Chapter Ten: Gun-Metal Blue
Sophia Crawford

"I'm so glad your grandmother agreed that you can come to the party next week Friday." Ana chirps happily, hooking her arm through mine like she always did when she led me to my locker. "It would've been boring if you couldn't come."

"About that..." I suck on my lower lip. "She wants to meet you and Cole first." I open my locker to grab the things I need for my classes today. "She wants to know who my new friends are, so she invited you over for dinner on Thursday, next week."

"That's so kind!" Ana says. "Cole and I would definitely be there on Thursday."

"Yeah," Cole agrees, nodding. "I'll definitely be there too. My dad won't have a problem."

I take the books I would need and prop them into my schoolbag. "I'm thinking of coming to the pep rally too." I tell them, zipping my bag closed once I have collected all the books I would need for the day. "I want to show my support toward the football team."

"Ooh yes!" Ana shrieks. "We can get snacks, too!"

"It's a pep rally, love." Cole says. "Not the movies."

"Yes," Ana nods, "but I cannot support you if I haven't had a snack!"

Cole chuckles, shaking his head at his girlfriend.

Ana tugs on my arm and I look at her. "What's wrong?" I ask when I saw that she looked quite wary. Her eyes were slightly narrowed and she had her chin slightly lifted as if she was trying to look over my shoulder at something.

"Don't panic..." She says.

I immediately start to panic as soon as the words left her mouth. Usually when someone says 'don't panic', it's something you definitely need to panic about, and that 'something' she mentioned was something behind me.

I don't dare turn around.

"I am panicking now." I tell her, the words coming out in a slight whisper.

"River is walking towards us." She whispers. "Well, toward you actually."

I turn to look at Cole to see if Ana's pulling my leg, but he just nods. "He is." He confirms. "But don't worry," he says, "he doesn't look angry at all."

"That doesn't make it okay!" I shout but lower my voice again. "What do you think he wants with me?" My gaze darts quickly between the two of them when I felt my heartbeat start to increase.

Ana and Cole both shrug.

"I guess you'll find out." Ana says, smiling evilly.

"We'll leave you to it then." Cole says and starts to back away with Ana.

I shake my head repeatedly. "Don't leave me alone with him!"

"Talk to him." Ana mouths, and winks.

River stops directly in front of me, obscuring my view from Ana and Cole.

I couldn't help but feel a sense of dread just looking at him and his blue eyes. I already have two subjects with him and we went to support group together on Mondays, and now I had to talk to him in the hallways too?

I also had a good feeling that he wasn't here to ask me how my weekend was, making me panic even more because I didn't know what he wanted.

"What do you want, River?"

"Do you greet everyone like that?"

His blue eyes were always hard, almost like glacial ice, but today they were softer. His eyelashes graze his cheek when he blinks not once, but twice, as if my question that sounded a little too rude, even for me, appalled him. I was still angry at him for throwing my notes in the trash like my hard work didn't mean anything, so my rudeness didn't come from nowhere, exactly.

"I only greet people who have shown me nothing but resentment and anger toward me like this." I tell him, feeling pain in my jaw from clenching it. "So I'm sorry if I haven't greeted you with the same buoyancy you have this morning because I am used to receiving nothing but death glares from you."

If Daniel would see me now, he would be disappointed in me for being rude, but if only he knew how much River actually hated me, and for what? Bumping into him on my first day?

"Hmm, buoyancy?" He flashes a familiar smirk my way-the one I knew so damn well. "I didn't know a girl like you knew such big words." He was so amused, too, so amused that his eyes actually crinkled around the corners.

"What the hell does that mean?" I ask, flashing him an austere frown. "A girl like you?"

"Nothing..." He throws his hands up in surrender. "I just didn't know that you knew such big words. That's all. There's no need to bite my head off."

I sigh, deeply. "I'm going to ask one more time. What do you want, River?"

"We have to work on the assignment together or have you forgotten?"

