Chapter Sixteen

I slept in that morning. It was wonderful having a later shift. And getting a little extra sleep was an amazing feeling, especially sleeping in during the morning instead of sleeping earlier in the night.
It seemed useless to try to brush my hair down, but for some reason I continued to try. Once the frizz had told me it had won, I gave up. I shoved my glasses onto my face, and proceeded towards work.
Damien didn’t pick me up from my house today, and I didn’t even realize it until I had already walked all the way to Wal-mart.
“Good morning, Paige,” David greeted me.
“Morning!” I said back. “Is Damien already here?”
David frowned at me. “No, he did not, Paige,” he answered. “And I don’t know if he’ll be coming in today or not.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“You kids had that dance yesterday at school, right?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t come home after that.”
My eyes widened and my jaw dropped.
“Damien didn’t go home yesterday?”
David shook his head slowly. “He left with Charlie, picked you up, went to school, and then I have no idea what happened after that.”
I frowned. Damien was starting to worry me. I knew he wasn’t in the best mood last night after the dance had ended, but I didn’t expect him to suddenly disappear.
“Gee, I’m really sorry about that, David,” I said, still shocked by the news. “I really don’t have any idea, either.”
David sighed. “Well, that’s all right, Paige. Maybe you should just go on to work.”
“Right. I’ll talk to you later, David.”
He nodded. “I wish us both luck with this whole Damien situation.”
“Yes. Definitely.”
I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Damien during work. I mean, it was hard to ignore him when you constantly acknowledged his absence. Usually I would be with him and talk and laugh and hang out with him all through work. It was hardly even “work” because I’d be having so much fun with Damien. It was upsetting having him gone. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
I didn’t do that much work today. It was hard to focus on my duties and such when so much was missing from my daily routine. I hadn’t realized before then how big of a part of my life Damien was. I decided it would be a good time to take my break now. Sort of relax before trying to do anymore work.
All of Charlie, Angela, and Katie were sitting in the break room. I tried to smile, but found out that I couldn’t. First knowing that Damien was missing, and then also considering that Charlie could be immensely upset with me. I simply just waved at the three of them.
“Paige, do you have any idea where Damien is?” Angela asked, her voice tense with worry.
I shook my head. “I didn’t even know he was missing until I saw David this morning when I got here.”
“You don’t know where Damien is?” Charlie asked. “That’s odd. The three of us thought you would know.”
“Charlie, I’m really sorry about everything. I mean, I—”
“Don’t worry about it, Paige,” he said. “Really. It’s cool. Just… next time you want to do something as awesome as pranking Chrissy, you have to let me be in on it.”
I smiled because I couldn’t laugh. “Sure thing, Charlie.”
I didn’t expect it, but he got up out of his seat, and wrapped his arms around me. “I can’t wait,” he whispered.
“What about Damien kid?” Katie exclaimed, sounding like she was about to burst out into tears. “I want him back! I miss him! Where did he go? Where did Damien kid go?”
“We’re really sorry, Katie girl,” Charlie said, letting go of me, and sitting down next to her. “We thought Paige kid would know, but then she didn’t. We don’t know where he went, and we don’t know when he’s coming back.”
“Damien kid will come back?” she asked, sniffling.
Charlie nodded. “He will most definitely come back, Katie girl.”
I sighed, but Katie and Charlie continued going back and forth like this. Charlie constantly told her that everything would be all right in the end, and Katie kept sniveling like a little girl.
“Katie,” Angela said. “Let’s try to get our minds off of Damien. What do you say about getting back to work?”
Katie sniffed. “Working, Angela girl? Working will only remind me more of Damien kid.”
Angela sighed. “We still need to get our jobs done, Katie girl. How about it?”
She frowned, and rubbed her eyes before saying, “All right, Angela girl. I will try not to think of Damien kid. I want him to come back now.”
“We all do, Katie girl,” Charlie said. I don’t know why, but this slightly surprised me. I thought he would still be upset with Damien about the whole “stealing girls” thing or something.
“It’s going to be all right, Katie girl,” I said. “Maybe you should go back to work.”
She sniffled again. “Okay. Katie girl will go work now.” She got up, and slowly and sadly walked out of the break room.
“Do you want to keep an eye on her, or should I?” Charlie asked Angela.
Angela sighed again. “I will, Charlie. This whole day hasn’t been good for anyone has it?”
Charlie shook his head. “Whenever things happen, they always seem to be hardest on Katie, no matter what it is.”
“Of course,” Angela said. “It’s understandable.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, I had better go make sure she’s all right. I’ll see you later, Charlie. You, too, Paige.”
