[ A SHOT IN THE DARK. ] -- reigh

[kiernan robinson]

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SO INCONSISTENT ,
I GET A KICK OUT OF BEING PERSISTENT
push me away and increase the resistance
CALL ME FAKE CALL ME LOST AND CONCEITED I MAY BE WEAK BUT I WON'T BE DEFEATED.

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It was a typical day in the life of Kiernan Robinson. Woke up, breakfast, that day’s round of classes, etc etc. Except that his typically cheerful mood was in the pits. Had been, in fact, for the past week. He couldn’t explain it. There was absolutely no reason for him to be that way. Halden hadn’t called him complaining about their father in the past seven days. His mother hadn’t called him crying or upset or nagging at him to get his sister to talk sensibly with the pater. None of his teachers had even slightly pissed him off yet, even despite the amount of homework they were already shelling out. Nothing, really, had happened to have rendered such an effect as he was experiencing on his moods. Well, he supposed that was kind of a lie. The fact that a particular memory of a certain dark-haired chit was still skipping around the edges of his brain on an almost-constant basis kind of annoyed him. Skipping, dancing, blatantly popping into his head at the least opportune times. The mere thought of the girl was enough to annoy him, much less the real thing. Usually, he was pretty good about putting negative things out of his head. He wasn’t the type to sit around and dwell on stupid shit that he couldn’t change. Much, anyway. He’d inherited too much of his father’s restlessness and temerity to be any good at the whole angst-ridden-teenager thing.

Unlike some people, who could sit around with their stupid fucking guitars and pull a whole woe-is-me routine and have people believing every word that comes out of his fucking mouth. Not that he was bitter about it, of course. Kiernan was who he was, he accepted it. He actually rather liked himself, most days. Not so much when his own brain had decided to play bloody knuckles with his mood. He was not amused. Interaction with the outside world didn’t seem to be helping much at all. All week long, every brunette he’d passed had grabbed his attention -- if only for long enough to ascertain that it wasn’t her. He’d told himself that such a practice was only because he wished to avoid her whenever possible and that, if he just so happened to meet her in the hallways, he was going to openly ignore her. To show that their little interlude had meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. Bloody hell, he sounded like a chick. He had to remind himself that their ‘interlude’ had been a battle of the wills and wits in the middle of a corridor on the Express -- not the fun sort one occasionally indulged in when one had too much to drink and found a willing partner. Kiernan severely doubted that anything remotely like that would ever happen with he and Reighleigh Braxton. Yeah, yeah, he’d finally got her name right. The girl was so uptight it almost seemed as if she’d been born with a rod stuck up her cute little ass. Which, of course, he had not noticed at all. At. All.

You might be inclined to comment that the level of protestation on Kiernan’s part might somehow indicate that the opposite was, in fact, the truth. But you’d be wrong. Grossly, vastly, and any other adjective to describe the size and greatness of your mistaken thought. No, indeed, it was impossible for Kiernan to feel anything beyond irritation and disdain for someone like Reighleigh Braxton. Because that’s so obviously what she felt for him and he wasn’t in the practice of feeling something for someone that wasn’t reciprocated. Referring back to the comment before, angst wasn’t his thing. It was just so much easier to meet a person half way than to fight them -- at least, when it came to feelings. His own, anyway. He couldn’t particularly care about what anyone else felt for him. Not the feelings of those he wasn’t involved in someway or another with. And, like it or not, he was involved with Braxton. She was his cousin’s best friend. Unfortunately for Kiernan, he could remember what it had been like being the first person to hold that position with Gideon and couldn’t easily shake the impulse to see how she acted with it. A part of him argued that he had no business doing so, that the part of his life involving Gideon to any extent beyond those of family requirements was a chapter that had long since been closed. In fact, it was a chapter in a book that had been read, checked back into the library, and was gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.

But, somehow, he was still curious. Then again, the boy had never been good at minding his own business. Which was his problem, the root problem of all his other problems actually. He was too curious by half. It was part of the reason he liked baiting Braxton when it came to Gideon. First in that anonymous chat room thing, when he’d first found out, and then later when they’d accidentally met face-to-face. She’d been to indignant about her defense of his cousin, to adamant to be believed. Either she was ironically gullible or there was some other reason that she argued with him on points that, unarguably, only he knew the truth on. It made it so incredibly easy to get her fired up -- the only thing was, her defense of her ‘best friend’ as she called him, usually succeeded in ruffling Kiernan’s own feathers. Which was kind of hard to do on a regular basis. Yet, Braxton seemed to do it with ease. It was downright maddening, to be honest. So, yes, a major part of him (perhaps the bit where the self-preservation synapse was stored) told him to head to higher ground if Braxton were in the vicinity. Sometimes, however, when his guard was down and his mind somehow became distracted with other subjects, he found himself searching for her among the waves of black robes and school uniforms.

It was how he ended up in the school library. He hadn’t been thinking straight -- as he would tell himself later on. Kiernan almost never went to the library unless it was absolutely required. It was too stuffy, too quiet in their for him. He, who had always been an exuberant being. The library was not for him. The library bookshelves, stacked high one against the other, the aisles barely a shoulder span apart. A little known fact about Kiernan was that close spaces made him exceedingly nervous. It was why he spent so much time outdoors. Why he had always insisted on dragging his cousins into the woods behind his house to play when they came to visit rather than stay indoors as the girls had always begged. He needed open spaces, almost like he needed oxygen. Even just sitting in a large room made him restless and jittery. He supposed it was a natural segue to procrastination when it came to the bookish bits and studying that came along with doing homework. Somehow, he’d always associated it with being indoors and being chained down. An amazing thing happened, however, as he stepped into the library this day. Kiernan didn’t even realize that the library was where he was until he’d silently moved down an aisle close to the entrance. Even when his eyes had to adjust to the dimmer light in the shadow of the stacks he didn’t realize it. Standing by himself, staring off into space, the boy looked a little more lost than usual. Physically and mentally.