Love Misunderstood

Heading into school the next day, I was nervous, but when I looked down and saw Caden's hand in mine, all of the nervous energy left, for the most part.

I heard a loud feminine laugh, and I turned to look down the hall, and I saw Drake holding Megan against her locker, of course!

The dickhead and the IT girl. Typical.

As long as they stay away from me, I don't care.

She catches my eye, and I can see the anger as she sees me holding Caden's hand. She looks back to Drake and grabs his face, kissing him. Ugh, like I would care.

"Don't think about it; ignore them." I look at Caden and smile. I shake my head, getting my mind off them, and continue to walk to class.

It is lunch now, and I look out the windows and saw Caden sitting by our tree. My stomach flutters with nerves and excitement, but it vanishes when I get dragged into a classroom, and the breath is knocked out of me.

I look around me at the empty classroom and down to the hand on my arm holding me too tight. I look to their face, and it is Megan. I look past her at the door and notice it is slightly open.

"What do you think you're doing?" Her voice is dripping with venom.

"What do you mean?" she cuts me off.

"Oh, don't play dumb with me, you, and Caden. you really thought he would be into someone like you?"

"I thought you were with Drake." I may have poked the bear with that comment, but she looks even more mad at me. I start to back away.

"Oh, please!" she laughs with no humor in her voice.

"You want to make Caden jealous, and by doing this, you are using Drake?" I gain more of a backbone, I think.

"Wow, you really are slow, huh?" She walks towards me one step at a time, and I feel my breath quicken and my hands start to shake, but I put them in my pocket so she wouldn't suspect I was nervous. I feel my phone and fiddle with it to help calm me down.

"Whatever is going on, you need to calm down, Megan. I'm not sure what I ever did to you, but..." and just like that, she snaps.

"You don't deserve Caden! Drake told me what you did—how you said he wasn't good enough; how you made his life miserable in school and he had to leave because of you; then I saw you getting close to Caden and hated you for it. Tears started to form in her eyes. "I followed you to the gym that time when Caden was angry and yelled at you."

My mind drifts off, trying to remember...

"Why? Why did you speak to me? Why did you help me?" I am getting a sense of Deja vu from when he asked me why I helped him with his anxiety attack before.

"Where is this coming from? I helped you because I wanted to." My voice comes out quiet and slightly frightened as he is speaking to me.

"You pity me; you don't want anything to do with me! How could I have been so stupid?"

"I never pitied you, and it hurts that you would think that I would do that." We are almost yelling, and we have separated; he is sitting looking up at me, and I am standing.

"Of course you pity me! Wanted to make the outsider fit in? I am an outsider for a reason. Stay away from me." Both of our guards are up, and I can tell they aren't coming down any time soon. My eyes are watering, and he goes blurry in my vision.

"I care about you!" I cry out to him. "WHY!?" he screams at me. I just stared at him in silence. I didn't know I needed a reason to care about someone.

"I don't want you near me; I don't even want to look at you."

"Just tell me what I did; I can fix it."

"You can't do anything or fix it." By this point, he has stood up and is facing me. He comes closer, and he looks me dead in the eyes. "You know what you did, and I don't want any part of your life or Brody's."

I never understood why he said that; it really hurt when he did, and I completely forgot about it until now.

"You think you were the first to notice him? to care about him? I saw the bruises and the scars on his arms. So once when you were out of your seat in class, I went to your phone you left on your desk, airdropped the photos I took from my phone of him to yours, then sent them to him."

"Why would you do that? Why would you take the photos? If you knew what was going on with him, why send him photos on my phone?"

"I was hoping that once he saw the photos you sent to him, since you betrayed his trust with photographic evidence, he was getting abused by his father. I thought he would run to me. I went up to him a few days later, but he ignored me. He was clearly too hung up on you."

I go silent. thinking over everything.

I start to speak more loudly. "This is why you treated me like shit? I knew you liked him, but why would you stoop so low by hurting both of us just to get to him?"

"I knew you weren't good enough for him given how you treated Drake."

"How long have you known Drake exactly? Do you really believe what he said about me?" She goes to answer, but I've lost my patience.

Enough is enough!

"Whatever Drake told you was a lie; he said I made his life miserable. It was the opposite; he pretended to like me for a fucking bet, said I made him feel special, and he made me feel the same." I start to raise my voice, not caring who can hear me.

"He knew how insecure I was about my body and said what I'd always wanted to hear: that there was nothing wrong with it and I was good enough." Tears were pooling in my eyes, and I could see regret show itself on Megan's face.

"But it was all an act, but then the bet came out and he said that I was anything but pretty, and my body is basically fat and disgusting, and something that nobody knows is that every other day after I ate food, I went to the bathroom to try and throw it up." I am panting with anger and defeat.

"So whatever bullshit Drake is trying to pull, please don't believe him!"

Megan and I stare at each other until our throats are cleared.