ever free climbed.
I don’t go near the edge because I don’t want anybody to think I’m going to jump. That’s a scene I don’t need.
Instead I plug my earphones into my ears and hit my “feeling angry” playlist. The first song to come up is a remix of “Rage Against the Machine.” It fits perfectly.
I look around the massive flat expanse of dusty sheet roofing and then run and skid along it, leaving a line in the gray while dirtying my black pants. I do it again to the other side. I’m already soaked in cranberry juice as it is. I may as well filthy up the rest of me.
Lane is going to go crazy, though she probably won’t say shit to my face.
Perfect Lane in her perfect house with her perfect husband.
Perfect Presley in his perfect school with his perfect fucking face.
I move, letting the loud music in my ears command my body. Dance and climbing have been my only companions, my only form of entertainment and release for years. I love the way my body aches, the fluidity of which it moves, the way it stops and jolts at the right times, completing moves made by pros.
Nobody can take this from me. I won’t let them.
If they do, I’ll die. Without this, I’m nothing.
Song after song plays until my body stops and I collapse onto my back, sweaty and exerted. Filthy like I’ve always been. Dirty and unwanted.
The bell rings, telling me it’s time to get to my next class.
I’m not going to my next class.
I’m not moving from this spot.
“She’s home,” I hear Lane say, sounding relieved as I walk through the door having found my own way home.
She fights Stanley for a glimpse and both take one look at me and likely decide not to say anything because their mouths close and faces fall. I drop my bag on the ground, kick off my scuffed shoes that I warned Lane I’d probably wreck in a week, and then head upstairs.
Stanley opens his mouth to tell me off for ditching him but thinks better of it.