I place my hand on my hip, looking at him with squinted eyes. "Where did this sudden interest in wanting to do the assignment with me come from?" I ask him. "Because yesterday you didn't want anything to do with the assignment, but today you suddenly want to do it with me?"

He opens his mouth to say something, or at least I thought he was, but he pops the gum in his mouth instead and has the damn nerve to smile too.

I don't know how he did it but when he smiled, it brought instant softness to his usual hard, cold features. I think it's because I never saw him smile before. I have seen River smirk a lot of times before, but an actual dimpled smile like this? I never saw him smile like this. It made me feel very uneasy.

"I never said that I didn't want to do the assignment." He says, popping his chewing gum. "I just wasn't very pleased to have been paired with you."

"Why? Because of my scar?"

He frowns, as if my question caught him off guard. "No." He says nonchalantly. "I was never assigned a partner before, but Mr Ryan assigned me one, you, because there are some tasks that cannot be done alone. And if you think I am repulsed by a small scar just because I didn't want you as my partner, you are deeply mistaken. I might be prejudiced at times, but I will never use ones flaws against them. I am not petty."

"But you call me scarface?"

"And last time I checked, you called me the devil incarnate."

My cheeks heat up almost immediately. "Where did you hear that?"

"That's not important." He says.

With that, he smirks again and pops his chewing gum, louder this time. I wanted nothing more than to grab it and throw it in his dirty blond hair.

"To get back on the subject of me being uninterested... you're the one who thought I was uninterested in doing the assignment with you." He says.

I bite down hard on my lower lip when he pops his chewing gum again. "You seemed pretty uninterested when Mr Ryan explained what the assignment pertained. You didn't even listen to a word he has said."

I press my thumbnail into my index finger, actually refraining myself from grabbing the chewing gum right out of his mouth and throwing him with it.

I know now why River was suddenly smiling at me like this, and I know now why I felt a sudden feeling of dread washing over me when I saw him.

River wants to get a reaction out of me.

No, not quite a reaction really, he wants to annoy the shit out of me to get me to back out of working on the assignment with him, and I'm not going to lie, but I was a few annoying gum pops away from actually backing out.

But I won't give him the satisfaction.

I am not a quitter. Not anymore.

"Oh, and not to mention the notes I gave you that were thrown into the trashcan like I didn't spend an eternity compiling everything for you so you won't get behind in your classes. So, you seemed pretty uninterested to me."

"Firstly," he holds up one finger, "I didn't ask for the notes. And secondly," he holds up a second finger, annoying me even more, "the handwritten notes were your way of trying to get into my good books. Admit it." He leans against a random locker and props his left black boot's heel against it.

"Into your good books?"

I couldn't stop the laugh from bursting through my lips. That seemed to stun him because he stopped chewing and smiling altogether, like he never thought that a laugh like that could escape through my lips.

"Firstly, I don't know why you don't like me, and I really don't care, either, but I am not trying to get into your good books, River. And secondly, you didn't ask for the notes, yes, but a thank you would have been appreciated seeing that I went out of my way to actually help you."

Pop.

"So that's why I thought you were uninterested in doing the assi-"

Pop.

"-doing the assignment because you-" I stop suddenly, glaring at him when he pops the chewing gum again. "You know what? Forget it. I am done-"

"We can talk about the assignment later." He says and starts to back away from me. "I forgot that I had somewhere I needed to be in a few minutes."

"River!"

He ignores me and walks away.

I huff in annoyance and pinch the bridge of my nose when I felt a headache coming.

Ana and Cole return after leaving me to deal with River alone and I glare at the two of them when they stand in front of me.

Ana couldn't hide the fact that she was curious about what River wanted. "What did he want?" She asks, the curiosity clear in her tone. "Hmm?"

"If you didn't leave me, you would have known what he wanted." I smile evilly at her.

Ana gives me a pleading look. "Don't be like that!" She says, tugging on my arm. "Don't leave us in this suspense! Come on, Sophia, please?" She begs.

I sigh, giving in to her pleading. "We just discussed the Biology assignment."

