The Puzzle Within Read online

“I kinda can’t. These tics kinda make me noticed,” I murmur as he walks over to the sound station, flicks some buttons and a beat drops though the room. I jump at the noise then Colton turns, winking at me and starts to rap out a song. His eyes stay on mine as he battles with the beat. His body begins to move, my mind begins to register the lyrics of NF Let me go. Standing, I begin to harmonize with him as he raps. Our voices blend and mesh together in a unique way that works. His eyes light up and a smile curls at his lips. Damn we sound good. The rasp of his voice mixing with the high of mine. Delish, as I watch him. He’s all alluring and safe feeling. I can’t even see what Tenley meant about the dark of the boys’ club. I just see a boy who is hot as sin, and I would follow him all the way to hell and back in a heartbeat.

  “You just feel misunderstood,” I say, watching him.

  “I feel like a broken record, babe.”

  Then the bell rings out. How the hell was this a period? Like, wow, time is lost with him.

  He picks up his bag. “Come, babe. Let’s bounce.” Grabbing my hand, he pulls me from the room and out into the corridor of students milling about before the next class, and we just walk through the sea of them. As my tics take over and my body jolts as the noise, the people, the senses are all too much, Colton picks up the pace, his arm tight around my body as my hands find my ears. “It’s all too much this fucking school thing. I told them, I told them not to put me into mainstream,” I say as the tics hit. “Meow-brook-brook-hot-bitch-dick-love-eyes-god-lick-me-kiss-it-meow-merrrr. Argggggggh, my brain it hurts.” The door to the outside is to the left of the corridor and Colton turns fast, pulling me with him. He kicks the double door open and pulls me right out into the fresh air. The noise fades behind us as we just walk. He just keeps striding over toward the carpark. His car bleeps, the indicators light up as it unlocks. He looks at me. “Get in, babe,” he says, winking while opening the door for me. I slide into his GTO without even thinking. The cool leather seats on my body, the wide-open windshield in front, and the smell of Colton inside. I allow him to just take me away from all the noise.

  Pulling my legs up so my head rests on my knees, I watch Colton drive.

  Fast car blares out around us, I hum to the lyrics. This song is life. So beautiful yet so painful. Tracey Chapman is a genius.

  Reminds me of the new song by P!nk called 90 Days. Stunningly broken and beautiful. She is such an amazing human. She’s so raw and open. She gives me strength in the dark when I feel like I am losing myself, like this damn condition is getting too much for me, and I just wanna fall away from it all and hit up the afterlife, Tourette’s free.

  “What are you thinking about over there, babe? You’re up in your head something fierce.” Colton’s ruff voice cuts through my pity party and sends shivers down my spine.

  Looking at him and smiling, I reply, “Just how much I love music. How it’s saving me when all I wanna do is hit up the afterlife and live there away from all that is Tourette’s and Lucy.” A weak smile plays on my lips as he runs his tongue over his.

  “Well, babe, don’t be hitting them up too soon, I kinda like having you around.” His eyes go back to the road as we are winding up a hill. Trees line each side cracking the window. The fresh scent of wet bush hits my senses and sends me into my thoughts again. I must have missed Colton’s questions as his hand finds my thigh, the heat hot, leaving a warm buzz. Missing the warmth as his hand rises up and he begins to run the pad of his thumb along my cheek slightly causing little goosebumps to ripple.

  I turn into his touch. He’s a boy and I am slowly ticking things off my little origami box of wishes, wants and desires.

  Pulling off the wendy road, Colton pulls to a stop on the edge of a cliff. I stare in awe at the vista before me.

  “OMG, where are we? This is stunning,” I say as I push the door open and step out. The cool breeze whips around us with the taste of sea salt in it.

  The sea stretches for miles before me with mountains and hills. Clouds in the sky are so blue, beautiful as the sea changes from a blue to green and rolling waves crash onto the rocks below.

  “This, babe, is the Coromandel.” His hand wraps around my waist as he pulls my back into his front. His other hand snakes around my torso linking with his other hand.

  My body falls back into his as my heart beats to a rapid beat. If this is what this thing called love feels like, then I’m all in. I want more of this. If this is what having a best friend is like, then hella yes.