“See you, Angela,” I said.
Charlie sighed once Angela had closed the door behind her. I decided to go sit down next to him.
“Are you worried about Damien?” he asked me.
“Yes. But are you all right?”
He blinked, his eyes blank. “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
I shrugged. “You left early yesterday because you told me you weren’t feeling well.”
“Oh. Right. About that… I may have been… a little jealous of Damien,” he said, struggling to get the words out. “I mean, you’ve been spending a lot of time with him lately, and you’ve just been keeping me out of the loop and things like that… and I guess I just…”
“Listen,” I interrupted him. “Just forget about it, all right? It was partially my fault, as well. I mean, I completely understand why you’d be upset with me being with Damien too much. Like, I understand. Because of your whole thing with, you know, Jessica.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Not exactly the best times, you know?”
“I perfectly understand,” I told him, even though I didn’t completely. I hadn’t really been in that situation, but I could imagine it completely.
“Thank you, Paige. And… Damien is your friend. Hell, he’s my friend, too. I know that I’m really—I mean, we’re really worried about him. But like I told Katie, it’s going to be all right. He’ll come back soon enough.”
“Yeah,” I said, more to myself than to Charlie. “You know, maybe I should just get back to work. Like Katie, I mean. Like, try to get my mind off of it for a while.”
“That’s my girl,” he said. He kissed my forehead, and smiled down at me. “It’ll be all right.”
By the time I was walking home, work just felt like a distant memory. I could barely even remember what I did due to the fact there was nothing memorable that had happened since Damien wasn’t there. I didn’t even think twice about it by the time I was home.
I closed the door behind me once I reached home. For the first time in what felt like a century, I saw that my Aunt Clara was awake on the couch. She looked at me. That was extremely unusual since she barely even acknowledged my existence.
“Yer the girl that I’m supposed to be lettin’ live in mah house, right?” she asked, her voice sleepy. I felt like yelling at her. First Damien went missing, and now I had to put up with whatever this bitch wanted to say to me.
“Uh. Yes, ma’am,” I said, unsure of what I was supposed to be doing.
“What’ve you been doin’ lately, girl?” she asked, her voice gruff.
I was confused. “Nothing, really.”
“I think it is comin’ to be too much to take care of ya. I can’t handle the responsibility, girl.”
What responsibility? I wanted to scream. She hadn’t done a single thing to take care of me. I was practically living on my own. I looked down at her hand. A glass of wine, sitting there in her fat hands, almost tipping over and falling onto the floor. My guess was she was drunk or something, and that’s why she even cared to look in my direction.
“Oh,” was all I managed out of my mouth.
“I don’t like you muckin’ up my house,” she said. “Go.”
“I’m sorry?” It took me a minute to let her words sink into my brain.
“Go on! Git! Get outta mah house, girl, I’m speaking English fer ya!”
She was kicking me out of her house? She must have been really drunk, then, to actually tell me to do something. Let alone speak to me at all.
She got up out of her seat. My eyes widened. I did not expect this at all. She almost never got up out of that couch.
But then she started getting a little touchy. She started shoving on my shoulders, and constantly yelling at me to get out of her house.
“I don’t want to take care of you anymore,” she told me. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest. No one really wanted to take care of me. It was about time that this guardian started hating me so I had to move on to the next. Always getting neglected, always getting pushed away. Things of that sort.
“Well, I don’t want to live with you anymore!” I screamed back.
“THAT’S THE LAST STRAW, GIT OUT OF MY HOUSE,” she yelled. To be honest, it didn’t hurt me at all. It wasn’t the first time that someone pushed me out of his or her life, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last time.
I wanted to go up and get my stuff so I could just run away from here, but she didn’t give me a chance. She was now starting to hurt me a bit as she pushed me out of her house.
So before I knew it, I was outside. I was outside with nothing and nobody. I don’t know why Aunt Clara rejecting me like this affected me more than any other guardian. It could have probably been due to the fact that this place I was actually loved by some people. I had friends, and even a boyfriend. I really didn’t want to leave this place. I really didn’t want to learn what other relative would accept me and then dump me on the side again.
I put my hands in my pockets. I felt something. My cell phone was still with me, thank God. I decided to text Damien for help.
“Damien, where r u?” I typed. I waited for a response. I waited. And Waited. And waited. I didn’t know when he was going to reply back, but after about fifteen minutes, I knew that he probably wasn’t going to respond back. So I tried to text him again. “Dude, I got kicked out of my house. Where r u?”
