Killing Me Softly

Two

The following day, my mother and Todd wanted to have a barbecue since it would be our last weekend before school. Paul would be starting school at the local community college and it would be my first day as a Senior. Mom wanted to “celebrate”. In the morning I noticed some slight bruising around my neck where the attacker had grabbed me. I wore a turtle neck shirt to cover it. I threw on a denim mini skirt so that my outfit would at least look like it was meant for summer.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Todd was drinking his morning coffee and reading his morning paper. I grabbed a pop tart from the cupboard and popped it into the toaster. Todd was to engrossed with his paper to notice me.

“You’re already dressed?” Mom asked, coming into the kitchen.

I pulled my pop tarts out from the toaster, burning my fingers in the process. “Yeah, I wanted to get a head start on the day,” I lied.

Mom clapped her hands together. “Great! You can go with me to the grocery store.”

I frowned. I didn’t want to go anywhere today. “Sure,” I said.

“Perfect. We’re leaving in twenty.” Mom walked out of the kitchen,

I leaned back against the kitchen counter and ate my pop tarts in silence. I stared down at the floor and relived the events from last night. I barely got any sleep last night. I had this fear that the attacker had followed me home. Whenever I did fall asleep I kept having the same nightmare over and over again. The attacker had crawled in through my window to kill me while I slept.

I’m more than grateful that Grayson had shown up when he did. Thanks to him, I was still alive. It would’ve been around this time that they had found my body if Grayson hadn’t shown up when he did. I shivered at the thought.

“You’re cold?” Todd asked.

I had completely forgotten that he was in here. “I just thought I saw a spider.”

 He looked at me incredulously, but he said nothing more and went back to reading his paper.

I threw the rest of the pop tart away, losing my appetite. I quickly ran upstairs to grab my purse and put on my converse. I went back downstairs to wait for my mom in the living room. As I waited I scrolled through my ** and on a whim, I typed in Grayson. I don’t know what I was expecting to find. I scrolled down the results and came up empty. Now that I really thought about it, he didn’t seem like the type to have an ** account or any social media account for that matter.

“Ready to go?” Mom asked, walking into the living room. I got up from the couch and followed her out the door, to the car.

I didn’t say much in the car. I had too many thoughts on my mind and I’m sure you can guess that most of them were on Grayson.

“You’re not hot wearing that?” mom asked, pointing to my sweater. 

I shook my head. “No.”

“I’m sweating up a storm and I’m wearing a t - shirt.”

I shrugged. “I’m okay.”

“You’re a weirdo.”

 I laughed at the fact that my own mother was calling me a weirdo. “I’m not a weirdo!”

The grocery store was packed as expected. My mom made me push the cart around the store; she was getting too frustrated and was seconds away from hitting someone with the cart. I followed her up and down every aisle carefully maneuvering around every cart or person that was in the aisle. Mom took her sweet time as she read every box label and checked for coupons.

“Is there anything you want for school?”

“Popcorn.”

 “You should get healthy snacks, Jules.”

 I shrugged. “Whatever you get is fine.”

 She sighed. “If you say so.”

We were at the grocery store for about another hour before mom decided that she had gotten everything she needed. She had practically bought the entire store. I helped her put the groceries in the car and we headed home.

 Paul and Todd helped us bring in the groceries as soon as we got home. Mom got to work right away on dinner. I wanted to just go in my room and take a nap since I didn’t get very much sleep last night.

I made it about three steps out of the kitchen when mom called me back to help.

“Can Paul help you?”

“I actually wanted to spend some time with you before you go back to your dads.”

I smiled. “Okay.”

“Just wash the lettuce and cucumbers for me please.”

I washed the vegetables in silence while mom prepared the meat. She was bustling about in the kitchen going back and forth between the fridge and the stove.

“Are you excited to start your senior year of school?” mom asked.

“Not really. I feel like it’s still the same just different teachers and slightly different subjects.”

“It’ll feel a lot different when you’re about to go to college.”

“I wonder if Paul is excited for college.”

“I doubt that,” mom said, sadly.

“Why do you say that?”

“His only options were go to school or get a job if he didn’t go to school.”

I laughed. “He is the laziest person I know.”

Mom also laughed. “At least he’s in school.”

Elizabeth came skipping into the kitchen and rummaged through the fridge, looking for a snack. She didn’t find anything there, so she went to the cupboards where she found a snack size bag of chips. Elizabeth was my youngest half-sister. My mother and Todd wanted more kids but after Elizabeth, my mom was no longer able to have kids.

“Don’t eat too many snacks otherwise you won’t be hungry for dinner,” my mother scolded Elizabeth.

“I’m just having one bag,” Elizabeth replied. For being an eleven-year-old she was very sassy.

“Just understand that if you’re full by the time dinner comes you won’t be able to eat later.” My mom put one hand on her hip and used the other hand to point at the bag of chips.

Elizabeth glanced at the bag of chips then at my mom. “How long until dinner is ready?”

“A couple hours.”

Elizabeth shrugged and opened the bag of chips. “I’ll be hungry again in two hours,” she said, walking out.

A couple hours later as promised, dinner was ready. Todd had grilled up the steaks, mom and I had made the mashed potatoes and veggies. Since it was such a nice day, mom and Todd wanted to eat outside in the backyard. Everyone laughed and talked while I just sat there and smiled when needed. Todd asked if my brother was ready to start college next week. The lucky jerk got to start school a week later than I did. Paul replied with a gruntled “yeah” and that was that.