  “Is this love.” I question him, his breath is warm on the side of my neck.

  “Love you ask,” he says to me.

  “Well, yes. Love,” I say back, shaking my head into him as a new clicking tic, a clicking of my tongue, begins to form and sound out around us. I try hard to suppress this one. “Cluck-click-meow-cluck-Click.” Oh, heck my body tenses as my head jolts forward and back.

  “Lucy, babe.” His head peers over my shoulder as he leans around me and pulls me back deeper into him. I swear if I get pulled any deeper into him, I will be inside this man’s body looking at him from the inside out.

  “Don’t suppress around me, babe,” he murmurs as my eyes seek out his, the jolts sending him back and forward making me dizzy. My eyes slam shut as the tic, this new tic, takes over. For a solid two minutes I am clucking and clicking, meowing and shit-giggles-unicorn-farts-baby-eat-a-dick ticing out around us. My voice falling on the wind and crashing out around us like the waves on the rocks below.

  His laugh whips inside my head. His arms roll up and down my arms. It feels sensual, if that is the right word for this insane feeling.

  “Love, babe, is definitely this. Love is whatever you feel is real,” he says to me. “It’s the goosebumps, the butterflies, the breath-taking, heart stopping, fuck me moments that you feel. It’s a solid ride and die feeling, a lot like this.” His lips touch my neck, searing my skin with a hot kiss. “I have seen a different person in me when I am with you. It’s been like, what, two days and I can’t explain it. How I feel the pull to you. Like they say, you fall in love with one look, and I fuckling fell, babe.” My eyes flutter open as he pulls me backwards and down into him on the grass. Both laying on our sides, the wind’s cool to the sun’s warmth. “I was born to fill a place in a hierarchy. I was born to fill the steps of my predecessors before me. All I have ever known, and had to bend to, is different now. When I look at you, all I can do is apologize to the gods for the things I wanna do to you: keep you, help you but break you, and shatter you to fit within the mold of my life. I know it will hurt you and yet I can’t stay away. So, I wanna pull you in, closer, tighter because I’m not a man that can compromise.”

  I look at him as my tics still wreak havoc on my body. His hands cup the sides of my face, hot and heavy, yet safe and scary all rolled into one. I see in his eyes the horror and pain that could come with him and this omission. I may have Tourette’s and Asperger’s but I still feel fear and still see danger, and he has neon signs blinking above his head in seven shades of red. Yet I still wanna just get lost in him.

  “I have no clue what this is. All I know is that my whole life I have been waiting for waves to take me and pull me under, to drown me so I didn’t have to deal with this. Fuck-dick-bag-not-friends-wanna-fuck-suck-my-cock-rainbow-man-unicorn-farts-cluck,-click,-cluck. I have dreamed of finding a guy that screamed hope, love, safety. You scream all of them but dark, danger, faith and something I can’t quite put a finger on yet, but I wanna be around you. I don’t need to lie, suppress or hide.”

  I watch him as his eyes move side to side. His lip turns up in a sensual curl as a low groan vibrates from his body between us. I take this moment to shuffle into him more. The overwhelming need to feel him and have his warmth takes my breath away.

  “I think, babe, that you have the most beautiful mind. If you trust me, I will only ever do bad things that will in the end turn into good things.”

  Slowly my hands seek out his body. One gripping his h
ip, his body taut and ripped, the other snaking around his neck. His skin is hot with the slight lacing of cool salty air. I watch his body still as he sucks in a sharp breath. Panic grips me as a wave of fury like rage grips his eyes. I still, like I have done something wrong. Like I shouldn’t have touched him.

  “Babe,” he breathes between us. My eyes move from his eyes to his lips.

  “Fuck-fudge-nonsense-bum-brush-whistle-mutt-bag-fun-fact-you-loser-cluck,-cluck,-cluck.” My head twitches as my fingers dig into his skin. His eyes burn with fire. Head jolt, fingers pinch, cluck, cluck, head roll, jaw twitch.

