Chapter 9: 9. They Say 'Freaks Flock Together'

9. They Say ‘Freaks Flock Together’

The Blacks weren’t on a screaming match this morning.

I knew, because a shaft sunlight had sneaked through my bedroom blinds and started to disturb my sleep. The Blacks usually never wait until the sun fully rise before they decided that they couldn’t stand each other. Ugh. Now that I was almost awake, I became aware of all the aches on my body. My back felt numb, and my shoulders were in anguish. I tried to reach for my phone, which I usually put under my pillow, but as my hand groped the hard, cold tiles, I found neither phone or pillow.

When I opened my eyes, I was head on with Ryder’s horrified face above me.

Ryder. Black. Above me.

Sleeping on my bed, slammed against my pillow, hugging poor Mr. Teddy #44.

Ryder. Black.

No.

Black Ryder.

“Stars my darned!” I screamed, and in that exact moment, Ryder screamed, too.

“My bed you are on!” I flailed my index finger to him.

“I’m in your room!” he flailed his index finger back to me.

“My room you’re sleeping in!”

“You’re sleeping on the fucking floor!”

The aches!

“I’m sleeping on the floor!” my hands grappled either side of my head.

“Did we have sex and I accidentally knock you off your bed?!” Ryder asked me.

I only stared at him blankly, although I was pretty sure that my jaw was unhinged.

“No-no, we didn’t,” Ryder said after he checked the lower part of himself, and then, as if remembering something, he massaged his temple. “My head… it’s the hangover.”

I massaged my shoulders, too. “My shoulders… it’s the floor.”

“What the fuck happened here?!”

My eyes jerked open. Oh, the memories! It all flushed back into my mind, and I couldn’t help giggling at the intermittent flashes of Ryder acting like a little child and nearly peeing on my mother’s flower pots. “You were drunk last night.”

Ryder looked like he had just committed a big scandal. “Was I that drunk?”

“You nearly peed on my mother’s flower pots.”

“Fuck,” he buried his reddened face on his hands.

I was sitting, and I looked at Ryder wistfully. What would I give to lay my back on the springy mattress and not have to feel the cold, hard tiles on my skin. I was quite susceptible to cold, but morning breeze was something of an entirely different entity. Before long, I could already feel my teeth crackle.

“Can I sit on the bed?” I said.

Ryder’s eyes never left me as he shifted a little to the edge of the bed.

I jumped on the bed and almost immediately the warmth soothed my freezing behind. I was about to request Ryder to let go of my blanket, but he was already putting the blanket all around my body.

“It’s a cold morning here,” he said.

I could only nod, all I could care about at the moment was engulfing my body with heat. Since Ryder had been sleeping on my bed, his body warmth lingered on the sheets. The only thing I would complain about was the slight smell of alcohol on it.

“April?!” my mother bellowed from below, and almost immediately, Ryder bolted to the bathroom. I was still amazed at the amount of seconds it took him to get off the bed, run and close the bathroom door (it was 3,05 seconds) when my mother started to shout my name again. “April, are you up?”

“Yes, mum! Don’t get inside my room!”

“Why would I get inside your room? Breakfast’s ready in ten, okay? It’s Strawberry day, sweetie!”

The fact that it was strawberry day had made me giddy. I was thinking of all the things I could eat today. Strawberry juice, strawberry strudels, strawberry yoghurt. So many possibilities!

The bathroom door creaked open, and Ryder’s head poked from inside.

“Hey,” Ryder looked at me, his face was still red and filled with vast amount of horror. “Did I.. Did I do something… inappropiate to you?”

I thought about it. “You were pretty out of control last night.”

That seemed to give him a slight heart attack. “Was I?”

I nodded.

“Was I.. Uh, was I being creepy?”

“Not really…” I contemplated. “I mean, you were actually pretty sweet last night.”

“I’m really confused, and my head feels like it’s about to explode. So answer this clearly, was there any harassment last night?” before I was about to answer to his question, Ryder snapped his finger. “And don’t answer with cryptic statements like that. Just nod or shake your head.”

I shook my head.

“So nothing happened between us?”

I nodded.

“Is that a ‘yes, nothing happened’, or ‘yes, something happened’ kind of nod?”

“Of course things happened,” I said, at this point, my body temperature had reached the comfortable warmth. “You were throwing rocks at my window and then you asked me if it’s okay for you to stay in my bedroom, and I agreed. And then you almost peed on my mother’s flower pots and then I gave you that t-shirt and then you started to snore really, really loud.”