"And?" Ana asks. "What about the Biology assignment?"

"I think he knows we have to work on the assignment together for a whole while because he's trying to get me to back out of it first by irritating me."

"Typical River." Ana says, sighing.

The bell rings for class and I have a good feeling that River won't be attending. He did, after all, disappear through the double doors of the school building moments ago, and once he left, he wasn't coming back.

I just hope that whatever he had going on that he would be in time for Biology. We were already behind as it is, thanks to him for being uncooperative, so we really need to step up our game if we want to pass the class. Well, I need to step up my game. I couldn't care less if he fails or not.

• • •

I was right. River didn't attend Math class, but he was already seated in Biology. It kind of surprised me to see him already seated, but what didn't surprise me was the fact that he didn't get rid of that chewing gum of his.

I sit down, placing my bag down onto the floor beside my desk chair.

It wasn't long before I started to hear it: the constant loud chewing of the gum and the popping thereof every few seconds.

The sound was driving me insane, and then, to make matters even worse, River started to drum his fingers against our desk, matching the rhythm of the water dripping into the metal sink.

Chew. Chew. Chew. Thump. Thump. Thump. Drip. Drip. Drip.

And repeat.

Chew. Chew. Chew. Thump. Thump. Thump. Drip. Drip. Drip.

I shoot him one nasty glare. "Can you please stop being so annoying?"

He acts all innocent and looks at me with those blue eyes of his. "What?" He shrugs. "I am not doing anything wrong." He smiles, his left dimple showing.

"Just stop chewing with your mouth open and stop drumming your fingers."

He looks at me as he chews and pops his gum and smiles slyly at me.

He was mocking me. He wants me to back out of this assignment.

The drumming has finally stopped, but right when I got my hopes up, River started to drum his ringed finger against the desk, earning a few glares coming from the students sitting in front of us.

They were also starting to get annoyed with him.

Did they say something about it, though?

No.

I bite the inside of my cheek, diverting my attention toward Mr Ryan in the front of the class before I literally grab River by his throat and squeeze.

Chew. Thump. Chew. Thump. Chew.

"River," I close my eyes tightly, refraining myself from actually killing him, "stop it."

"Is everything alright, Miss Crawford?" Mr Ryan asks.

"Actually, no, Mr Ryan-"

"Everything is fine." River cuts me off and smiles sweetly at me.

Mr Ryan eyes us cautiously but starts to speak to the rest of the class again. "Today's lesson is not for the weak stomached, but there are empty buckets underneath every single desk." Mr Ryan says.

It's then when I realised that there was a dead frog lying in the middle of our desk, stuck to a tray with pins.

I have been so caught up into wanting to murder River for chewing loudly that I haven't even noticed the dead frog lying in the middle of our desk.

How the hell didn't I notice a dead frog lying on the middle of my desk?

"I know this is the moment you all have dreaded, but it unfortunately has to be done," Mr Ryan says, "so please slide on some latex gloves and grab a scalpel blade from the drawer. Be careful, though, they're very sharp."

He chuckles when a girl in the front of the classroom starts to freak out. Really freak out, but then he continues. "The organs inside a frog are similar enough to a person's, and as we dissect the frog, the frog's organs would be able to provide insight into the workings of the human body."

My stomach clenches at the sight and smell of the dead frog lying on the desk. I had to place my hand over my mouth just to cover my gags.

River notices it and chuckles. He actually chuckles. "The bucket is underneath the desk," he says, "please don't puke on the table."

"I am not going to puke." I tell him, swallowing hard as I slid my latex gloves onto both my hands.

River slides a scalpel blade toward me, handle side toward me and the sharp blade side toward him, and laughs. "Oh? Why are you so green, then?"

"It's not..." I gag but managed to cover it by swallowing hard, "...every day I get served a dead frog so I'm sorry that I'm not very, pleased, right now."

"Don't be a baby." River says, holding his scalpel blade between his fingers.

