Rage shot through me.
“Darcy!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”
Seriously, what the heck was he doing?
He didn’t look at me or give me an answer; he completely ignored me and focused on Laura. I couldn’t believe it; he was caring for the girl who hurt me.
It hurt me even more that he was clearly siding with her.
“Darcy, she—”
“What happened here?” A deep voice suddenly cut through the loud murmurs of the crowd of students.
A teacher.
Crap.
“Um, well, you see—”
“Neala punched me in me face!” Laura all but wailed.
I don’t know why, but I gasped when Laura ratted me out, as if I were completely innocent of the act, even though I knew good and well that I did hit her.
“Is that true, Neala?”
I noticed the teacher was Mr. Halford and instantly I became scared. He was known to be very tough on students when he was angry.
I was silent for a long moment, and before Mr. Halford could repeat his question, Darcy said, “It’s true, sir. Neala punched Laura.”
The ground might as well have opened up and swallowed me whole.
I felt my jaw drop open, my eyes widen, and my stomach churn. Darcy refused to look at me after he put me on the chopping block; he stayed focused on Laura.
Stupid. Laura.
“Neala, you’ll have to come with me.” Mr. Halford sighed, and then looked down at Darcy. “Bring Laura to the nurse to get checked over.”
Darcy nodded mutely and helped Laura to her feet. I wanted to cry, but I refused to do so in front of so many people. I wanted to scream that none of this was my fault, but I couldn’t get the words out.
It was like I was frozen.
On shaking legs I followed the teacher, while Darcy went off in the direction of the nurse’s office with Laura. I was glad of the separation, because I needed time to think.
I had to plan everything I was going to say to Darcy very carefully, because I wanted him to be really sorry for what he had just done to me.
The next thirty minutes were filled with tears, pleading, and a distressed phone call from the receptionist to my mother when I wouldn’t stop crying.
I was suspended from school; of course I couldn’t stop crying. I was in a lot of trouble, and nobody believed that what I had done was in self-defence.
I don’t really know if it was self-defence, because I was angry when I hit Laura, but she had knocked me over and hurt me. The teachers didn’t believe that, on its own, that deserved suspension-whereas my punching her certainly did.
I was a wreck.
I was sad, angry, and feeling sick with worry about what my parents would do when they eventually arrived at the school to pick me up, but mostly I was gutted about Darcy.
I was really mad at him for not seeing to me. I mean, I was his best friend. Not Laura. She was just some stupid girl he thought was pretty. He shouldn’t have picked a girl over his best friend . . . He just shouldn’t have done that.
It wasn’t right.
He hadn’t even given me a chance to explain, hadn’t bothered to hear me out, which was so unlike him. Everything he had done was very out of character for him. I just didn’t understand any of it.
“Neala?”
I looked up and blinked when I saw Darcy standing in the doorway of the reception.
Speak of the Devil.
I sniffled and looked back down to my lap.
“Are you okay?” he asked me.
I nodded even though my hand hurt like hell.
“Laura isn’t,” Darcy replied casually. “Her cheek and eye are bruising because of what you did.”
I jerked my gaze up to his. “She started it! I wouldn’t have touched her if she hadn’t pushed me onto the ground!”
Darcy frowned. “She said you wouldn’t give her the skipping ropes—”
“So that makes it okay for her to push me down?” I cut him off, my sadness turning to blind rage.
“What? No, of course—”
“Why do you even care about her?” I snapped. “I’m your best friend, and you didn’t even see if I was okay. You just ran to her and ratted me out to the teacher! Some best friend you are.”
Darcy paled. “Now just wait a minute—”
“No, you wait a minute, Darcy Hart,” I bellowed as my tears started flowing again. “I would never have chosen someone else over you, ever . . . So why did you choose her over me?”
Darcy blinked. “You hurt her, Neala.”
“She hurt me too! Why don’t you care about that?”
Darcy frowned. “I do care about you, Neala Girl; you know I do.”
Tears flowed from my eyes.
“No,” I cried. “You don’t. You wouldn’t have done any of this if you did. You like her and that matters more to you. She matters more to you than I do.”
Darcy blushed, but didn’t deny the charges.
“Get out!” I shouted. “I never want to see you again.”
Darcy stayed rooted to the spot. “Neala, stop being a baby and just listen—”
“Now I’m a baby? Why don’t you just throw a rock at me head? It’d hurt less.”
He shook his head and looked at me like I was something he’d scraped off the bottom of his shoe.
“Neala,” he began, sighing. “We’ll speak later when you aren’t so . . . We’ll just speak later.”
“Don’t bother. Stay with Laura. I’m sure she’d love that.”
He stared at me, his eyes dark. “You know what? Fine. I will.”
“Don’t come around me house anymore either, because I don’t want to see you, talk to you, or be friends with you anymore.”
Darcy raised both eyebrows. “You don’t mean that; you’re just angry and upset—”
“I do mean it. I hate you.”
He stumbled back like I had struck him. “Neala.”
I heard the hurt in his voice, but instead of getting upset, I reminded myself that he had chosen Laura over me, and a fresh surge of rage flowed through my veins with the knowledge.
“Take it back, Neala.”
I shook my head.
“Neala,” he whispered. “Take it back.”
“We aren’t friends anymore, Darcy. You made your decision today. We’ll never be friends again.”
Darcy’s expression was unreadable as he said, “Just like that?”
I nodded. “Just like that.”
Without a word, he turned and stormed out of the room, and out of my life . . . so to speak.
I sighed as I came back to the present.
As much as I hated to admit it, Darcy had broken my heart that day, and after that I was done. We had been best friends since we could walk; then, in the blink of an eye, we weren’t. I was a very emotional child, so I fought Darcy’s betrayal and anger with my own. After that I didn’t cry in front of him, and I never would. Instead, I became a devilish menace whenever I was in his company, and that turned out to be very often.
You see, Darcy and I were best friends by default. Our mothers were best friends, our older brothers were best friends, our dads were best friends, and even our grandparents, God rest them, were best friends. There was no escaping Darcy or his family after our falling-out, so we both learned to tolerate one another as best as we could . . . which was usually by fighting or pranking one another.
Our hate grew as we got older – he always blamed me for our falling-out, and even dated Laura into our secondary school days, which was like rubbing salt in my wound – while our tolerance for one another’s company lessened. Our families didn’t seem to understand our mutual loathing, because they always tried to force us together so we could learn to ‘get on.’ They still did. Never mind that we were now both twenty-five, and any chance of mending our joke of a friendship was long gone.
Our mothers, God help them, had this silly fantasy that we would get together, fall madly in love, and
give them grand-babies, but I could tell you that was never happening. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell. You had a better chance of fusing oil and water together to form a single liquid than you did of Darcy and me being civil to each other.
We were a lost cause, and as far as I was concerned that wasn’t a bad thing.
“What’s that look for?”
I blinked and shook my head clear of my thoughts, then looked to my mother, who had retaken her seat next to me on the couch. I wasn’t telling her I was thinking about Darcy and our past, because she would take it as a stupid sign that it meant he was my future or some bullshit like that.
I cleared my throat. “Nothing. This is just how I look when I zone out. It’s me duh face.”
My mother grinned and quietly sipped her tea, and it grated on my nerves. I hated when she looked smug after pissing me off about Darcy. I needed to change the topic of discussion to something mundane.
I blew a breath out through my nostrils and asked, “So, breakfast?”