At this point, the horror in Ryder’s face transformed into chagrin. “Oh, really?”

I giggled again because I remembered the way he almost always messed up his sentence structure. “Yes, you’re a five year old when you’re drunk. It’s really funny. I almost gave you a goodnight kiss on the forehead because I was afraid that you’d be having nightmares about boogeyman, but then you smelled bad and you probably contracted Andrew’s skin disease, so I decided not to risk it. And then-“

“Stop,” Ryder cut me off. “Okay? Stop talking. I’ve embarrassed myself enough for a lifetime.”

I clamped my mouth shut.

Ryder checked inside my bathroom again, and he surreptitiously lifted his arm so that he could smell his armpit. “Can I.. Can I borrow your bathroom?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

I’d never wager for Ryder to be the kind of guy who’d take a long time in the showers, but he did. I kept pacing around my room, silently hoping that he’d come out from the bathroom quick. It had taken him more than ten minutes and I was afraid that my mother would get inside my room because I was late for breakfast.

I was never late for breakfast.

Finally, though, after twelve and a half minute of spending la-la time inside my bathroom, Ryder got out. The smell of my soap and shampoo immediately filled my room, and I sighed in relief when I saw Ryder getting out fully clothed. Without the help of wax, Ryder’s raven locks reached his eyes and the end of his nape. His face was clear and bright now, unlike last night where it was all flushed and red. “I’m sorry about the vomit.”

“It’s okay.”

“Is this really Quentin’s shirt?”

I nodded.

Ryder’s face contorted. “Ugh.”

“He will probably think the same way of you when he finds out you’re wearing his clothes.”

Ryder sized me up. “You’re actually serious about it. Thanks for the reminder. Glad to see that the hatred’s mutual.”

I smiled at him. “No problem.”

Right after that, however, my trustworthy alarm started to chime.

“What do you mean, you locked him out?!” I could hear Mrs. Black screaming to her husband. “He’s just a kid, Gregory! Why are you locking him out?!”

“Can’t you see how much of a monster he’s become, Mary?”

“I can’t believe you! I can’t believe you!”

I nearly commented at how stressed Mrs. Black was, because she started to double everything that she said, but luckily I managed to stop myself.

“He needs to be taught a lesson or two. Mary-Mary, listen to me-“

As Ryder’s parents bickered about him, we stood by and stayed silent. I was afraid to raise my head and look at him. My connection to the linguistic part of my brain had been cut off so that I couldn’t even talk. Besides, what there was to talk about? I couldn’t possibly discuss the Blacks’ battles with him like I did with my parents.

“Is that what you hear daily?” he was the first to speak.

“No. Usually, there will be you on the mix.”

I could hear him chuckle. “I never thought that the walls would be so thin.”

The Blacks had picked up their voices again, this time they were screaming about how Mr. Black was such an ignorant boyfriend. I didn’t understand how their fights could go way back to their dating years, but I guess those kind of things happened when you had spent a lot of time together.

Ryder walked to me, and before I could react or before Yoda could take over, he put his hands on either side of my face, his calloused fingers curling behind my ears. All of a sudden, my whole body melted, and I felt out of the world. The only thing that I could see was Ryder’s actually very brown eyes and if I didn’t feel his hands on my ears, I was pretty sure I’d dissolve to the floor.

“You really shouldn’t listen,” he whispered. “It’s our family problems, anyway, not yours.”

I put a great effort to answer affirmatively, but the most that I could do was a series of whimpers. His touch was much too unexpected, and the way he chastised me so gently was not something that I had anticipated. I tried closing my eyes, because I couldn’t stand the beatings that my heart suddenly took with every seconds I stared at him. It felt as if he had taken away my brain when he touched me.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the case, because when his hands left me, I slowly regained the normalcy of my body. “I-I’m sorry.”

“Likewise,” he said. He walked past me, to the window. He opened my window and stared down. Before long, he had already jumped off the window. The shriek was caught in between my throat, because I hadn’t heard the sound of him crashing against the ground.

I ran to the window and looked at him climbing down the walls. He looked like a scene straight out from Mission Impossible, only he was taller than Tom Cruise and much younger.

And much better looking, in my opinion.

My cheeks heated as the last thought slipped inside my mind. Ryder was still in full concentration, before then he finally let go of his grip and landed safely on the ground. He looked up to me, smirked at his own accomplishment, before then he knocked on the door to his house.

The rest of the morning was quiet afterwards.

-

-

-

When I descended downstairs, the whole family had finished their breakfast. My mother served me strawberry milk with fruits and cereal inside and I immediately gobbled it down.