"The smell's horrible!" I pinch my nose shut with my fingers. "How can you not react to the smell? Are you used to this smell or something?" I ask.

"No," he chews his gum and pops it loudly again, "I just ignore it."

• • •

I made my way to my locker to place the books I won't need for the rest of the day back into my locker to lessen the load in my school bag, but when I opened my locker, River was leaned against the locker beside mine and he looked at me with the same sweet smile he used on Mr Ryan earlier.

"What?" I ask him. "Are you here to make fun of me for puking?"

"No," he says honestly, "I did know you were going to, though."

I roll my eyes at him. "Well, it's not funny. Okay?"

"I'm not laughing."

"Then why are you here?"

"We need to discuss the assignment we have to do." He says. "We didn't get a chance to do that in class."

I prop my books a little too forcefully back into my locker and slam it shut when I was done. "You were too busy annoying the living hell out of me, so I wonder why we didn't get a chance to discuss it in class." I glare at him.

"No," he corrects me, "you were too busy puking your lungs out."

"River, if you came here to annoy me-"

"I told you what I was here for." He says, running his fingers through his hair. "So, are you ready?"

I frown at him. "Ready for what, exactly?"

"Ready to discuss the assignment?" He gives me a look that says 'isn't that obvious?' "It's lunch time and I don't get to see you for the rest of the day."

"Thank God." I mutter. "Okay... what do you want to discuss, then?"

"Your house," he asks, "or mine?"

I couldn't help it, but my cheeks flamed up a little bit.

"Can you not talk so loud?" I ask him, noticing the girl he usually hung with eyeing me with a venomous look. "Your girlfriend thinks that you're going to cheat on her."

"She is not my girlfriend." River says in a matter-of-fact tone. "And are you going to answer my question or are you going to keep dodging it?"

I sigh. "Meet me at my house tonight at six pm." I tell him. "Not a second later. I know you don't like to be on time, but I swear if you're not by my house at six pm, I will lock the door and I will do the assignment myself."

The curve of his lip pulls up in a smirk. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"I'm being serious right now, River." I cross my arms across my chest. "If you don't start taking this assignment seriously, don't even bother coming by my house tonight."

He throws his hands up in surrender. "Fine." He says. "Six pm."

"Good."

I turn to walk away from him, but he grabs my wrist and slings me around. When he lets go of my arm, I can still feel how his hand was wrapped around my wrist.

"What, River?"

"I don't know where you live."

Of course he doesn't know where I live. I forgot.

"I live like ten minutes away from that abandoned barn on Rick's." I say that slowly, hoping that he won't put two-and-two together that I might've been there. "My street name is Gentle Lane and my house's number is one hundred and one. It's surrounded with a green fence, but the latch is broken so you have to pull it upward and then to the side to get it to open."

He nods and the tension in the air arises almost immediately. "Don't go to the barn," he says, surprising me, "it's dangerous for girls like you."

"There you go again with the 'girls like you' saying. I can take care of myself, you know." I tell him. "And just by the way, how do you know the barn is dangerous? Have you been there before?"

I want to see if he would confess even though I already know he was there before.

"Just," he pauses, raking his hand through his blond hair, "don't go there, Sophia." He pulls his lips into a thin and firm line and walks away fast without saying another word.

But as I stared at his retreating back, I couldn't help but notice how sad he looked when he mentioned the barn-like it was some sort of safe haven for him, and I wasn't supposed to know it, and now I feel guilty that I do know.

It felt like I have somehow invaded his privacy, but I wasn't aware that I did.

I didn't know he was fighting inside that barn.

I simply just couldn't know.

As far as I'm concerned, I went for a jog that day and came across the barn by accident mid-jog when I heard cheering and clapping coming from inside the barn, and I'm not going to lie, but my interest was piqued, I was curious to know why there was people inside, clapping and cheering, so I walked into the abandoned barn, and that is when I noticed River and that he was declared the champion, and that he has been fighting there for a while now.

