Chapter 2

Mark waited on front of the school gate, leaning behind the stone wall and peeking at his friends roaming around as a group near the exit where students poured out of the school. Once their position was identified, he proceeded on scanning the groups of people coming out to find Olivia.

It had been a few weeks since the Mino-Olivia incident, and the basketball team remained passive when it came to messing with her, but as Mark had found out that morning from his teammate, Mino had planned something big for Olivia after school, something that didn’t make him comfortable.

“We’re bringing her to my house… Nobody will know that way. We’ll see how much she’s able to handle,” whispered Mino as he sat on the cafeteria tables with his friends, waiting for their class that morning. Mark knew what it meant for Mino to bring a girl to his house…

. And in this case, with that many guys… .

He just couldn’t handle it.

The thought of her being by his friends was beyond him. There was something inside that bothered him, and he wasn’t sure if it was because the thought of was disgusting, or because he was actually worried about Olivia. No.

He didn’t want to be worried about her. She was nothing to him anymore.

Yet he was still there, waiting like a freak on front of the school gate, as if his life depended on it.

Mark finally spotted his target behind a wave of people exiting the school. Her hair was in her usual bun that she rarely let loose. Her brown bag that he recalled being the one Jessica gave her at her 13^th birthday. She stood out like a sore thumb as being one who barely fixed herself.

Before passing the gate leading out the school, Olivia felt a pull on her arm bringing her to the side of the path.

“What?” she asked, taken aback by his sudden halt. Mark peaked past the wall again to check if his friends were still stationed at the same corner. He soon realized that a few of them were spread out now, and it would be difficult to sneak her out.

He eyed her seriously.

“You step out there, you’re gonna regret it.”

“Why?” Olivia pushed her ear bud out of her ear and tugged Mark’s grip away. “If someone is waiting for me to beat me up, I don’t care. He could try me if he wants.”

Trying to break free, Mark pulled harder and bent down to meet her eyes.

“There’s more than one. A lot more,” he said, tightening his grip as she was tugging some more.

“Ok, even better, more asses to kick” she said with confidence, moving towards the exit until Mark shoved her to his chest and shielded her with his body. He could see one of his friends from his basketball team looking around through the mob of people, searching for Olivia himself, and moving amidst the crown.

Mark pressed his right cheek against hers to hide her face. Although Olivia tried pulling away initially, she froze when feeling Mark’s warm skin rub on hers so gently. His chest pushed on hers as his hand came creeping down to her waist. He pivoted at an angle that should’ve hid as much of Olivia’s frame as possible, his fingers now undoing the bun on her head. As her long hair fell to her side by strands, Mark brushed them gently to hide her face.

Olivia didn’t like feeling dominated by men. She much preferred taking the lead and showing her own control, but for the first time, she felt protected, and it made her feel at peace. Mark always had a way of holding her that gave her goose bumps.

“Trust me, I know Mino. When he says that he’s bringing you to his house, it’s not going to be because he wants to hang out. What do you think will happen in a house with one girl and a bunch of boys?”

She was quick to catch on what he was implying and bit her lip.

“Why are you protecting me? I thought you said that we weren’t friends anymore,” remarked Olivia, stuttering because her heart was beating so hard.

Mark came in even closer, as if he weren’t already close enough.

“I’m not doing this for you. I just hate seeing such things,” he commented referring to the image of Olivia getting .

“What do you suggest we do then?”

Mark moved his arms away from her and reached for his bag pack. After searching through it while his arms still circled around Olivia’s torso, he pulled out a dark hoodie and forced her to wear it. He slipped the hood above her head and pressed his lips against her ear.

“You walk out, I’ll take care of them,” he said walking away and leaving her in a daze.

Olivia shook her head and came back to her sense even if she was flustered.

Mark lunged forward towards the group of boys and went directly to Mino. With his finger, he signaled Olivia to walk away unnoticed while he managed to distract Mino briefly.

She lowered her head and marched away discretely behind a group of junior girls, the hood of the sweater covering her face. She avoided making eye contact with anyone.

It was odd, because Olivia was never the type to hide in situations like these, but somehow, Mark’s new authoritative aura managed to get her to follow his lead. She rarely got any protection from anyone, and she didn’t like to either. But with Mark, it was different. She felt like a real girl whenever he treated her like that, regardless of anything he said to oppose otherwise.

Olivia continued to walk at a steady pace towards her house, without once looking up. Honestly, it wasn’t even because she was scared of getting caught, it mostly had to do with hiding her red flushed face.

