Chased by Bad Boys

You know that moment when you feel like nothing could go worse, chest feeling heavy with the feeling of a golf ball being stuck in your throat as if any moment you would start pouring your heart out, and yet no emotions, no tears, no anger or any other feelings coming up? That numbness was exactly how I was feeling, until I screamed out of frustration and lifted my head up to try to absorb the view of Lake Michigan ahead of me. Key word here being “try”, since all I could see were three pairs of different eye colors looking back at me. Let me tell you these eyes showed no sign of amusement of any sort; if anything they looked filled with relief, for only a brief moment, because after that came a tornado of anger, sadness, sympathy, fear and some other feelings that I could not decipher. What followed is what surprised me the most, while two of them sighed the other one, the tallest and most eye catching one, but also my long time bully, Aziel whispered, “Nefi, thank God you are okay”. If he was not so close to me, I would have missed it, the way he whispered it with some much affection. Known as Nefertari Monifa Afifi, only my close ones call me Nefi and hearing it come from someone who supposedly hated me brought me to another shock level. I tried to recover from the shock by getting up and trying to stand tall and proud, but failed miserably as my knees wobbled a bit. Standing at five foot two, I had to raise my head even higher to face them while regaining my composure. Confusion is what I felt the most as I stared at the three handsome boys. But before I go into the details of the owners of those intense eyes or the emotions dancing around in the air, let me explain my situation. Up until now, I never really felt like I belonged to anything and above all wanted. Don’t get me wrong, with my dark hair, round amber colored eyes, straight nose and  heart shaped lips, I knew I was not unattractive but my short past made it hard for me to believe in anybody. Having been born and raised in a rather wealthy family implied having a lot of people around you, yet I craved for the warmth of a family. I had quick glimpse of such happiness but things went haywire quite quickly. Being the last child and only daughter of Cepos, my father and Aneksi, my mother, I enjoyed a beautiful childhood up to the age of five, at least from the little bits I can remember. The memories are all filled with laughter, love of my parents and my two brothers Zosar and Aboyami. Shortly after my fifth birthday, during a traumatic experience, that I cannot recall or maybe that unconsciously I choose not to, I lost my young brother Aboyami. He was only seven at the time and while everybody understood that I was not to be blamed, my elder brother, who was barely ten, drifted apart from me and became distant. At one point he directly blamed me for the loss of our brother. While he never did anything to hurt me physically, his actions spoke of the hate he had for me. He constantly ignored me, mocked me for my shortcomings throughout the years. My parents tried their best to bring us back together. But this changed when my father suddenly died in a car accident when I was ten. The atmosphere at home changed drastically from there on. Being the closest to my dad, Zosar took it really hard. Since he was having such a difficult time in coping with the loss, he left our family home in Los Altos only a year later to go to a boarding school in order to then pursue his medicine studies. My mother was never the same after that. At the beginning she felt lost and would shut herself in her room. While during the day she kept a happy face, at night she would cry and sometimes so loud and intensely that I could hear her and not be able to sleep. The maids and workers around the house distracted me during the day but at night when they were all gone, it got really lonely. Everyday I did my best to cheer her up and entertain her but I believe she felt abandoned by all the men in her life and there was nothing I could do to make that go away. However, two years after the death of my father, my mother slowly started coming back to herself. She started slowly laughing at my silly jokes and that first time she laughed, it made me so happy and warm. I felt like flower finally bloomed in a drought affected land. Little did I know that this happiness would only be short lived. At that time, this was more than enough for me as I was having my own battles to fight. I had just started my first year at the Anderson Junior High School. Even though everybody started together at the same time, I quickly found myself alone. It seemed that nobody would dare to be my friends. I had started, even though my family issues, with a bubbly and happy mood. The first few girls I got to know in the first days I avoided me like the plague and I eventually gave up. After couple of months, I cornered one of them and begged while crying asking why they were acting as such and I finally got my answer. They were warned to not be friends with me. I was so surprised and did not understand. I was new to the school and so was everybody. Nobody knew me and yet someone already targeted me. With some more begging, I found out that this warning came from the popular and richest boy of our class, owner of the pair of baby blue eyes currently staring at me, Aziel Cowen.