So does it still count as invading his privacy when I wasn't actually aware that I was busy invading his privacy? No. It wasn't.

Even if it was considered invading his privacy, I'm just glad that River didn't know that I was there that day and that I saw him fight against Kane.

• • •

When my grandmother and I make it home that afternoon, I tell her about River and the assignment we have to do in my room.

She gives me a look and a grin spreads across her mouth.

"Don't even say it," I give her a look, "he's not even considered a friend."

The grin slightly disappears, but she still has that gleam in her eyes. "Right..."

"I'm serious." I tell her. "River's not my type anyways. River is..." I tap my finger against my chin, looking for the right words to describe River's character and smile when I finally found the perfect words, "...very cynical and calloused."

I think River is cynical is because he thinks that I have some sort of agenda against him, that's the only reason I can think of why he hates me.

I was, after all, in the bathroom with him when he used the dirty mirror as a punching bag. He's afraid I might tell people that he had a panic attack in the bathroom and that he's in support group.

"Well," she smiles even wider, "keep the door open at all times." She winks.

"Ugh," I pull my face in disgust, "no, ew, I don't think so Grandma."

She laughs and squeezes my shoulder. "I am just pulling your leg, Sophia."

• • •

Once in my room, I gathered the assignment sheets and notebooks and placed them on the floor where River and I would be working today.

When everything was taken out and ready to start the Biology assignment with, I take a look at how the caterpillar's doing.

The plastic container Mr Ryan provided didn't really sit well with me because the caterpillar was inside such a small container with small holes in the lid, so River and I have to make a habitat soon or the caterpillar will die.

"Hi buddy," I tell the caterpillar, feeling stupid that I was talking to him, "don't worry; we'll make you one nice habitat soon. Just hold on a little longer-"

"Are you talking to a butterfly?"

"Shit!" I grab my heart, setting the caterpillar back down onto my desk before he dies of other causes and not of having a too-small habitat with holes in the lid. "I could have been naked! Why didn't you knock? Shit."

River was standing in the doorway, smirking at me. "I did knock," he says, "twice, in fact." He then walks over to my bed and plops down onto it, boots and all. "You would have heard me if you didn't converse with a damn butterfly."

"It's a caterpillar." I correct him. "He's not a butterfly just yet." I walk over to my bed and forcefully remove his boots from my bed.

"Whatever," he says, "let's just get this thing over with, shall we?"

"Yes, please. I want to get it over with as much as you do."

River eyes my room as if he didn't expect it to look the way that it did. He wasn't looking at it with disgust or anything, he was just curious. There weren't any dolls, or pink wallpaper like a girl's room would usually have.

Mine looked plain and quite boring if it wasn't for the posters on the walls.

And at least I cleaned the place up before he came here-the rank dust smell was now gone; and my room smelled like lavender and it smelled clean. The cobwebs in the corners of my room were gone, but the wall's paint was still peeling off because I didn't get a chance to paint it over last weekend, but other than that, my room looked quite presentable. I was very happy with it.

It almost feels like home.

"I expected it to look more..." he pauses, seeming to think of the right word by tapping the edge of his chin repeatedly, "...girly, or something."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but not all girls' rooms look the same."

"No, I know." He nods, giving my room another examine. "But I just didn't expect yours to look like this."

"If you're referring to the chipped paint, I know about that. Okay? There's no need to point anything out." I pause, sighing loudly. "And besides, renovating my room is the last thing on my mind right now."

River ignores me, and grabs the photograph I had of me and Daniel from the nightstand. "Who's this?" He asks. He holds the framed photo carefully, as if he was afraid to break the frame.

I rush over to him and quickly grab the framed photo from his hands. I hug it to my chest so that he won't see the photograph anymore. "I would appreciate it if you don't cross-examine my room and touch everything with your dirty fingers. And besides, it's none of your business. We came here to do an assignment, not to play a game of twenty-questions."

"Relax," he throws his hands up in surrender, "I was just being curious. I have never seen him around. I thought he was your brother, or, something."

