Word Count: 2467

  Novembris 5

  It's the beginning of the third month of school.

  Hibernal has finally taken hold, and though the world is cold, there are days when I hardly notice the bite of the icy air. Most things, I've realized, now only seem to leave me feeling numb.

  Only six more months until school lets out which means that there's only that many more months until this fa?ade ends. My feelings about it ebb like tidal waves.

  Since our moment on the balcony, Lucas has been following me around like a dog and every morning after, I've had to get used to a new routine. Before the sun comes up, we both take a trip to the baseball locker rooms.

  His warm hands trail up my arms as my back pushes up against the cool tiles of the wall each day. He shadows over me, trumping my height by seven inches, a difference I never really noticed before.

  Soft lips fall on my neck and move up to my cheek before trailing to my lips. As he draws closer, soft strands of jet-bck hair brush against my face, intertwining lightly with the brown of my own. And every once in a while he looks up and offers me a tender smile, pink dusting his cheeks.

  His passionate gaze makes me feel like a liar and I know too well that I don't deserve his affection. But at the very least... he's happy.

  Feeling a buzz in my pocket, I gently push him away from me.

  "What's wrong?" Lucas asks, raising his hand to his mouth. He turns to look out the window and sees the coming sun. "We don't have much time..."

  I mumble to myself as I stare at my pager.

  "Damien?"

  "I have to go," I say hastily.

  He backs away and I straighten up my clothes. But before I leave, he pces a warm hand on my cheek.

  "I'll see you after css," Lucas says with a smile.

  I muster a smile back before power-walking out of the locker rooms. Mother's message read 'Urgent' with a code typed after it. 'B5TO9L '

  I inhale sharply once I finally transte it.

  A suitor has been found for me. The pn is finally in full motion.

  'So now it's certain. I'm due to be married by the end of this school year. Soon, Father can finally rest,' my mind whispers. 'And I'm gd! When I'm gone Lucas can marry a girl who truly deserves him. Maybe she'll be able to love in a way that I can't.'

  As I walk back to the dorms I look to the horizon and watch the morning sun peek out from behind the rooftops.

  Ah... but it seems that I failed to mention one thing in my initial thoughts.

  'So, this is it.'

  After my marriage, I will be given to another man and find myself dormant within a four-walled mansion once again. Except this time I'll surely remain there until my dying day.

  I pause, letting the courtyard grass brush against my legs. The morning frost has chilled the once-warm bdes, but the cold feels strangely comforting.

  'My dying day...'

  My face dampens suddenly and it's such a peculiar feeling that I touch my cheek to investigate.

  'Ah...' I ponder.

  'I'm crying.'

  As Lucas had forewarned, the sun is beginning to rise. I unexpectedly find myself overwhelmed by a coming orange-blue sky lit up by the familiar celestial body.

  Its light touches the trees, the cold bdes of grass, the squirrels hibernating in concealed bark, and even me, providing soce to all its living creatures. Almost as if saying,

  'The hard part is over.'

  Daylight spills over my body tracing my face with a soft touch and I watch as the sun smiles at me.

  But suddenly, an overwhelming urge to scream rises within my body as the welcoming daylight wraps me in its gentle embrace. But I don't yell aloud, I only yell within the confines of my heart.

  'Don't look at me that way. Don't warm my face and tell me that there's hope...'

  I clutch my shirt the desperate way I used to do as a child.

  ' I've spent years hoping and begging and dreaming! And when I finally made it out here, I found that there's nothing in this world meant for me! I have no friends! I have no future! I'm no longer the woman I used to be nor will I ever be a man. There's no room for my kind. Every day, every single one, is a bomb in disguise because one slip of the tongue will get me sent to death row. So, don't draw me to tears so easily. Don't be so unfair to me, sun...'

  Nonetheless, the stoic luminary star shines and with a final gnce, I open the institution's door and disappear behind the frame.