Nearing her home, she suddenly felt an arm throw a weight on her shoulder, making her almost trip to her knees. He seemed to be out of breath, as if he were running for a while.

“They’re coming to your house!” whispered Mark as he pressed his lips to her ear. They advanced forward as Mark continued to lead her to where they lived. Right before Olivia was able to walk to her front door, Mark pulled her to his patio of his house instead, his arm still tightly wrapped around her, grabbing her shoulders and keeping her close.

“Why, what happen?” she asked before Mark shut the door behind them, peeking out the window.

“They wanted to come and check if you were home. They should be knocking at your door any minute now.”

Olivia’s back was pressed against the wall as Mark stood on front of her, his cheek rubbing unto the side of her head as he continued to look out the opening.

“Go inside,” he ordered, giving her the shivers. “They won’t find you here.”

She took a moment to stare at Mark’s lips. They were right at her eye level and her knees went weak at the sight of them. Olivia slowly moved past him and blinked a few times.

Insanity.

 That was all he was making her feel.

Insanity.

Olivia made her way inside the home she once called her own. Everything was familiar to her, as if it were yesterday that she had left.

The living room was still just about the same as it was four years ago. The couches formed a square  around the center for the Tuan’s regular family game nights and the enormous television stood tall on front of it.

She felt a breeze creep up behind her as Mark past by, walking towards the kitchen. Joining him, she watched as he emptied his bag full of dirty dishes from his lunch.

“Your house didn’t change at all,” she remarked, however, the boy didn’t give off any sort of reaction, ignoring her as best he could.

She turned her back seeing he disregard her existence and moved towards his room at the end of the hallway. She slipped his hoodie off her back and hung it on the hook behind Mark’s door. Turning her head, she smiled seeing that his room was the same as well, no poster removed, no action figure budged, no table shifted.

Everything was the same.

Mark’s room was once Olivia’s cheer up place. Since her house was cold, almost always empty and gloomy, she came to Mark’s place during her down times.

A beam came to her lips the moment she turned to Mark’s bed. Without even thinking, her body moved mechanically towards it as she sat on the edge, remembering all the afternoons she spent laying there with Mark, talking about how heartbroken he was because of Jessica.

Looking back on it, Olivia barely spoke about her problems to Mark, but just being beside him, listening to him, made her feel a tone load better.

He was her comfort for a very long time.

Olivia rolled to the left side of the bed, the spot that was once reserved for her long ago. The cold sheets made her take a deep breath of relief. Her eyes shut on they’re own.

Mark entered the room, his shirt half off as he anticipated changing his clothes as soon as possible from the damp and sticky uniform he had worn for the entire day.

“What the hell?” he jolted in surprise when seeing her on his bed unexpectedly. “What are you doing in my room?” he shouted, pulling his shirt back down. “Get out of here!”

Olivia refused to move. She ignored him and remained in her own world, savoring every comfortable moment.

He stood still to stand his ground and insist on his will, but she didn’t move an inch.

“I’m serious. I want to nap I’m tired.”

Olivia turned her back to face the opposite side of the room, away from where Mark was standing.

Seeing that she wasn’t going to budge anytime soon, and knowing Olivia, moving her was out of the question, Mark came next to her on the bed and placed a pillow in between them both. He stared at her for a while. It had been years since Mark had anyone lay on his bed. He usually hated it unless it was Olivia.

Yet Olivia was here, but he was kicking her out like a stranger.

“I miss this…”

She commented. No answer.

“This was like, my hiding place, back when we were friends. It was the only place where I actually felt safe.”

Mark turned his back on hers, leaning his head on his arm.

“I just wanna lay here for a few minutes.”

Mark flipped the blanket over his head, pretending not to care at all.

“Would you just shut up? Nobody’s listening,” forced Mark with an irritated tone. He shut his eyes and ears in hopes that he wouldn’t hear her anymore. He didn’t want to feel any compassion.

“See, that’s the problem with you people. You never wanted to listen to what I had to say. That’s why none of you know anything. Nobody was ever interested when I was depressed. People only cared when I made the mistake!”

Mark threw the blanket away from his head and pressed his arm on Olivia’s chest. He shoved his weight harder, squishing Olivia under his body mass. His face was red hot as his anger was about to poor out into flames.