"He's not..." I sigh, again. "He's not my brother. Okay? Can we just..." I motion my hands toward the floor where the assignment sheets and my notebooks were laying, "...please start with the assignment already?"

"Fine," he says, "where do we begin?"

I set the framed photo frame-down onto my desk and turn around. "Well, we'll need leaves and bark, so you can start off with grabbing those. We have some dried leaves in the yard."

"Can we not just leave the thing in the container Mr Ryan provided?"

I frown at him. "The entire assignment is about making a habitat for him."

"You mean 'it'?" He raises his eyebrow. "That thing is an 'it', not a 'he'."

"Can you just get the bark and the leaves outside?" I ask him.

"Why do I have to get the things from outside?"

"We need to work together." I tell him. "I'll start writing the things down while you get the things we need from the yard. And no more complaining, alright? You're the one who didn't want to back out from the assignment."

"Fine." River rakes his fingers through his blond hair and sighs. "I'll get the damn bark." He gets off my bed and leaves my room.

"And the leaves!" I call after him.

"And the damn leaves." He mutters.

I hear his footsteps receding down the hallway, and then his footfalls down the staircase told me that he was on his way to the front yard where dry leaves and the bark from the tree could be found.

At least he was complying and not making me do the entire assignment by myself, but it was only ten minutes past six pm, the night was still so young.

Anything could happen.

"He seems like a nice guy," My grandmother says from the doorway, "and not at all calloused and cynical as you called him a few hours ago."

"That's because he has been putting up a show in front of you." I tell her. "You have not yet seen the side of him I have seen."

"He can't be that bad." She says.

I scoff at her. "He doesn't care about anyone other than himself." I tell her, correcting her assumption she made about River being a nice guy. "And he's very troubled. Gets mad easily... Gets into fights..."

"Everyone is a little troubled, Sophia." My grandmother says. "Maybe he just needs someone to help him out of the dark place he's in right now."

"Dark place?" I ask her. "Do you know something I don't?"

"No, and even if I did, I wouldn't be telling you. It is not my business."

"Fair enough." I nod at her.

I wouldn't want my grandmother telling him what happened to me, either, but I was still curious to know what she knew because it's clear she knows something I don't, but I wasn't going to ask her about it. It's not my place.

"River doesn't seem like the type of guy who wants to be helped anyways."

"Everyone needs help even if they don't want to admit it, Sophia." She says. "Why would you say something like that?"

I open my mouth to tell her about that day in the bathroom when he had a panic attack and suddenly bit my head off for wanting to help him to defend my actions to why I said he refuses to be helped, but close my mouth instead.

"He just seems like the kind of guy who keeps everything that bothers him to himself. He would rather suffer in silence than ask someone for help."

"We all cope differently and in many ways." She says. "Maybe he wants to ask for help, but he doesn't know how to or he doesn't think he needs it. Remember that before you make assumptions about someone."

She was right: everyone does cope differently.

River fights his demons and I try to run away from mine.

"These are the only leaves I could find in the yard." River says when he walks into my room.

My grandmother leaves us alone again by backing out of my room.

River plops himself down onto the ground.

He suddenly looked, angry.

"What's with the foul mood?" I ask him.

"I want to finish up here so I can leave." He says without looking at me.

"The feeling's mutual." I mutter under my breath and see his eyes flash with anger when he looked at me.

"Listen Scarface, I don't want to be here any more than you do, so the faster we can finish this bullshit of a shitty assignment, the sooner I can leave here and never come back, alright?"

"You know what? Why don't you just leave right now? I will do this assignment myself." I tell him, feeling anger bubble up inside me too all of a sudden. "It's better than hearing you complain every few seconds about you wanting to leave anyways."

"Fine by me!" He says, getting up from the ground before he leaves my room with his school bag. He shuts the door behind him with such force; the photographs on my wall nearly comes tumbling down after.

It seems like I'm going to do this assignment on my own after all.

I glanced toward my bed and noticed that he has left his Biology book there.