  ~

  Csses go by, the teachers' words sounding muffled as I stare outside of the frosted window at the beautiful courtyard. It'll be encased in ice until Vernal brings its first thaw. I spend the entire day in that haze.

  When I leave my final css for the day, as usual I find Lucas leaning on the door's frame.

  A week after the social, the baseball team praised me for "saving" Lucas. Apparently since then, he's been performing at a rate that rivaled long-held school records. Because of that they don't mind as much that he spends half of his free-time with me and the other half with them, but thinking about me.

  Yet, I wouldn't mind if we cut our time together into another half.

  Every word, every stutter, every blush, it buries another tiny dagger deeper into my skin knowing that the day will come when I eventually break his heart.

  We make it to my dorm room and he watches as I unlock it with my key. Wasting no time, I sit at my desk at the far end of the room and begin writing down homework answers. As I calcute the numbers on the page, Lucas sits on the chair beside me with his own work but peering over my shoulder. With both my mornings and nights spent with my raven-haired cssmate, it has been getting harder and harder to perform in school.

  Plus with night coming faster in these cold months, I only had two hours before the sun would go down forcing me to break for the day.

  "Your handwriting is beautiful... It's really precise," he mutters.

  I hand him one of my fake smiles which he glows at.

  "A-also! You're pretty smart, Damien. Maybe we should study together sometime...?" He starts and trails off as he rubs the tips of his fingers sheepishly with his other hand.

  I nod silently and he grins once again, face glowing with red tinted over his cheeks, "...Cool."

  From his top bunk on the other side of the room, Finn watches with a grimace. Pretending to yak, my roommate puts his brown paper lunch bag over his mouth and dramatically dies on his mattress.

  Lucas ignores him.

  Sebastian looks at us from his bed, taking a break from his third rereading of the book that I leant him, to show his annoyance with a targeted gnce.

  Lucas also ignores him.

  Deep in my Calculus homework, I suddenly become aware of his hand lingering just above my shoulder, hesitant to rest there as if weighing how far he could go without inviting suspicion.

  Inwardly, I sigh.

  I already knew that he was only getting so risky because I cut our 'meeting' short this morning.

  Finn watches the scene with gentle amusement.

  "So you do have a thing for him," he sings, habitually twirling the piece of hair that often falls in front of his eyes.

  Lucas immediately pulls his hand back.

  "What do you mean?" he scowls at Finn.

  The silver-haired boy rolls around on his bed casually, kicking his feet up on the frame like he was swaying on a hammock.

  "It's obvious that you're lovers. What? Do you steal kisses in the bathrooms, hm? Or maybe you take romantic midnight strolls?"

  Lucas' face blooms with the reddest flush I've ever seen, yet I watch their exchange with calm indifference.

  Given that I've lived with Finn for three months now, I can tell when he's being serious or not and this is not one of his serious moments. But, the words seem to frazzle Lucas deeply and that's when I begin to get a little nervous that he might say something that he's not supposed to say.

  I pce a hand on his arm in an attempt to comfort him but at my touch he shoots up from the desk involuntarily.

  Everyone's eyes in the room focus on him.

  "Er..." he mumbles.

  Seemingly at a loss for words he manages an awkward wave to me, before shuffling out of the room.

  Finn watches the scene with a mixed look of utter disbelief and glee on his face before wasting no time getting down from his bunk. He crosses the room in record time with the express purpose of bugging me.

  "I was just joking! Are you two really...?"

  I don't respond.

  "Come on, Damien! I can't tell if that's you avoiding the question or you ignoring me as usual," he prods my cheek with his finger. "Hey, hey we're roommates right? And roomies are kind of like friends. Mhm, and friends tell each other everything! So, that means that you should tell m-"

  "We're not friends, Finn," I say coldly.

  His blue eyes meet mine as if ready to fight but after gazing into my tired expression, he quiets down. And for once in his life takes the cue to leave.

  Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he huffs, "Geez... it was just a question..."

  It was in character for Damien to give the cold shoulder to Finn, but maybe that's not the only reason that I did it. Maybe it was because he was throwing around that term I care so much for, so carelessly.