“I did care! I always wanted to understand you! But you would never tell me anything!!” he reasoned, pressing down harder. When his anxiety finally went down, he placed both hands on either side of Olivia’s shoulders. He looked down as his body towered over hers. “Do you know what hurts just as much as Jessica dying? It hurts that the person that I trust the most in the world was the one who did it, that the person I thought I knew so well was someone completely different than what I was told she was.”

Mark was leaning on his elbows now.

“I want to know everything. I want to know what exactly I did wrong to let you become a monster.”

Olivia kicked his leg until it let his body fall on her, allowing her to toss him over on his back. She was towering over him now.

She stared at him, and for quite a while too. It was blank, as if she were gathering all her thoughts and placing them side by side to make sense of it. Mark searched her eyes in hopes to understand, but couldn’t. There was a barrier.  

She pushed herself to get off him and slid to the side of his bed, sitting on the cold floor.

“My dad is in a gang,” she stated while keeping her gaze away from his sight. “I’m ashamed of it. I wish it weren’t the case, but that’s why I often got into trouble.”

Mark got up from his position and slid next to her, showing his interest in knowing more. He didn’t want to interrupt her. For once, Olivia was being transparent and vulnerable and he didn’t want to stop that.

“You know when we were younger and my mom was alive, my dad used to visit us a lot. Although mom wasn’t married to him, they had me accidentally, and dad sorta took care of me at the time. He read books to me, he taught me all sorts of self-defense techniques and martial arts. Even if he wasn’t always there, he was an acceptable father. I could’ve sworn that he loved us.”

Olivia stretched out her legs, sat up straight and rubbed her left cheek.

“But when mom died, I noticed that dad stopped caring, and I barely saw him anymore. I realized that he really loved my mom, but he didn’t give a crap about me.”

She swallowed the thick lump in .

“I did my best not to think about it, so I continued doing well at school and practicing martial arts to prove that I was worthy. But he still didn’t give a damn.”

Olivia finally lifted her head for the first time during her speech and leaned her head on the edge of the bed.

“I figured that even if I didn’t have a father who loved me, I still had my grandmother, Jessica, and you. That sounds like enough, right?” She looked at Mark, as if pleading: pleading for him to understand. “Honestly, you guys were great friends. I would have probably killed myself earlier if it weren’t for you.”

She swallowed any tears that would have potentially fallen.

“But I made the mistake of starting to like you, a lot, more than I should have.”

Mark parted his lips to say something, but ended up shutting them again.

“I didn’t do it on purpose, I promise… It was just hard, you know… You were always talking about Jessica. Your parents always favored her too. I figured it was because she was better than me, and that I wasn’t worth loving, just like my father thought I wasn’t worth loving.”

Mark scratched the side of his head.

“When we were twelve, you started hanging out with her more than me. And don’t get me wrong, I knew why. You told me it was because you liked her. But I was twelve; of course I would get jealous.”

There was a pause.

“Once Jessica went out with Mino, I remember going to your house finding you in a complete mess. I couldn’t even get you out of it, because you liked her so much. You stopped talking to me. Jessica stopped talking to me because she was so busy with Mino. I was alone and tired of being the one people came to because they needed me. Yet nobody came to me when I needed them.”

She brought her arms to her knees, hugging her legs to her chest.

“Out of loneliness, I went to where my father was staying out of my own will. He was living in a ghetto area with dangerous people, but I went anyway. I made myself believe that even if none of my friends needed me around, maybe my dad would miss me. So, I found him and the place he was staying. It took days to get him to see me, but I had a feeling that it would be worth it. I asked him if I could stay with him because I thought I could fit in.”

Her voice croaked.

“He said no obviously, but I persisted day in day out. I begged him to the point that I started copying him, taking drugs, getting angry for no reason. One day, he gave up and finally acknowledged me. I still remember the day he told me to prove that I was worthy.”

She closed her eyes, covering all the shame that drowned her for so long. Mark hadn’t known that she got into drugs.

“He said that…” Her words came out with great difficulty as she spoke slowly. “He would love me and allow me to live by his side… if I prove that I was loyal to him and that I could sacrifice part of my life to him. He wanted me to kill someone I loved, someone I cared about.”

Mark’s jaw dropped, his face tilting and his eyes watering.

 “I told myself that there was no way that I would do such a thing.” After hiding her face for a few seconds, Olivia her lips and found the courage to speak again. “I began to walk home while smoking what my dad told me would take away my stress. I came home, smelling like alcohol and drugs. My grandmother looked at me, and was so disappointed. She got at angry and it made me mad at myself for letting down the only person on earth who still loved me.”

