I’ve been gone awhile, but here I am with a brand new chapter to one of my stories for Mileven Week
This is the second chapter to Sometimes Life Hits Back
Sometimes Life Hits Back Chapter 2
Suddenly, Eleven was starting to see Mike everywhere.
She would see his head flash by in the hallway, sometimes in a deep discussion with the curly-haired boy -Dustin. His head sticks out like a sore thumb at the front of her English class now that she knows who he is, and his table of rambunctious nerds at lunch is much closer to where she eats than she realized.
It’s odd to think that once someone enters your gravity, you start to realize that they were actually always close by, hanging on the edges but never really coming close enough to be in your orbit.
She doesn’t know yet if it bothers her.
How had it taken this long for her to notice his near constant presence? They had a class together, she’s pretty sure that she recognizes his messy hair from the tech crew that sets up for the announcers at her lacrosse games, and when you got right down to it, he was seriously cute.
“Hey, what happened to you yesterday?”
Eleven felt herself tense, and she jumped back in surprise at Max’s sudden intrusion into her thoughts, “What?”
Max stared at her for a second, her face scrunched in confusion, “The team grabbed food after practice and we were noticeably down a captain. You were supposed to meet us at Benny’s, what happened?”
“Oh.” Eleven felt her mind whirring trying to think of a normal way to say I found a boy half dead and bleeding in the middle of the hallway and I couldn’t just leave him there so I helped drag him outside to his friends. Once she realized that there really wasn’t a normal way to say it, she just went with exactly that, “I found a boy in the hallway that had been beaten to a pulp and I helped his friends get him out of here. Benny’s must have just slipped my mind, I guess.”
When she looked at Max’s face, the sheer shock and confusion plastered on it was laughable, “You what? Who was it? Who beat him up?”
“His name was Mike. And obviously it was that imbecile Harrington.” She scowled as she thought of that runt. He had been her least favorite person for a while now, but seeing first hand what he does to others made her like him even less, which she didn’t know was possible.
Max didn’t seem to notice her change in demeanor, seemingly lost in thought, “Wait, Mike? As in Mike Wheeler? The AV club kid that helps with our games?”
“Hm. I can’t believe he was even here that late. And where were his friends? Doesn’t he always travel in a pack?” Max asked.
Eleven looked at her weirdly, “How do you know so much about him?”
Max gave her a duh look, “His friend Lucas is my lab partner.”
“Oh.” She shrugged, “Well I don’t know what he was doing here so late, or why his friends weren’t with him.”
Mike’s face ached terribly as his mother redid the hasty bandages that Dustin had plastered across his face the day before. He winced as she pulled off the Star Wars bandage from his eyebrow, and replaced with a butterfly bandage that tugged weirdly at his skin.
“There.” She said, brushing his hair to the side as she turned to clean the bandage wrappers off of the counter, “All done.”
Mike turned to the mirror to inspect the damage.
He had cuts littering his face, probably from that stupid ring Troy like to flaunt all the time. There was one running through his left eyebrow, another across the bridge of his nose. His lips were split in two places, and there was a bruise on his jawline. Most of the damage was on the left side of his face, save for the small cut on his right cheek one from where he had slammed his face into the ground.
Overall, he looked like shit.
He sighed as he turned away, moving out of the bathroom, kissing his mom’s cheek on the way, “Thanks, Mom.”
Mike could feel a dull pain in his ribs, briefly considering the possibility that Harrington had cracked one before deciding that it would definitely hurt worse if that was the case.
No matter how much his mom pestered him about who had taken to pummeling him, he would just tell her that someone had jumped him on the way out to his car at the end of the day. Which, while being a total lie, was really the best thing to give her, knowing that if he told her Troy Harrington had beaten him down in the middle of the school hallway, she’d have taken it to the principal immediately. That would have only made things worse, though, as Troy was a star athlete. Without any real proof that he was the culprit, it would’ve only caused another beating.
So he’d kept his mouth shut.
That day, at lunch, Mike noticed her.
The girl that helped him when he was a bleeding mess laying in the middle of a hallway. He knew exactly who she was, having seen her superb athletic skills whenever he helped set up sound equipment for the lacrosse games. Eleven.
He could see her almost perfectly from his normal seat, right next to Dustin. Her dark brown hair was falling out of a messy braid, and she was laughing at something one of her friends had said.
Mike jumped as he whipped his head to look at Dustin, “Huh?”
“You should go and thank her,” Dustin said with a look on his face that said duh, “She helped me drag your unconscious ass all the way out of the school and into your car. You should thank her for it.”
“No! I’m not going over there.” Mike said.
“Mike.” Lucas was leaning over the table, “You are going to get your ass up and go over there and thank her for practically carrying you out of the school. Trust me, your gangly limbs do not cooperate when you’re out cold. The girl deserves a damn medal for having to deal with. The least you can do is say thank you.”
Mike looked at him, dread falling over him as he looked over at Will, losing all hope as he nodded his head in encouragement.
Once he realized there was no way to talk his way out of this, he got up and took a deep breath before walking over to the table.
A couple of the girls looked up at him as he approached Eleven from behind, and he felt like they knew he was nervous. He had to push aside his doubts and look away from their face, instead focusing on the braid.
When he was right behind her, the whole table had gone quiet, the ones facing Eleven staring at him hard.
It took Eleven a couple of seconds to notice that all of her friends weren’t even looking at her while she spoke. She turned to see what they were looking at, and suddenly, Mike was there once again. He looked awful, his face splattered with cuts and bruises, butterfly bandages adorning his features and disguising his freckles.
“Uh, hi.” He said, reaching up to the back of his neck, scratching it as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, “I just wanted to thank you. You know, for yesterday.”
She blinked up at him, “Um, it was really no problem. I couldn’t just leave you there.”
His hand shot out towards her and he was quick to respond, “No, that’s the thing, you totally could’ve. And there’s a good amount of people that I know who would’ve left me there. But you didn’t, you-“ he paused, a small smile grew on his face “-you dragged my unconscious ass through the school. You didn’t have to, but you did. So thank you.”
Before she could even open her mouth to respond he had started walking backwards, smiling once more before turning around to join his friends.
She frowned in confusion, staring at his mussed hair. When she turned to face her friends again, they were staring at her.
Max was the first to speak, “That was weird.”
“Yeah.” She replied, looking over her shoulder again to look at him, “It was.”