  Seemingly without warning, tears begin to escape from my eyes once again. They drop and pool on my workbook and I have to wipe them away before any more damage can be done.

  'Urgh...My body is such a nuisance...'

  Why am I so torn up about this? It was stupid to think that I could find a life-long friend in the first pce. I had forgotten my role and was sending meaningless pleas up to the skies when I should've known that no matter where he was, Father would be the man he always has been, emotionless.

  'It was careless. It was futile. It was worthless. It was...'

  As I wait for my workbook to dry, I cast a thoughtless gnce to my right and see Sebastian looking back at me.

  In a sudden fre of embarrassment, I wipe my face hoping he didn't catch any remaining glimmers of tears at the corners of my eyes. When I finish, I peek back to my side and see that he's returned to reading the book.

  Finn has gotten over my dismissal and seems to be taking a long nap on his bed. As I gingerly open my book to make sure the water has evaporated, I feel a buzz in my pants.

  I slide the pager out of my pocket and see that Mother has contacted me once again.

  It takes me five minutes to transte the array of letters and numbers into a lexicon that makes sense. It takes me another five minutes to check my work. And it takes me ten minutes to check it again as a nauseous feeling begins to form in my stomach.

  As I'm reading the message for the fifth time, I hear a knock on the door. Sebastian stands up to turn the knob and once he does the person I feared seeing most appears from behind the frame.

  "Damien!" a gruff voice bellows.

  I feel sickly.

  "How big are your sister's jugs? And is she hot, like magazine hot!? Arghh, I can't believe my brother-in-w is going to be a string bean like you!"

  "Jugs...?" Sebastian says as he grimaces.

  Finn suddenly sits up as if he's been raised from the dead.

  "Why are there more guys, hm? You've been getting busy, Damien," he teases as he watches the event from under his sheets.

  The knot in my stomach furls and unfurls as I sit in bed scrunching my uniform's pants.

  'Your suitor will be Leonard Montgomery.'

  That's what the message had said.

  The one I decoded several times praying that there was a misspelling or mistake somewhere. I assume he learned the news from his parents at the same time and immediately came running here.

  Leonard looks towards me with a wide grin. His hair had been retouched recently so red now filled every follicle. It almost feels as though he's grown taller since our first meeting, but it's unmistakable that he is still the same brute who attempted to intimidate me on my first day.

  And although I wasn't afraid then, nor am I afraid now, it is strikingly obvious that our personalities just don't mix.

  "Oi, Damien!" Leonard yells stomping over.

  He picks me up from my bed like paper and shakes me like a doll. Sebastian stares on in shock while Finn rolls over in his bed ughing so hard that he might die.

  "What! Does! She! Look! Like!"

  "And her butt!! How thick is her..."

  The buzzing in my ears grows more intense.

  'So is this what it's like to suffer? '

  ~

  "So your sister is getting married?" Finn says, handing me an ice pack for my headache.

  After a long, fruitless, thirty-minute effort from Leonard to learn anything about his future bride's body, he finally left to serve his after-school detention. But he would surely be back in the coming days.

  "I guess," I mutter.

  "You get used to it. I've had a bunch of sisters get married already. The ceremonies are always boring."

  "Uh huh..."

  I wince as I move my head onto my pillow.

  Finn has stopped talking.

  When I open my eyes to look back at him, I find that he's staring at my face in silence. We lock gazes for a few seconds longer than we normally do.

  "What?" I mumble.

  "...Nothing."

  I inwardly roll my eyes at his cryptic expression before turning on my side in an attempt to sleep.

  As Camille rests in her bed, the boys on the other-side of the moonlit room share a conversation.

  "Hey," Finn whispers.

  "What," Sebastian replies, nightlight on as he works on his essay.

  "..."

  "...Is Damien gay?"

  "Nope."

  Silence envelops both of them.

  "..."

  "...Is Damien a girl?"

  "Yep."

  "..."

  "..."

  "Huh."