Olivia wanted to cry so bad, but she pinched herself.

“She said that she wished I turned out like Jessica, who was good at school, who was lady-like, who had everything together… I got so angry, and hurt. Everything was always about Jessica. Jessica. I wasn’t as good as Jessica.”

Mark was the one crying now. He didn’t even care how ridiculous it looked at that point.

“So I thought about what my dad said. Long and hard. The more I thought, the more I wanted to do it. I only really had three choices: grandmother, you or Jessica. The one who kept me alive, the one I was in love with, or the one I was jealous of. Who do you think I would pick?”

Olivia glared at Mark for the first time since the story started, as if telling him that the answer was obvious.

“I hesitated, you know, before killing her. When we met up at the park for the first time in weeks, I almost held back. I wanted to talk myself out of doing something stupid to her. But we started to argue and we began saying hurtful things to each other. At one point, I think I pissed her off and she said something that made me lose my mind.”

Mark didn’t speak, but in his eyes, Olivia could tell that he was curious to know what exactly it was she said.

“She told: ‘No wonder Mark is in love with me, and not you.’”

He froze, not really knowing how to react.

“Of course I don’t actually think she meant it. She was just angry at me for saying things I shouldn’t have. But I remember at the time, I was annoyed because…” She searched for words. “She basically put herself on a higher level than me, as if rubbing in my face that I wasn’t as important as she was. Also, she knew you were in love with her, yet she chose to hurt your feelings and ignore them. That pissed me off. Because I worked so hard for you to love me, yet you loved her naturally, and she chose to ignore it. So I just did it! I killed her.”

Mark couldn’t even find words to say. He was utterly shocked by her story, and he wasn’t expecting such a thing. He began to look back on it, and realized that everything made sense, but it hurt. The uncertainty of it being guilt or anger invaded his spirits.

“I’m not trying to excuse myself. I deserve everything that happened to me. I needed to go to juvie to reflect on my actions and learn how to be alone. Being away from everyone made me realize that even if I had no idea if any of you still loved me after my mistake, I still loved you all, and that was enough.”

She smiled, her face still perfectly dry as she did not let a single tear drop out. Near the end of herself, she began to laugh, even. Mark was amazed at how she was able to remain composed while revealing such a shameful mistake. In some sense, he wanted to accuse her of being stupid and not telling him about her feelings earlier, or about not bringing some sense to him during the time he was blinded by his emotions.

He understood now. After so many years of disregarding her, he came to the realization that what killed Jessica wasn’t just a jealous friend, but it was an angry, lonely heart of someone who wanted someone to love her. Looking back on it, Mark realized that he never really looked after Olivia all that much. He had always just assumed that she was tougher than he was and wouldn’t let anything affect her anyway. As far as he could remember, she had always laughed everything off, as if her pain was a joke. There were even times when Mark saw her as a man, an older brother that protected him when he was hurting.

For the first time in his life, the friend that he once viewed as a boy became a weak, vulnerable girl, who simply hid all her weaknesses behind her tough aura.

As he stared at her some more, he noticed that she was completely different now. Not only did she grow up faster than most, but she grew up to be a woman. The tough look she always carried seemed quite soft now. She was a lot more beautiful than he remembered.

She was stunning, actually. He couldn’t believe that he never noticed before.

The curls of her dark hair fell to her shoulders. Her face was completely bare, no makeup in trace.  

Mark’s eyes went from her glowing eyes to her lip, and before he knew it, he found himself making out with her, caressing the side of her neck and pulling away the hair from her face.

With more eagerness, he pulled her body onto his lap as he continued to pull her closer, kissing her with hunger. His other hand rubbed her waist and began moving up her shirt, near her bra. Olivia, although slightly confused as to what was going on, grew numb as the kiss became sloppier. Mark began to leave a wet trail of kisses from her lips to her neck before she pulled away abruptly.

They looked at each other for quite a long period of time before Mark carried her off his lap, unto the floor.

“I don’t know why I just did that. I’m sorry.”

Olivia coughed and avoided his strong and piercing gaze.

“It’s cool,” she responded, rubbing the back of her neck, but in reality, the whole thing was just so out of the blue. Her heart pounded out of her chest.

Mark turned away, trying not to make the atmosphere leak awkwardness. Truth be told though, he wanted more, and he didn’t know why.

 “Don’t get the wrong idea… It was my bad.”

“Of course. You’re just probably angry and did that out of shock.”

But he wasn’t angry.

Happy New Year! God Bless You all!