Free All We Know Is Falling: Fall With Me: Volume One by Nicole Thorn Page A

down with me. 
    Hale stopped talking to me and started in on his work. The conversation was over. Both of us sure that we were the right one.
    I stared straight ahead as I tried calming myself down. I knew how this would go. Every time I let myself think of what I really was, anything past a teenage girl, it would hurt. I tried my best to ignore it. But how could I? It was in my DNA to be evil. I was even attracted to it. Any hope of forgetting what I was vanishes as soon as my real vision breaks through.
    I looked at the boy next to me and something changed. Maybe it was the look on his face, or his posture. Something radiating innocence lost and misery. But I knew what I was doing was the right thing. Trying to keep him away. I’d just had the reason wrong before. I was doing it for me, to keep myself safe. But it was him I should have been worried about. I didn’t want my darkness mixing with his, making him something else.
    He thought he was bad. I’d only make that worse.
    The bell rang and Hale bolted before I even stood up. I slowly walked out, feeling an odd sense of abandonment.
    I got in line and waited as it slowly passed. It was pizza day, so there was that… Surely that would erase the feeling of shame and worry I had swimming around in my head.
    I got my tray and loaded on all the stuff I was paying for but still not sure I’d eat. I looked around and didn’t know why until the disappointment set in. Hale was nowhere to be seen. Whatever happened to him today, it made him want to hide.
    So I guess I was back to eating alone. In theory, I should be happy. I got what I wanted. He didn’t want to talk to me anymore. So then why do I feel so awful about it? It felt more like a forfeit than a victory.
    I made my way to the empty corner of the room so I could return to my life of solitude. It was better this way. Really it was. A friend was never in the cards for me.
    When I got to my usual table, I finally looked up from the floor. I set my tray down next to the carton of chocolate milk. I picked it up and read what was scrawled on the side in marker. For my Lamb.
    That was it. All it said. But it didn’t need to say more.
    I looked around and still couldn’t spot Hale anywhere. But he’d been here. If only to leave the milk for me.
    My stomach dropped.
    I sat down and started eating, going for the carton Hale left me before I went to drink my own.
    After lunch was over—for me, since I left early—I headed to art class. Hale was sitting at the table in the very back of the room and he was painting something. Our teacher wasn’t even in the room yet.
    I watched him for a little longer than was normal. His eyes looked…content. Whatever he was painting seemed to be bringing him peace. And I was about to disturb it. Because I couldn’t leave well enough alone.
    I walked over to the table and sat down, setting my backpack on the floor. Hale didn’t acknowledge that I was next to him and I wasn’t sure if he knew I was there.
    I tried, I really did, to not talk to him. To let him work out his issues on his own and leave him be. But he bought me milk and if that wasn’t a cry for help I wasn’t sure what was.
    “Tell me,” was all I said. His eyes remained on his painting and I wasn’t sure he heard me.
    “You managed to get through lunch without finding out?” he spoke with no emotion.
    “No. I didn’t hear this mystery rumor,” I said sounding exasperated. “I want you to tell me. I don’t know how to communicate with you that nothing you’ve done that you think is bad, could possible have any affect on what I think of you.”
    He looked up then. His eyes searched mine as he considered me. “I think you were right.”
    The sentence caught me off guard. “About?”
    He stared down at his paint covered hands. “We shouldn’t be friends. I’m going to leave you alone.”
    Fuck. That was it. What made me figure out that I didn’t want that at all. That it was too late and I cared enough