Chapter 144: Nauseous

For the past four days, I’ve been barely existing. The days went by with me hardly feeling my presence. I felt too numb to feel anything, not even pain. Everything was back to normal with Mr. Brett. He was just my teacher, and I, another one of his students. He has become so formal, you won’t believe there was ever something between us.

I had finally come to terms with it after trying severally to reach out to him. After that day he cut things between us, he began locking his office, so I just couldn’t access him except during classes. I couldn’t try anything stupid during classes, he had completely left me in a hopeless situation.

I’ve been working to get my life straight. It’s been difficult considering how much I’ve derailed, but the urgency of the situation required that of me. I have just a month until graduation and if I wanted to graduate, I had to make up for my accumulated poor grades. I didn’t give myself time to think, I studied most of the time and had minimal leisure so that I don’t think of how much I miss him.

I had hope. The good grades I had before I messed up would go a long way to neutralize the bad ones. Thankfully, I hadn’t gone too far in messing things up. Mr. Brett was right and I was gradually beginning to understand him. If I had gotten any more bad grades than I did, the good ones I’ve been having wouldn’t even be able to redeem my situation.

I’ve worked on my grades, but I had one more thing to make right. My friendship with Jason. All I’ve ever been to him is a bad friend after all he has done for me. I wanted to make it up to him. He had a game tonight and I was going to be there to support him.

Evelyn helped me pick out a proper dress. I should have been on Jason’s jersey, but he had a girlfriend now and just two jerseys. I’ve begun hanging out with Vivian and she wasn’t unlikable. I found myself enjoying her company. She and Jason were cute.

Evelyn also insisted that I put some make up on. She rubbed me a thick red lipstick that made me look sluttish.

“Now no man would resist those lips,” she said, placing her cheeks on mine. She was looking at me through the mirror.

“I’m going for a game not a man hunt Evy.”

“I know you don’t like football and you’re only going because of Jason. So how about you make it a little less boring and turn it into a man hunt?”

“Evy!” I exclaimed giggling.

“By the time you come back, you should have gotten yourself a man,” she encouraged me.

“I’m not interested in having a man.” That wasn’t true. I wanted a man and I know exactly who that man was. “Besides, why do you keep saying ‘man’, you mean hormonal teenage boys not men.”

She laughed out loud. “Anyone.”

I furrowed my eyebrows and removed my gaze from the mirror to look at her.

“Anyone? You’re encouraging me to look for men even way older than me?”

She shrugged. “Just saying that you shouldn’t limit yourself.”

“What age bracket?”

“Anyone from your age to Mr. Brett’s age.” She was looking hard at me as she said that.

I removed my gaze from her immediately. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Why was she specific about Mr. Brett?”

Evelyn sighed. “Misha I’m your sister, did you really think I wouldn’t have figured it out?”

My heart skipped. How the fuck did she find out?

“How did you know?” I muttered.

“It was easy, Misha. You totally changed out of the blue. You haven’t been the Misha we used to know, so of course I needed to figure out what was responsible.”

“You stalked me,” I finished.

“Yes, and I’m sorry about that. I was worried, I couldn’t help it.”

“Does mom know?”

“I would never do that to you.”

“Thanks.” That was all I could say.

There was silence for a while before she spoke up.

“You really like him, don’t you?”

I nodded in response.

“You do know the gravity of what you were doing.”

“I do Evy. I don’t want to talk about this. We’ve already cut things off by the way.”

“Ok.” she said, squeezing my shoulder gently and resumed making me up.

My heart was pounding in my chest. Mr. Brett’s words were reechoing on my head.

‘These things always have a way of getting out.’

How many more people were uncomfortable and suspicious of my sudden change in behavior and began to stalk me? The thought of it was really irritating me.

“Do you think anyone else knows about this?”

“Not any that I know of.” She looked at me in the mirror and sensed that I was agitated. “Everything would be fine Misha.”

She hugged me from behind and I held her hand. Evelyn has always had this positive energy emitting from her that is just relieving.

“How old is he?”

“26.”

She didn’t ask further questions but I could guess that she was calculating the age difference. I’ve never really been interested about that, but now that she brought it up, I couldn’t help but take note of it. I would be eighteen this year, so Mr. Brett was 8 years older than me. I didn’t find that particularly bad. The only thing that wasn’t helping matters was the fact that he was my teacher

By the time Evy was done with my make up, I was in awe. For the first time I felt very beautiful. I liked the look. In fact, I liked my general appearance. I was wearing a red short flare skirt and a matching crop top. I really wanted to pack my hair in a ponytail but Evelyn insisted that I let it down. I didn’t let her insist on my footwear. That one had so much to do with my comfort and the last thing I wanted to be was uncomfortable. I wore a black sneaker. The discomfort of wearing a very short skirt was only the much I could take.

Jason came to pick by 5:00pm. The first thing he mouthed when he saw me was, ‘Wow.’ He had to go and pick Vivian too, so by the time we arrived at school, it was 5:40pm. The game was to begin by 6:00pm.

I was overwhelmed by the crowd. Vivian helped me feel relaxed by engaging me in one conversation to another only pausing to chant Jason’s name when he got the ball. I joined in cheering for him too.

In between the game, Vivian and I treated ourselves to cone ice cream. After licking it, I suddenly began feeling very uneasy and needed to use the restroom. I excused myself and left for the restroom. I didn’t know exactly how I felt or what I even needed to do to ease myself. So I sat on the floor and rested my head on the wall with my eyes shut.

A sudden feeling of nausea washed over me and I stood up immediately. Next thing I knew, I was emptying the contents of my stomach in the toilet. By the time I was done throwing up, I was weak to the bones.