I know The Devil

Chapter 006| A broken lyrics

~ The sad part is, that I will probably end up loving you without you for much longer than I loved you when I knew you.

Some people might find that strange.

But the truth of it is that the amount of love you feel for someone and the impact they have on you as a person is in no way relative to the amount of time you have known them.

Brusque yet sonorous, curt and laced with smug confidence but so enthralling. All these were adjectives used to qualify Law Tyler’s voice as he held all our attention and made our eyes fixated on him, his British accent not helping in any way and that was the moment I should have known he was different, I should have been able to tell the ethereal features he possesses and exhibited so naturally.

“Love is immortal, lasting for centuries and millennials. A soul in two bodies, one alive but hardly feeling without the other. Just like how useless a becomes without its pair that’s how you feel the moment a part of your soul is gone under ashes, sand and mud not hearing your voice, not knowing your name, not feeling __” his eyes held mine captive and my breath was hitched, my hands holding on to my books tightly each of his words making me shudder and sounding familiar to my ears.

Nobody dared say a word. His words didn’t make any sense and just like my mom’s quote they weren’t practical but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from his eyes. It lulls, it attracts, it glints. God, it calls to me.

It was insane, but it felt as though the whole class listened to his nonsensical jargon, it felt like his words were only for my ears, like hushed whispers a lover would share with his beloved under the heat of passion.

His lips rose oh so slightly and he was back to assaulting me with words that didn’t even make the least sense to me. His eyes seemed sad which was ridiculous because just a few seconds ago they were empty, dead even, like an empty shell that have forgotten what it is like to harbour breath or life.

“The sad part is, that I will probably end up loving you without you for much longer than I loved you when I knew you,” he started, and I felt the absurd strange feeling that he was only talking to me, that he was desperate for me to understand and with each minute that passed as he searched for only God knows what in my eyes he only got sad and sadder, “Some people might find that strange.” He continued averting his gaze from mine like watching me was hurting him in some way, he turned towards Ms Anne, “But the truth of it is that the amount of love you feel for someone and the impact they have on you as a person, is in no way relative to the amount of time you have known them.”

There was chilling silence in the class which only heightened the goosebumps on my body as I wondered how literature class got so intense.

“Ronata Suzuk,” he mumbled and then saying incoherent words under his breath that seemed like permission to leave, he was running out of the class not waiting for Ms Anne’s response.

The bell rang simultaneously and I blinked as everybody stood up and activities began like nothing had happened. I now knew that though the class was quiet, it wasn’t for the same reason as I was. Maybe it was just the British accent that gave them the chills or how authoritative his words were but for me, I could tell, I could feel it, his words had meant more, they’d spoken to me.Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

My tummy rumbled angrily and I rolled my eyes realizing how stupid I looked deliberating over words that were from a quote. I must also have been engulfed in the spell of his voice too. That must have been it, I concluded as I jogged to the cafeteria knowing that Gloria must be waiting for me already.

I waited in the line patiently for my food, already anticipating the spaghetti and meatballs on my empty tray since its aroma assaulted me from every corner.

Someone was suddenly beside me. He’d cut the line I could tell because the chick with too big a front row set of teeth couldn’t invoke the toe-curling sensations, in me the way he did. I fought the urge to turn and confirm with my eyes what my heart already knew not wanting him to know that I could tell it was him behind me, even though I could tell that he might not even notice.

Lawson Tyler was like a piece of a jigsaw in a puzzle that have nothing to do with me. A broken lyrics locked in the mind of a secluded songwriter who though he screams nobody hears. He was in his little world, always has been and so you all would understand the confusion that came with his newfound interest in talking to me.

I won’t call it an interest though, I thought as I pressed my lips together. Maybe just a passing flair, an amusing game to him perhaps and the demented theory still held water in my head too.

The line moved and I took a step forward pressing my lips together.

“What do you have with wearing black and grey clothes and what’s with the hideous capes you use in hiding your face?”

It was one thing to corner me in the school hallway, it was another to talk to me in the school cafeteria. Clearly, Lawson also had no fear of social death but I did. Well, I didn’t have a social life to start with, but I also didn’t want to make enemies out of the popular girls in Evans high school who had eyes on him already. No thanks, I already have a long line of trouble supplies to last me my whole lifetime. I didn’t want another. So I completely ignored him, pretending that he wasn’t at all talking to me and dropped my head lower praying that I’d had some mystic powers which would have come in handy right now to just go invisible.

“Or is this the latest trend in some sort of secret society,” he sounded amused and I resisted the urge to turn and find out if my ears were not deceiving me and Law Tyler had the capability of feeling any other thing that wasn’t indifference, “Are you in some secret biker society? I think that’ll be so cool anyway,” he teased and I gritted my teeth in vain knowing that I couldn’t hold myself back.

“You should know those biking societies are so old school, Tyler,” my voice was a harsh whisper as I burned glares into the floor not liking that he was talking to me, wanting him to leave me the hell alone and forget my existence just like he had remembered it.

“Wow,” he sounded genuinely shocked and I could tell he was good at acting, “Seems like I’m slacking in the league of cool kids and I would have to crave your enlightenment.”

I rolled my eyes biting back a retort of explicitly telling him to fuck off with his strange choice of words and his crazy obsession with wanting to engage me in a conversation.

“I heard that the Illuminati is the new it and what more it is led by the Devil himself.” He snorted and I grinned at my own crazy story then caught myself a second later, my eyes widened as I wondered what I was thinking getting carried away, forgetting we weren’t friends, he wasn’t in my social circle and I would always be a bottom feeder regardless of his crazy reason for wanting to engage with me all the time.

“I believe the Devil is smarter than that.”

“I don’t care about the Devil,” I curtly replied, not knowing when I ditch my whispers and stood up straighter, “But I think you disagree mostly with whatever comes out of my mind and in class today? What was that all about and your stupid explanation?” I huffed in derision, “Where had that illusion even come from?”

“If only you could talk back at the people who talk down at you this way,” he wistfully whispered and I could feel his hot whisper against my ear making my eyes widen and my hand holding even more tightly to the tray in front of me.

The girl in front of my line left and I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I was the next after the boy who wore flipflops to school and wasn’t sanctioned for breaching the strict shoe policy that seems to only apply to the poor because they were produced by his parents and yet was nowhere up the social ladder but at least he wasn’t a bottom feeder like me.

I didn’t reply to him, I’d spoken too much as it were and we were already attracting stares. If not that I stared straight ahead and nobody would ever think that Law Tyler who was oddly so quiet would be so chatty and with me no less, I’d have been in trouble.

Relieved that it was finally my turn, I smiled at Margret the lunch chef even as I made a mental note to ask her if she later made it to her grandson’s basketball game, she was complaining of being so late to she feared she had missed the whole thing. Side note: I’d have been very popular if I had the same smooth relationship I had with the staff in Evans high school, with my peers. I knew about the librarian’s arthritis, the Janitor’s atheist son and the head cleaner daughter who was in Britain on a scholarship.

I smiled at the sight of the delicious delicacy now on my plate and on top of my plate, my tummy growling in approval and clutching my hand discreetly over it to quieten it, I turned about going back to my seat.