Todd asked if I was excited to be in my last year of high school. I shrugged and told him I was just glad it was my last year. High school was pointless. So, I thought.

After dinner, Paul and Elizabeth were told they had to help clean up since I helped cook. I was relieved and ran upstairs to shower right away so I didn’t get pulled in to do work. Paul wasn’t thrilled about having to do anything while Elizabeth didn’t seem to mind. All she had to do was help carry dishes into the kitchen.

I locked myself in my room for the rest of the night. I read right before bed and had fallen asleep early. That night I was actually able to sleep without having any nightmares of the attack. I did have a strange dream but nothing as scary as the nightmare from the previous night.

I was sitting in a church in the middle of what seemed like a sermon but as I looked around the room I noticed people crying and everyone wearing black. In particular, I remember one older woman who had to be in her seventies wearing a black fascinator with a veil and every few minutes she would dab her eyes with tissue.

Todd, Paul, Elizabeth, and my mother were all with me and we listened to the pastor give his sermon. Next thing I remember is standing in line behind Paul to pay respects to whoever was lying in the coffin. When it came to my turn everything around me began to blur and everything had faded into nothingness.

Monday came faster than I wanted. I was in the car with Todd and Elizabeth heading to school. My stomach clenched as I noticed the familiar street we were about to turn on to pull into the drop off zone at my school. I grabbed my backpack and swung the car door open.

Todd wished me a good day before getting out. I thanked him for the ride and told Elizabeth to have a good first day of school. I headed straight for the main doors brushing past everyone in the hall. I went straight to my locker. Sydney was already waiting for me.

“I’m glad to see you made it home alive. You never texted me,” she said.

 “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

I opened my locker to put my lunch away. By the end of the day, the locker would be filled with books.

“Did Paul pick you up?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I lied. I didn’t want to tell her about Grayson because that meant I would have to tell her about the attack which I never wanted to talk about ever again.

“What’s your first class?”

I pulled my schedule out of my notebook to hand it to her. At orientation, I didn’t bother to look at my schedule.

“Spanish. Yuck." She was thoroughly disgusted. "That’s what you have for your first class?”

“Apparently. What room?”

“Eighty-eight.” We started heading in the direction of the eighty’s hall. “What do you have?”

Sydney pulled out her schedule. “Physics.” She scrunched her nose in disgust. “That’s worse than Spanish.”

I laughed. “It’s not that bad.”

“Not to you. You don’t have to take physics.”

“No, but you chose physics.”

Sydney rolled her eyes and was about to reply with some snide remark but instead she yelled out, “Jules, watch out!”

I had ran into someone, the force knocking be back. I lost my balance and had almost fallen back, but someone caught before I could hit the floor. I looked up to see who had caught me. I was more than surprised when I found that Grayson had been the one to catch me.

To say the least, I was shocked. I knew that he was in school, but I didn’t know he was in high school. Or that he went to my school.  I had never seen him before and I couldn’t believe that he was here now.

He stared at me with wide eyes but said nothing. I had forgotten for a moment that Sydney was there. I quickly recovered and mumbled a “thanks.”

Grayson nodded then took off. I spun around and watched him walk down the hall away from me. It hurt that he barely acknowledged me but why should he? We weren’t friends. He just happened to save my life once.

“Who is that cutie patootie?”

I scowled at her. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.” I rushed off to Spanish.

The rest of the day was going pretty smooth. I didn’t run into Grayson and I hung out with Sydney and few of my other friends for break. It wasn’t until fourth period when I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I took a random seat in AP English Lit and waited for the final bell to ring. People started filing into the room one by one, taking one seat after the other. Ten seconds before the final bell was supposed to ring, Grayson walked in. He glanced at the empty seat next to me. He started walking down the aisle to take the open seat but surprised me when he kept walking past it.

Grayson took a seat open in the back next to a few of the more popular girls at the school. I frowned. I should’ve known that he didn’t want to be friends with me or have anything to do with me at all. I laid my head down on the desk as I waited for Mrs. Alvarez to start the class. She was brutal from what I heard but as she was getting closer and closer to retirement, she was letting up just a bit.   

“Don’t get excited, children. Where you’re sitting is not your permanent seat. Everyone stand up and go to the back of the classroom.”

There were some grumbles and groans from around the room, but everyone did as she said. I grabbed my belongings and stood at one end of the room while Grayson stood at the other end, trying to get as far away from me as possible. Mrs. Alvarez began calling off everyone’s names and pointed to their new assigned seats. It seemed that she was going in order of last name.

“Grayson Mitchell,” she called out, pointing to an empty desk.

My stomach dropped.

Oh no.

I prayed to god or whoever was up there in heaven that there was someone in this room whose last name started with an M and the second later had anything before an O. Or the ground could open up and swallow me whole.

“Juliet Moreno.” Mrs. Alvarez pointed to the seat to the right of Grayson.

Just what I needed.

Reluctantly, I headed for the seat next to Grayson. I put my stuff down on the desk while Mrs. Alvarez finished calling off everyones names. I glanced over at Grayson to see that he was staring straight ahead with a blank expression.

He moved his jaw in agitation. I’m guessing because of me. Grayson sensed that I was staring at him as he turned his attention to me.

I gave a small smile as he continues to stare at me, expressionless.

This was going to be a long year.