Anger and Angst

 “No.” Jacey says quietly. “Now please leave, I would like to just have some time alone with my friends.”

“Ok, yea, I understand. Have fun everyone.” Nik says as he smiles and turns around walks back to us.

When he reaches the car, Troy and I congratulate him. I start “Shouldn’t you spend more time with your new girlfriend?” Troy follows “Dating for about 2 minutes and he can’t stand being near her.

“I’ll tell you about it as soon as we get on the road. Just smile and say bye.” Nik's soft voice tells us it didn’t go the way he planned.

I avoid looking at anyone and just slide into my seat.

Unlike me Troy says bye to everyone still watching from the window and then jumps into his seat, as if nothing was wrong.

As we exit Jacey’s neighborhood, Nik starts telling us about Jacey rejecting him. “Yea man, she just said no, and then asked me to leave.” As he continues with his story I notice a tear falling down from his right eye. “You know, I thought I had a connection with her. Crap, I’m even crying. Don’t tell anyone about this.”

I begin to ask my questions, “I can’t wrap my head around this. She just told you no. She didn’t give you any reason? I can’t believe it man. There has to be a reason she rejected the guy she likes.” As those last words left my mouth I realized I broke my promise, and immediately shut my mouth.

“You know you really are dumb sometimes Mark. She clearly doesn’t like me if she rejects me. That’s not how feelings work. I’ll be alright guys. It’s just gonna take some time to get over.

“Welp the cats out of the bag, might as well tell him now Mark.” Troy whispers to me.

Nik overheard Troy, looks at me and asks “what's this secret between you two?”

Realizing I couldn’t keep this from Nik any longer I decided to tell him. “Jacey likes you Nik. She told me herself. That’s why I can’t believe she would just tell you no.” I looked down at my phone hoping to see a text from Valerie, explaining what happened but there was nothing. “I really am sorry though Nik, I hope that she doesn’t leave you clueless.”

The first person who we drop off is Troy. As we say our goodbyes we make plans to play catch over the weekend. As we are driving to my house, Nik starts to talk to me. “Listen Mark, don’t let what happened to me scare you from asking Valerie out. Stuff happens to everyone, good or bad, we fight through it.” He pauses for a moment, “Just make sure you don’t miss your opportunity to tell her. You will regret not telling her.”

“You don’t gotta tell me that. I’m just waiting for the right opportunity. There just hasn’t been one yet.” As I leave the car I look back to see Nik with a face of disbelief of what I said.

Before I open my house door I hear Nik yell at me “If you haven’t noticed a right time yet, then you never will.”

As soon as I get inside my house, I head into my room to start working on homework. A few hours pass by, and I get a call from Valerie. I ignored it, thinking that it wasn’t anything important. Then my phone rings again. This time I answered it.

“Thank god you answered.” Valerie’s tone seemed in a panic. “Have you heard? Nik got in an accident. It’s on the news.”

I quickly run to turn the tv on.

“Alright, I turned on the news now. I see his car but they aren’t saying anything about it. Did they mention how he was doing?” I question her with concern for one of my best friends.

“No, they didn’t say anything about his condition, or which hospital they took him to. I’m really sorry Mark. Please don’t bla-”

Before she could finish her sentence I hung up the phone to call Troy to see if he knew anything more than I did.

“Hey Mark, I’m already on the way to your house right now. We are gonna go to all the hospitals around until we find them. Get some shoes on and hurry up, I’m almost there.” Troy hung up before I could respond back, but without arguing I got ready to go find where Nik was taken to.

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After a few hours of searching, we finally reached the last hospital in the town. When we went to the front desk and asked if Nik was brought here, they told us that he was admitted, but no one but family was allowed to see him. About 10 minutes of begging for information we finally gave up and left for home.

“Man this sucks. Our best friend is in the hospital but we can’t check up on him, or even find out how he’s doing.” Troy says as he spits on the ground.

“This wouldn’t have happened if Jacey wouldn’t have just accepted Nik’s confession.” I say while looking at the ground.

Troy looks at me as if he was gonna hit me, “Don’t say stuff like that, no matter what happens! What do you think Nik would do if he heard you blame this on her?”

I blurt out “Nik’s not here is he? Don’t try to defend her, especially when you know that he wouldn’t have been driving then would he.”

Troy trying to calm me down says “That’s a stretch and you know it. Accidents happen every minute, just because it happened to one of us doesn’t mean it was avoidable.”

“Whatever, I’m just gonna walk home now.” I turn my back to Troy and leave.

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When I get home I decide to put on music and drift away. I turned my phone onto ‘Do Not Disturb’ and put on my playlist. As I listen all I can feel is anger towards Jacey. I couldn’t figure out why I was the only one mad at her.

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I spent the whole weekend in my room listening to music. I chose not to talk to anybody. I wanted to be alone as I mourned for my friend. Before I knew it it was time for me to go to sleep.I was more calm than I originally was, but I still couldn’t help but feel this was Jacey’s fault. As I get ready to go to bed and get ready for school, I set my alarm and quickly fall asleep.