After about a minute, my phone vibrated. I quickly pulled it out of my pocket, almost dropping it in excitement.
“Come to dumpster behind wal-mart,” it said. I was lost for words. Was he there this whole time? And what was he doing? I didn’t question it, because I was glad I had finally found out where he was. I practically ran all the way there, and was completely out of breath by the time I made it.
“Damien?” I called. “Damien, are you here? Where are you?”
“Hm? Paige?” I head a voice. It was with that same sleepy tone that Aunt Clara had when I first started talking to her when I got home.
“Damien?” I called again. “Is that you?” I looked around frantically, searching for where his voice had come from. He was sitting down by the dumpster, his back against the wall of the store. His head was lying on his shoulder, and his eyes were half closed, as if he was trying to fall asleep.
He looked up, and smiled. “Hey, Paige,” he said quietly, as if he was sleep talking.
“Oh my God,” I said. I crouched down so my eyes were at his level. “Dude, Damien, you scared the crap out of everyone. You have no idea how freaked out and worried we were. Especially David… God, you scared us. Are you all right? Were you here the whole time? What happened after you left?”
“Paige, how many fucking times do I have to fucking tell you to stop worrying about me, Paige…?” he asked, still with that sleepy tone.
“Damien, you don’t sound very good,” I said. “Are you sure you’re okay? Please, just tell me what happened.”
He reached under the dumpster, and pulled out a bottle. I did not know the contents of what was in this bottle, and the label was ripped off. But at the same time, I partially did not want to know what the contents of this bottle were.
“Do you want some?” he asked.
“What?” I said. “This isn’t the time to offer me things.”
“I’ve been drinking it,” he said. “And it’s only polite to offer some.”
I wrinkled my nose in disgust. I could smell the dumpster next to me. I didn’t understand why Damien would be here. “No, Damien, I don’t any. What is it, anyway?”
He uncorked it, took a huge gulp from it, and put it down. He sighed, and whipped some of it off of his mouth. “Cheap whiskey,” he said.
My jaw dropped. “Damien, you shouldn’t be drinking that! Are you drunk?”
He yawned and shook his head. “No, no, no. Of course… no… I’m not… Paige, why would you…? …Yes… oh, Paige… yes. I think maybe… no, I know of course not… well, maybe a little… I don’t…”
“Damien, it’s a simple yes or no answer. Are you drunk or are you not?”
He tilted his head back and grinned at me. It wasn’t a normal smile, though. It made me feel like something had gone horribly wrong.
“My dear, Paige, why don’t you tell me? What the fucking hell do you think?”
“This is not a good thing, Damien,” I said, worried about him. “You shouldn’t be doing this. Why are you doing this?”
He took another swig from the bottle, and shrugged. “I don’t know anything anymore, Paige.”
“Look, stop drinking it,” I said, grabbing the bottle from his hand. “Now, tell me what the fuck made you do this?”
“Listen, Paige, I’m feeling really down. I invited you over here because I’m sure you feel rejected, too. And I trust you. So hush down, and just hand that back over to me.”
“No,” I told him, holding the bottle farther from his grasp. “Tell me what the fuck happened. What do you mean about you feeling rejected?”
He sighed. “I guess I had to tell you some time, huh?”
“Now would be a good time, Damien. What the hell is going on?”
He smiled. “I got dumped.”
“What?”
“At the dance. Jessica. I got dumped. She dumped me. Broke up with me, I mean. She doesn’t love me anymore. I don’t know… what happened… but all I know… is that… I think I still love her… I don’t… I mean… I just…”
“Stop,” I said. “Don’t talk to much, you start to only say part of your sentences and thinking the other parts. Just… take breaks while talking.”
“Gotcha, Paige.”
“So is that why you were so… what’s the word? bitter yesterday?”
He nodded.
“I see. But why come here and drown your sorrows in alcohol?”
He shrugged. “Lotsa people do it, ya know? I mean, people do it all the time. What I’m trying to say it… people do it… but they know it’s bad for them… and they… still do it anyway… and no one ever said that it didn’t work for… when you’re upset or something… so I figured I would give it a shot… because I do things like that… bold and stupid… now that’s a bad combination… but what can ya do?... I just wish… and I think… maybe I should have just…”
“Okay, I understand,” I said, even though his reasoning wasn’t too strong. “But I really think that’s no excuse.”