  Heat creeps up my neck, coating my cheeks. I can feel it; I am losing so much with this damn disorder. My mind is so clouded that the next movement completely shocks me. His lips are on mine. His tongue pushing my lips apart, claiming my mouth as my mind tries to go over the spreadsheet, I made from Google research on kissing. How to kiss, how to be sensual, how to get lost in the moment. All is lost though, floating in the space between my brain and my ears as his lips dual with mine and my body hums, moving with him like it has been making out with boys for years. Breathless, he takes all the air from me with a searing passionate kiss that could absolutely get you pregnant

  that could absolutely get you pregnant. Breaking free, his eyes look into mine and he screams in a warning sign, but in that moment, I realize that its danger I want, the dark I need, and this is the guy with whom I would definitely gamble the devil for.

  Love steals your heart.

  Love steals your breath.

  It will steal my sanity.

  Love is a damn thief.

  And….. We will let it happen repeatedly…

  Folding this into a little paper heart, I lock it away inside the shoe box. I’m sliding it under my bed just as my door is whipped open and in walks Tenley like a whirlwind.

  “Whatcha doing? I missed the hell outta you today, little miss no show.”

  She falls beside me. Her legs cross and her head falls back on my bed.

  I eye her and the smile on her face.

  “Cool room, Lucy.” She looks around.

  Her eyes lock back over mine. My stare is blank as I see her mouth running a mile a minute in her normal fashion. I just can’t hear what she is saying. My head is too loud with all the tics I am holding in. This is my place. The only place I can tic freely without even a second thought. She’s in my room at my house. I have never had a friend over before. For that matter, another human who is interested in me and wanting to hang out and well talk like she is doing right now, a lot of talking.

  I close my eyes briefly, swallowing down the lump that is firmly in place inside the walls of my throat.

  Tenley clicks her fingers in front of my face, the noise pulling me from my trance-like state as I flutter my eyes open, blinking at the light. The dark is so much calmer than the bright, harsh light of reality that a human, other than my parents and brother, is in my room.

  I tuck my hair behind my ear.

  “Yeah,” I say to, well, my friend I suppose. I don’t know when this quite happened, but it did. She’s here and that makes her a friend by default, doesn’t it?

  “Hey, are we now like friends? Or are you just like sorry for me and my ticing? Is that why you’re like nice to me?” I question her, my eyes squinting as I try to read her face. It’s hopeless, she’s like a wall of seriousness, and in a split second of me panicking, she breaks out in laughter. I have a strange feeling it’s pointed at me.

  “Are you laughing at me?” Now my brow furrows.

  “Yup, I kinda am, weird girl, and yes we are friends. Do I feel sorry for you? Hell no.”

  She says this in a manner that has a smile cracking over my lips as the fuck-off-liar-bullshit-calling-bullshit-oooo-yay-friends-yay-love that never had a friend before. I begin to rock back and forward as a rush of air is pushed out my nose with a puffing sound. OMG, is this a new tic? God, I hope not.

  Tenley’s laughter continues as she wraps an arm around me and pulls me into her. We lay on the floor in my room looking up at the ceiling and the posters I have coated over the cream paint. “What’s with all the roses and lily pictures, babe?” she asks me as I look at them.

  “They are my fave and calm me on a bad day. It’s nice to just look up and fuck-it-puff,-puff-cluck,-cluck. God damn, sorry. I mean it’s nice to just look up at something beautiful.” I answer her question, the long way of course.

  “I get it, babe. I get it.” Her voice trails off, and I sense a feeling of sadness or hiding of something, but the body tics and this new puffing air from my nose tic is stealing all my damn concentration right now. I wouldn’t even be able to ask with a full tic attack so instead I hit play on my iPod. I let the sweet voice of Emile Sande fill the room and take me away. I lay there and just listen to Tenley talk as I hum away the tics.

  The school corridors cave in on me this morning as I walk in with Tenley. Colton wasn’t in the car park and neither was his GTO. The sound of lockers closing, and the snickering voices of the students echo inside my head. As I allow panic to settle in my stomach, the bitch squad steps from the side of their lockers and right into my line of vision. Directly across from my locker, Tenley’s hand reaches for mine. Her warmth is an anchor, but the tics start as I reach my locker, and then the laughter begins. I reach my locker amidst, “Bitch-squad-meow-cluck-click-woof-woof- dog-breathe-piss-leg have a dick-up ya.” My head jolts as the laughter becomes so intense that it slams against the side of my brain and I body tic.