“So what took you so long?” Quentin asked. His eyes were still bleary and he didn’t look like he’d gotten a good night sleep.

“My defecation took longer than expected,” I fibbed.

“Not in the table, April,” My mother reminded me. “Quentin, are you okay? You look really tired.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” my brother rubbed his eyes. “I kept having nightmares about Ryder trying to eat me whole, and I smelled something horrible from just outside my room.”

My mother’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yes! It was a horrible stench, indeed! I hadn’t had the time to clean it up, but there’s a repulsive vomit at the trash bin.”

I nearly choked on my fruits.

“Ugh, dad, is it you?”

Dad only flipped after the newspaper pages lazily. “Nope. Maybe it’s your mother.”

“Mom?”

“What? No! I don’t drink and puke!”

They kept throwing each other accusations, and I kept choking on my food, until finally my mother decided that it was not right for me to put myself in danger of asphyxiation. She took away my cereal and gave me water instead. “No protest, April. Maybe you can’t stomach fruits so early in the morning yet.”

I said goodbye to my perfect Strawberry day as I chugged down the water.

“Anyway, did I or didn’t I hear Ryder’s voice in this morning’s battle?” my mom opened the morning topic for us Hales.

“I didn’t hear him at all,” Quentin said. “Mr. Black said that he locked him out last night, right?”

“Oh my God, what a twist!” my mom actually looked excited about this. “My parents locked me out from my house years ago because I didn’t get home until three o’clock. Since I was feeling bold and outrageous-“

“And quite drunk,” my father added.

“And quite drunk,” my mother repeated with a lascivious smile. “I walked to your father’s house asked him to let me sleep in in his room. It’s the start of our romance, actually,” she shared a wink with my father, who growled at her.

Quentin stared at them in disgust. “That’s heartwarming, but I don’t want to hear how my parents hooked up.”

“And did you hear what Gregory said about their dating years?” my father chimed in.

“G-Guys!” I splutter water as I tried to gain their attention, but I couldn’t careless. Ryder’s forlorn eyes was bored deep in the back of my head, and his plea still rang inside my ears. “Can we change the topic?”

My family looked at me like I was mad.

“Why, April?” my mother asked.

“Um,” I couldn’t say that because Ryder asked me to. I didn’t want to explain how I suddenly was on the speaking terms with him. “It’s.. It’s boring right? I mean, right now the topic’s boring and I much rather talk about…” my eyes shifted to my father’s newspaper. “The children in India.”

Quentin’s raised an eyebrow. “April. The condition in third world countries make you bawl.”

“Maybe I want to bawl today.”

“Early in the morning?”

I nodded as convincingly as I could. “Early in the morning.’

“Alright, then,” Dad slapped the newspaper excitedly. He was very passionate about journalism and news and whatnot, which was why the fragile state of my conscience often discouraged him. “Ready, April? I’ll read the article and then we’ll discuss about this before you go to school.”

Needless to say, in about five minutes in the article, I was in no state to talk or listen, because my whole nose was filled with snot and my eyes were too blurry with tears.

Quentin never stopped teasing me about it in the whole trip to school, and I still had difficulty to breathe even after the second period. But then when I glimpsed Ryder’s face at the hallways and he gave me a slight-smile as he saw me, I felt a little better than before.

“Thank you for last night, Neighbor,” Ryder whispered to me as we bypassed each other. My hackles rose as his breath fanned my ears, but when I turned around to see him, he was already walking away easily. People gave him way by backing away from his tracks, and he walked like he was alone in the whole room, without the need to swerve even on the slightest bit so that he wouldn’t run into people.

That was when I realized it.

I might be the girl who would need to shove through people and get jostled all the time whenever I attempt to reach my locker, but me and Ryder, as different as we could be, was very much alike in terms of unsociability.

We were the freaks of this school.

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Thank you soo much for the support that you’ve given me the last chapter. I still can’t believe at how nice you are all to me, to my imperfect story, to my imperfect english. I’m updating fast to show my gratitude. Thank you so much everyone, I love you all, really. :)

p.s: before you say racist to April's comment on how Third world countries make her bawl, I myself live in the third world country, and believe me, it's really not all that bad as those news shows. Like, seriously, we're not living in the middle of jungle without technology.  It was just to show how very wrapped into her own world her character is. I'm not the kind of author who puts herself too much on her main character. Again, me, the author, demonicblackcat, is not April, and what I believe in is not what my characters believe in. There has to be that distinction.