#71: Sit Down

I step out of the cab and pay the driver quickly before he can ask any questions about why a girl in expensive clothes is standing outside a neighborhood gym at this hour. I am not entirely sure what I am going to say when I find him. I have been running through versions of it since I climbed out of my bedroom window forty minutes ago, and every version ends the same way, which is me telling him to stay away from my family. I do not care if my father actually did what Elias keeps accusing him of, but he needs to stay away from us from now on. But first things first. I push through the gym’s front door and go directly to the office, because Alvin will know where he is and Alvin is faster than scanning the whole building myself. I open the door without knocking. “Where the hell is Elias?!” Alvin looks up from whatever he is doing with the stacks of paper on his desk and regards me with the expression of a man who has seen a wide variety of things walk through that door

#72: There Was Smoke

Aunt Selene pulls me into another quick hug before she turns toward my mother who has stepped back into the room. “Nora, I have missed you so much.” She wraps her arms around her next and holds on for a moment. “Life has made us all way too serious lately. I saw Tyler and Lucas downstairs in the sitting room and they told me Lucia was up here so I thought I would check on her first. Luckily I found both of you together having some mother daughter bonding time.” I look down at my hands and fidget with the edge of my sleeve. Selene notices immediately, because of course she does, and looks between the two of us. “Did I interrupt something important?” My mother glances at me before answering. “Oh it is nothing serious. We were just having a little mother and daughter chat.” Selene’s eyes move to me and then she gasps, bringing both hands to her face in the theatrical way she has always had. “Oh my God. Was it a boy? Lucia, is there a man? Tell me everything immediately.”

#73: It Doesn’t Matter

A/N: Double upload today as an apology for being inconsistent lately. I promise you guys, I'm trying my best but school is after my lifeeee.Also, for those that have been commenting, thank you so much. So many times I'm stressed af and wonder if this is worth it at all, but knowing I have a few people actually reading is literally the only reason I haven't given up on this story just yet. So thank you for the comments. I read every single one and I promise you have absolutely no idea how much they mean to me.~The study door is closed and I am sitting at the dinner table staring at it.Lucas is looking at me. Tyler has his elbows on the table and is pretending to check his phone, but I can tell from the angle of his head that he is watching the study door the same way I am. The lamb is getting cold in the serving dish and nobody is suggesting we finish eating, because finishing eating would require pretending that what just happened was minor, and n

#74: Effective Though

#74"I look like a literal child," Garvin says, holding the uniform blazer at arm's length with the expression of a man being asked to wear a hazmat suit to a dinner party. "Who designed this? Who sat down and thought, yes, this is what a human being should put on their body voluntarily?"Elias takes a sip of water and watches his friend examine the thing like it might be contagious. They are in the back of the gym between sessions, the afternoon light coming through the high windows in long strips, and Garvin has been having variations of this same conversation for the better part of thirty minutes."You've been complaining about that blazer since you bought it," Elias says."Because the complaining is justified," Garvin says. "It has a crest on the pocket. A crest. Like I'm going to a medieval tournament.""A lot of schools have crests.""A lot of schools are also wrong," Garvin says, throwing the blazer into his open locker and closing it like the uniform might escape if given the

#75: Grab A Seat

The alarm goes off at six forty-five and Elias lies there for a full thirty seconds listening to it before he reaches over and turns it off.He stares at the ceiling.He is going back to school. He, Elias Arden, who was expelled from the last one approximately three weeks ago, is putting on a uniform and presenting himself at the gates of a new institution as though the previous one did not end with a letter from the principal and a boy in a medical wing.The specific absurdity of it would be funny if it were happening to someone else.He sits up.The flat is cold, the heating system doing its best and falling short, and he pulls on a hoodie over his pyjamas before he even thinks about the uniform. He checks the time on his phone and sees it is fine, he has forty minutes before he needs to leave, which is enough time to make breakfast and check on his mother.He hates being the new kid because it always brings too much attention. People stare and whisper and try to figure out wh

#76: Occupational Hazard

The art teacher is saying something about emotional truth and I have been staring at the monitor for forty minutes and I could not tell you a single thing he has said in the last twenty of them.This is my final term of high school. My final term, which I was supposed to spend doing the things final terms are for, the mild senioritis, the lunch table politics, the general coasting on the knowledge that the end is close and the beginning of something else is closer. Instead I am sitting in my childhood bedroom in front of a laptop while a man I have never met in person tells me that art is about pouring your feelings into the work, which is rich, because my feelings right now would produce something nobody wants to look at.I turn to Zeke, who is sitting in the chair by the window doing the thing where he appears to be engaged with whatever is on the screen while actually just existing very professionally in the room.“You’re not listening,” I tell him.He doesn’t look away from the mo