“Paige, I am not perfect. I am not like Charlie, who is such a great person. Or I am not like the Great… Alexander… he’s just, like, flawless. I’m not like that. I make mistakes. Some more dumber than others. Sometimes I’ll make a mistake that will kill my entire life, and some times it’s just something like… something on a math test or whatever. I make mistakes. Mistakes…. I’ll do… stuff like… ya know… I just…”
“I see, Damien. Just… don’t go off like that ever again. Were you here the entire time?”
“No, of course I was not, Paige, how could you… no. Yes. Yes. I was here. Through the night, I was here. All day, I was here. I dropped you at home, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t even think anymore… so I came… I didn’t want to talk to anyone… I didn’t want… I came here… drank… it was hidden… under dumpster… I never thought I would need it, but then I came here and… yes… I was here.”
“Oh. Wow. Oh my God. You scared the shit out of me, I was so worried.”
“Paige, what did I tell you about worrying about me?”
“Damien, I do not care. You constantly tell me not to worry about you, but you’re my friend, Goddamn it, and I do give a shit about you, just so you know. So stop telling me not to worry about you, because I do worry about you because I still freaking care about you. You could have killed yourself with this alcohol stuff, and do you know how many people would be worried about you then? You can’t go around telling everyone not to care about you, because we do care about you.” I was out of breath by the end of my speech. I inhaled. And exhaled.
He looked at me. It was a peculiar look. He raised one eyebrow. “You care about me, huh?”
“No, Damien, I just gave you a speech longer than Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech telling you about how people give a shit about you. Of course I don’t care about you,” I said as sarcastically as possible.
He smiled, and looked down at the floor. “You care about me, huh?” he repeated.
“Of course, Damien,” I said. I figured that my sarcasm didn’t go all the way through him due to the fact that he couldn’t really think straight at the moment.
“May I please ask you a question?” he asked calmly.
“What?”
“Whom do you care about more? Me or Charlie?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but then found out that I was lost for words. “I… um…” I didn’t really have an answer.
Damien raised his eyebrows. “Whom do you care about more? Me or Charlie?”
“What kind of stupid question is that?” I snapped at him.
“Charlie,” he said. “You won’t answer because it is Charlie.”
“No, of course not!”
“So you care about me? You care more about me than your own boyfriend?”
“Damien, stop talking like this. I love the both of you equally, just in different ways. I love you like a best friend, and I love him like a boyfriend. You get it?”
“No,” he said. “I know you love us just about the same, but that did not answer my question at all. Whom do you care about more? Me or Charlie?”
“I care about both of you.”
“I care about you,” he said.
“I love the both of you.”
“I only love you.”
“What?”
“Jessica doesn’t love me anymore. She doesn’t… I don’t… you…”
“All the words that are in your head need to come out as well, Damien,” I said.
“Paige, I am… you…”
“All the words!” I snapped. “Stop dozing off!”
“…in love with…”
He wasn’t even paying attention to me anymore.
I leaned over to him, and started lightly patting his cheek, trying to get him to make sense. “Damien, stop doing this. Speak!”
He opened his eyes, and looked directly at me. His mouth was a little open, so I could smell the cheap whiskey smell come out of his mouth. I had never actually been this close to Damien before.
“Paige, I am in love with you.”
And the next thing I knew, he was on top of me. His lips on mine, his alcoholic smell coming in from his mouth, into mine. I just barely started kissing back before I realized what both he and I were doing. We were kissing. And it was wrong. I pushed him off of me.
“No, Damien, stop it,” I said. “I… this isn’t right. I’m with Charlie and you… you need to get over Jessica. You don’t really mean it, this is just the alcohol speaking… You don’t love me, Damien, you’re drunk.”
“Hush,” he told me, putting his fingers to my lips. “Charlie will not know anything about this, and if Jessica does not love me, then I do not love her back. I’m in love with you, Paige. I’ve never said anything more truthful. I love you. I love you. Believe me, Paige, I am in love with you.”
“You’re not, Damien, you need to get some sleep. You need to wake up and not be drunk and just… get all of this out of your mind, okay?”
“I can’t go home,” he said. “Not when I’m… not when I’m like this. I just… I just can’t… my dad would be… so… disappointed… I can’t… Paige… will you… please… just… pay me back… that one time…”
“Complete sentences, Damien,” I reminded him. “Complete sentences.”
“Do you want to pay me back?” he asked. “For that one night where you slept in my car and I stayed awake all night?”
“What do you want?” I asked. I didn’t know whether I should do whatever he asked or not. I was still a bit skeptical about the fact that he had kissed me.
He fell over. His head ended up on my lap, and he was lying down, his foot barely touching the dumpster.
“Let me sleep, Paige.”