ofkatherinebishop:
“Stop screaming?” she repeated, asking the question incredulously though she didn’t stop and her voice didn’t lower when Jamie commanded her in a manner that she found offensively audacious. “There is a man I don’t know trying to beat my door down, Jamie, I’m going to call the police if you don’t do something,” she informed him, though she wasn’t even sure where her phone was at the present time.
“No,” she protested, pushing the back of Jamie’s shoulders when he nudged her, “Stop touching me,” she demanded, hysterically, throwing her hands into the air again, feeling trapped by the two males that stood between her and the courtyard outside of the girl’s dormitory building.
She was silent for a moment as she watched the door, the muffled discussion taking place in the hallway, hopefully, Frank was being removed from the premises as swiftly as possible. Kat yelped and practically jumped out of her skin at the sound of something or someone colliding with her dorm, “Oh my God,” she said again, the air whisked out of her lungs with fright. “No, I don’t want to meet anybody, I don’t want any of this,” she told him, the words falling out of her mouth one after the other before she could actually think them through, she just wanted this to be over, she just wanted to go back to her Netflix show and she wished she’d never bothered opening the door up for Jamie in the first place. She placed her hand flat against her stomach, feeling as if it was going to fall out of her at any given moment, “Fix it,” she practically barked with half a mind to attempt climbing out of her dorm room window if she was stuck for any longer than this.
“Do not call the cops,” Jamie snapped after Kat pushed him away, growing irritated with her inability to stay calm under duress. He had his own fair share of irrationality, but none of it consisted of so much screeching. Frank was a frightening thing, sure, but Jamie had grown so accustomed to his aggression that him banging on a door didn’t spook him nearly as much when he knew what the man was really capable of and what the absence of him meant.
Frank in jail meant that one of them would be left with the responsibility of keeping their ugly trailer in Princeton as Mom’s endless number of kids were filtered through there like items on a conveyor belt waiting to be finished with a dash of trauma. As horrible as Frank was, he was a name to put down on paper and food on the table, as meager as it was.
He waited, watching the door as if he were expecting Frank to burst through like a horror movie monster. Sweat beaded between his shoulders and glued his t-shirt to his body the longer he stalled. He knew what he had to do to save his uncle from spending a night in Nighmore county jail, even if it meant he had to go back to Princeton and submit to his fate. Kat’s screaming only further convinced him that he should’ve just gone away silently into the night instead of caving to sentiment. He hadn’t been able to say what he wanted, now wondered if it’d have been worth it to wring one last teenage thing out of high school with how much Kat was yelling at him before he had to commit to a life of delinquency.
“So much for goodbyes,” he muttered, shouldering his bag. Jamie looked uncertain but resigned as he went to unlock the door, opening it slowly and peering out. Frank was further down the hall with a brigade of staffers who seemed like they were doing their best to be civil in hope of containing a man who was more tornado than person.
“Hey,” he said. “Looking for me?”
