Whatever She Needs: Inevitability (2/?) - Degrassi, PG-13

Snake was shocked to find her waiting on the steps of Degrassi at 6 a.m. the following day.

“I have to admit, I was expecting another several weeks of silence. Or possibly an eternity,” he joked. His relief at seeing her was immediately overcome by feelings of embarrassment and idiocy when he realized that she wasn’t there for him. “And I’m officially clueless,” he continued. “You must be waiting for Peter. Sorry.” He hastily continued up the steps in a desperate attempt not to prolong another awkward encounter.

“I’m not waiting for Peter,” she called after him. He stopped in his tracks and turned around, waiting. She was looking at her shoes again.

“And so you’re waiting for… Manny?” She shook her head and he felt a smile playing on his lips, but fought to hide it. “Maybe Derek or Danny?” Snake wanted to conceal the delicious feeling of confidence that had suddenly overcome him, mainly because he wasn’t quite sure why it had.

“You know I can’t stand Derek or Danny. They got me in detention, remember?” She actually smiled.

“No, I remember you getting yourself in detention,” Snake grinned.

“No, I ended up in detention because a certain teacher of mine wouldn’t listen to my side of the story,” she retaliated playfully.

“Hmm. Wow. That guy sounds like a real jerk,” Snake admitted, hoping it still sounded like he was joking around, but realizing suddenly that he wasn’t. He partly believed it himself.

“He’s not,” Darcy said softly. There was an awkward pause, apparently an inevitability whenever the two of them came within a ten-foot radius of each other. “Besides,” she added, “I hear he’s willing to listen to me now.”

Snake was stunned, and could think of nothing else but to nod. They walked in silence to his classroom. He was surprised to feel a wave of anxiety, one that he hadn’t felt since he walked these same halls two decades earlier. Hesitantly he sat down at his desk, she at hers. He was not a hormone-crazed teenage boy—so why did he feel like one whenever Darcy was around?

Snake shrugged it off. He was just nervous. He hadn’t been this nervous about anything since he was in high school, but the causes of that feeling versus this feeling were completely different. This situation was just new territory for him, and it was terrifying, and that was all. He certainly wasn’t about to adopt the unorthodox teaching practices of former colleague Matt Oleander. Why am I even thinking about that? he wondered, making a face. He didn’t realize Darcy was staring at him.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“What? No,” Snake answered quickly. “Sorry, I uh, I just realized that I don’t think my breakfast agreed with me,” he added. He immediately cringed, wondering why, of all the possible excuses, that particular one had come to mind.

Now it was Darcy’s turn to make a face. “Oh. Uh… do you need to go to the bathroom or something?”

“No! I’m fine.” Snake laughed uncomfortably, internally berating himself for increasing the already-suffocating tension tenfold.

Darcy offered a smile. “Good.”

“Good,” Snake repeated.

He expected them to resume their typical awkward silence, their eyes grilling into each other until she would freak out and jump up and leave, but instead, she spoke.

“I need to confess something,” she said. He waited. “I never intended to tell you about this.” Snake opened his mouth to respond, but she cut him off. “But I don’t mean that in a bad way. I don’t regret telling you.” He clamped his mouth shut, signaling that it was okay for her to continue. “I just want you to know that… this is probably going to be weird. Weirder than it is already. And I know that I’m supposed to be confiding in Ms. Sauve, and I know that you never wanted to be dragged into all this, but for some unknown reason, telling you made sense.” She paused, and he opened his mouth again, but then she abruptly added—“I guess I also thought that if I told you, you’d make it better.”

“Why would you think that?” Snake asked, truly confused.

“I don’t know,” Darcy admitted. “There’s so much going around in my head right now and none of it, I mean none of it, makes any sense. I haven’t felt like myself… in months.” Snake said nothing, not because he hoped it was the correct approach, but because he still had no idea what he was supposed to say. “It’s like—every morning, I wake up so early, because sleep is just too terrifying. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since… it happened. And then I take these super long showers, like forty-five minutes, so long that my mom has yelled at me a few times to get out.”

Snake nodded. “You want to wash it off,” he said. It wasn’t the world’s most brilliant observation, but it was a start.

“I guess. But no matter how hard I try, it’s still there. I still remember it, but like, in broken images… these dark, horrifying flashing images… and how bad he smelled, and how he pushed me onto the bed—“

“Darcy—” Snake interrupted, fearful of where this was going.

“What? Can’t handle it?” she demanded sarcastically, the anger growing in her eyes. “I’m telling you what happened in words,” she continued, practically seething. “How do you think it was actually experiencing it?” Her voice was shrill now, and loud. Her entire face was red.

Snake sat in silence, too afraid to say anything that would upset her any more. To think, she had been foolish enough to believe that he could help—what a joke, he realized. And then his earlier prediction came true. She leapt up and darted out of the room, leaving him alone and useless and drained in an empty, silent classroom.

He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. This was going to be much harder than he had ever anticipated.