  “You’re fine, Lucy. Ignore and don’t suppress,” Tenley says to me as I grip at the side of my locker, trying to hold myself in this one spot. Don’t run, don’t run. The chant rolls over my body’s ticing brain. The girls step in closer to me. “Slut-whore-cow-pussy-bags-shooo-get-leave-me-back-up-meow-woof-meow,” I tic out. Tenley steps in front of me as they close in, taking all the air from my lungs.

  “So, tic girl, think you’re pretty neat, do ya?” She spits at me. I see the spittle flying like dust motes towards my face.

  “I have no quack-meow-quack-cluck understanding of what your comment means. For I have done nothing quack-meow-back-up for-for me to think I am neat.” I look over Tenley’s shoulder.

  “Smart as well as stupid I see.”

  Running my tongue over my drying lips, I look at her. Honestly, I can’t help but laugh at Larissa in that moment.

  “Smart and stupid are not two words that are required to be in the same sentence, other than to make the person, whom I point out as you, to look and sound stupid,” I state to her, leaning slightly over Tenley’s shoulder. Larissa’s hands fly out toward my face. I retreat slightly. The group she’s with gasp out in shock. Not for her but at what I said to her as I see people have milled around. Tenley is fast, a lot faster than Larissa, and for that I am thankful. Her hand snaps out, taking hold of Queen bitch’s wrist. More gasps come from the squad and students. I tic uncontrollably by this time and start to poke at Tenley’s back and pull my hair. Tenley’s voice is crisp and full of dark depth.

  “You touch my friend or come at her again and I will cut you into tiny pieces.” With one fluid movement she twists Larissa’s arm behind her back, turning her toward the group of students and pushing her into them fast. She falls, skidding on her hands and knees as a shrill of laughter rips over us. All the noise is too much, my hands fly over my ears and I rock; just rock, needing to breathe, calm down and quiet. Pulling my headphones from my pocket fast, I jam the buds into my ear. I hit play on my iPod, not even checking, changing or seeing what song is up next. I just need the music.

  Heartlines by the Broods drifts inside the space between my ears and my brain as I just let it take me. Before I know it, I am singing, I am calm, and I am free of all the rage. It’s disappearing. All the dark is turning light and the ticing is all but gone. Tenley turns me in her arms. Her touch has me opening my eyes, and all I see is her face. But past her face is their faces. All their faces. Th
ey all are staring; the bell has rung. Teachers are walking from their classrooms wanting to know where we are. All eyes are on me. I don’t stop, I just keep singing and take Tenley’s hand and I pull her off toward the English classroom.

  “Those girls are just bitches, Lucy. Don’t worry about them,” Tenley says to me as I look out the window in English. I see Colton’s GTO off to the far side of the school field, not on school grounds, but the road.

  Him and the boys are all huddled on the field and the bitch squad is headed their way. “What the fuck’s up with that?” I question more to myself, but Tenley pushes me, leans in and looking over the scene before us.

  “They are all fucking trouble, Lucy. Let’s not even bother.” Her tone is clipped, and it has the hairs standing on the back of my neck. “You need a high level of pedigree to get into that shit show, babes. I thought maybe Colton was different.”

  I ignore her statement and just watch them. They all command the atmosphere surrounding them. Even from this far away I can feel it, see it, sense something different with them all and this place.

  “They own this school, babes. I mean like own it, and you should fall away now, like let’s not even let you get stuck into that web.”

  I watch as Colton holds his hands up in front of him as head leader of squad bitch tries to snake her grossly skinny, over privileged arms around his waist. “Oh no the hoe didn’t. Hoe-bitch-squad-hoe-nope.” Damn tics. The class goes quiet and looks my way. “What!” I snap. “It’s been days now, my ticing shouldn’t come as a shock,” I bite out again as I see Colton and one of the other guys talking rather close to each other. Colton pushes the dude in the chest. He bounces back with his fists balled. Colton meets him with balled fists of his own and she is there again. Her hands reaching for his shoulders as he shrugs her off. His eyes glaring fire at her as her mouth moves. His eyes snap away, his head shaking, he throws his hands up in the sky and walks away from them. I watch them all look after him in disbelief.