Tears of the Broken by A.M Hudson

steps.
    My
thoughts strayed to the last five minutes of my life as I walked
beside David, and the humiliation of being unpopular trickled away
with each second I studied his face.
    Look
at him. He’s not just a boy, but kindness embodied in perfection. I
don’t deserve his compassion—or his friendship.
    He
shouldn’t have stood up for me, but I’ll never forget
it.

Chapter
Three
     
    T h e bell to
resume classes tolled before we even made it to the sunshine. David
smiled gently and jerked his head in the other direction. “Come on,
your next class is this way.”
    “ How
do you know that?” I asked, running after him.
    “ I
read your lesson plan, remember?”
    “ Yeah, but, how did you retain all that info. I can’t even
remember what classes I actually signed up for.”
    David said nothing, just smiled—a kind of secret smile—and
walked close to me as we headed back up the stairs, passing a
carrot-top girl, who waved at me on her way down to the ground
floor.
    “ That’s Ellie.” David leaned closer. “She was sitting next to
Ryan in music class.”
    “ Oh,
okay.” I frowned. I don’t remember her.
    Ellie glanced up at David from under her brow, and her soft
red hair fell around her blushing cheeks in ringlets. “Girls seem
to like you around here,” I said.
    “ Not
really. It’s just the ah…want what you can’t have theory, I guess.”
He shrugged once.
    “ Oh.
So, you wouldn’t date any of the girls, here?” I asked, twiddling
my fingers.
    “ It’s not that. I just keep a pretty low profile. I’m not one
for dating, as such.” We weaved through the staring students, and
David kept his eyes forward as we walked. “Sometimes girls take an
interest in me, but they know nothing will ever happen, so they’ve
stopped asking. Now they just stare.”
    So—no dating. Is he telling me this because he’s noticed how
captivated I am by him? I should probably tell him that I don’t
really feel that way, that he’s just misreading my signals. But the
truth is, if he thinks I like him—he’d be right. Pity he doesn’t
date, but at least he let me down gently.
    David’s head whipped up and his eyes widened as he came to an
abrupt halt. “Um—I, uh—I really didn’t mean it like that. I—” he
shook his head, but didn’t finish.
    “ Didn’t mean what?” I smiled and shrugged, holding both palms
out.
    “ When I said I don’t date, I—” he paused again as the
corridors became silent and empty. The voice of the teacher,
already addressing the rest of the group, filtered out from my next
classroom. I want David to finish what he was saying, but we’re so
late.
    David, with his brow pulled tight in the centre and his lips
slightly twitching, drew my books from the stack under his arm and
placed them in my hand. Inconspicuously, I lifted them to my nose.
Mmm, they smell like David—a sweet, orangey-chocolate
smell.
    “ Ara, I—”
    “ It’s okay, David, you don’t owe me an explanation.” I tried
to grin. I know it looks fake, I can feel it. “I only just met you,
after all. If you don’t date, that’s fine. I hadn’t placed myself
in that category, anyway. Friends?” I shrugged with the phony smile
in place and backed into the doorway of my History
class.
    “ Ah,” the teacher said. “Class, we finally have a new
student.”
    David’s jaw set stiff and he looked down at the ground. After
waiting another few seconds for his response, I turned away from
him to face the class and smiled for real, feeling more confident
seeing a familiar face in the room. “Hi Dad,” I whispered as I
stepped up to his desk, making sure no one else would hear, then
looked back toward the door. The empty corridor stared back at
me.
    “ Attention please?” Dad called out over the noisy class. They
went silent immediately. “Class, this is Ara-Rose. I’m sure some of
you have already met her—”
    I
cringed and cut him off, “Actually, it’s just Ara.”
    He
looked sideways at me for