LOGINBonnieThe hallway was empty as most students had gone home. The ones who remained were either in the gym or the library or the parking lot. I had told Bianca I needed to go to the bathroom and she had nodded and said she would wait by the front steps. But I did not go to the bathroom. I walked toward the hockey wing... towards the locker room... towards Lucian.I had seen him earlier. He was in the hallway between sixth and seventh period and he looked tired. His hair was messier than usual and his eyes had that distant look that meant he was thinking about something he did not want to talk about. I had wanted to ask him what was wrong. But the bell rang and he walked away and technically I did not follow.But now I was following.The hockey locker room was at the end of the hall. The door was heavy and It had a sign that said players only.Well, I pushed it open anyway.Lucian was sitting on a bench in the middle of t
BonnieI could not look at myself in the mirror.There I was standing in the bathroom with my hands on the sink and my head down. The tiles were white and the lights were too bright. A girl I did not know was washing her hands next to me. She glanced at me once and then looked away.I did not blame her. I could not look at myself either.My mother's bed. I had let him touch me in my mother's bed. On the sheets where she slept, where she dreamed about her wedding and her future and the man she thought loved her.What was wrong with me?I was a terrible daughter. In fact the worst daughter. The kind of daughter other mothers warned their children about. I had done things I could never take back. I had let him do things I could never undo. And I kept going back. Kept letting him touch me. Kept telling myself it would be the last time.But it was never the last time.I turned on the faucet and splashed col
MarcellusThe first thing I noticed as Ieft my room was that the house was empty.Clarissa had left early for a work meeting. I heard her car pull out of the driveway at seven. The front door closed and her footsteps faded down the steps. Then silence. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the tick of the living room clock and the knowledge that Bonnie was still upstairs.I should have left for school. I should have grabbed my briefcase and my keys and walked out the door. Instead I poured a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table and waited.She came down at seven fifteen.Her hair was wet. She had just showered and she was wearing her uniform and I noticed that it stick more to her bod. Her bag was slung over one shoulder and she was looking at her phone.She did not see me at first."Good morning," I said.She looked up and her eyes widened. Just for a second then she recovered."I though
MarcellusThe restaurant was Clarissa's choice.She wanted Italian. She wanted candles on the table and wine in her glass and a waiter who called her signora. I did not care about any of that. I cared about Bonnie. Bonnie was sitting across from me and she was in a blue dress that made her collarbones look like something carved from marble and she was pretending to read the menu while her eyes flicked to me and away to me and away constantly.Clarissa was talking. Something about the wedding and about the flowers. Something about the guest list. I nodded when I was supposed to nod and I smiled when I was supposed to smile then seconds later, I reached across the table and held her hand because that was what a good fiancé would do.But my eyes kept drifting.Bonnie looked up and she caught me looking. Her cheeks turned pink instantly then she looked down at her menu again.I was a finished man. That was the only way to d
BonnieThe painters arrived at eight in the morning.I heard their truck before I saw it. The rumble of the engine followed by the slamming of doors and voices calling out instructions to each other. I was still in my pajamas when my mother knocked on my door."Bonnie. They are here...the painters.""I know. I heard them.""Can you help them? I have a meeting."She did not wait for an answer. Her footsteps faded down the stairs and the front door opened and closed.I got out of bed and pulled on a pair of old jeans and a t shirt that already had paint stains on it. I twisted my hair into a bun and went downstairs.The hallway was chaos. Buckets of paint lined the walls. Drop cloths covered the floor. Two men were carrying a ladder toward the guest rooms, a woman was taping the edges of the baseboards. The smell of fresh paint hung in the air like a promise and I weirdly liked it."He
BonnieFour days.That was all that stood between me and the arrival of Marcellus's children. Colette and Jude. The twins and my soon to be siblings. I did not know why I was excited. I should have been nervous or scared or angry. Marcellus had kept them a secret for months. He had let me believe he was just a man with a fiancée who still fucked his soon to be step daughter and a teaching job. But he was also a father. A father to two teenagers almost my exact age.And I was excited no capping, forget the anger I had first heard of it.The feeling surprised me. It bubbled up in my chest every time I thought about their faces and their voices and the way they would walk through the front door and change everything. I wanted to meet them. I wanted to know what they looked like and what they laughed at and whether they would like me.I was in my room on a Wednesday night and the house was awfully quiet. My mother was downstairs wa
BonnieThe house was quiet when we got home.Seems like my mother had taken the day off, her flip flops were out here as I removed mine. I hadn't asked her to. She'd just done it, the way she did things sometimes, without announcement or explanation.She looked back like she was expecting me, proba
44BonnieTwo days.That's how long I stayed inside. Two days of drawn curtains and silent phones and the kind of stillness that comes after an earthquake, when the ground has stopped shaking but you're still waiting for the aftershock.Bianca came over and we watched movies, ate popcorn but that d
BonnieLucian stayed for two hours straight that evening.My mother was in full hostess mode the entire time...bringing out leftover pasta, forcing him to take a second serving, asking about his hockey schedule like they were old friends instead of strangers who just met five minutes ago. She even
LucianThe hospital smelled like bleach and death. And I so hated coming here.I didn't want to be here. Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to turn around, to get back in my car, to drive anywhere that wasn't this place with its fluorescent lights and its too-quiet hallways and its walls







