Chapter 1
My pencil scrapes against the worn-down wooden table as I stare down at the paper sheet in front of me, as if rereading this question from my biology class for the eleventy-fifth time will suddenly make it make sense. My doodles cover all the edges of the page and have moved onto trying to lightly decorate the park table I’m sitting at. It isn’t working, but I’m hoping that the horrific feeling of my pencil finally snapping from the attempt will shock me into being able to use my brain again.
The slow, repeated tapping of a pencil eraser comes from beside me, as my friend faces what I imagine is a similar dilemma with his own homework.
“Do you have any idea what this question is supposed to mean, Henry?” My friend, Wyatt Banks, asks me, while holding up his paper and pointing to some equation that I can hardly even read.
I scrunch my face up in a futile attempt to understand it, but only briefly before I shrug. “You know I can’t.” He scowls at this response, placing the paper back on the table and glaring down at it intensely. “You’re the one who thought you could handle Trig, dude.” I tell him, returning to my own work.
He whips my wrist with the back of his pencil, letting out a half irritated, half amused snort. “Shut up. You’re not having any better of a time than I am.” He hesitates for just a moment before spinning around and hopping off the bench. “I’m gonna walk home and throw on a movie. You want to join, or are you gonna stay here and act like you’re actually a good student?” He walks away slightly, and I can hear him toss a few things in the trash can sitting in the corner.
I roll my eyes, not looking up from my paper as I circle what I can only hope is the correct answer in a multiple-choice question. “I have to get at least a C on this, or Ms. Pearson is going to make me sit out our first art show. I’ve been working on my piece for almost a month.”
Wyatt snorts and starts to speak but is interrupted by the sound of semi-distant laughter suddenly filling the air, and I look up from my work to try and spot where it’s coming from. The gazebo Wyatt and I are set up under is sheltering us from the blazing sun, but my eyes are immediately attacked by how bright it is outside. Even the playground across the field is mostly empty as a result of the unusual September heat.
Past the groups of tall trees that are almost randomly splotched across the park and across a small field, I see a moderately-sized group of people, mostly consisting of girls around our age with a few younger kids and some parents, are slowly approaching our direction with a bunch of different items, one of which looks suspiciously like a birthday cake.
Since the gazebo we’re under is the only one on this side of the lake, I’m going to take a guess and assume that they’re going to want to sit here, and I’m not sticking around long enough to deal with that awkwardness. I begrudgingly turn around and stand up, grabbing my stuff up off the table and walking in the same direction as Wyatt, who has stopped to look at the incoming group.
“Think we could stick around and talk to any of them?” He asks, but I already have my hand around his wrist to drag him away.
“You really want to try picking up random girls right in front of their parents, dude?” I question him, and he frowns for a moment before his usual pep returns and we start walking away from the gazebo, towards the exit of the park, which first involves walking about a quarter of the way around the lake that sits in the center. It’s a pretty view to study with, but annoying when it’s hot and all you want is to jump into the water.
We’re only walking for a few moments before his chatter returns. “I don’t know why you’re so concerned about sitting out the show. It’s not like our club is even going to have the funds to go – the damn soccer team is going to make sure of that.” He grumbles, kicking the dirt. I grind my teeth a little in response to the comment.
“Don’t even talk about them right now.” I snap, a bit sharper than intended, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, he grins and quickly walks over to one of the medium-sized crabapple trees that line the path, and jumps up and snatches one of the tiny fruits off of it. How he’s able to bring up something like that and then just move on is baffling to me, but behold is the brain of Wyatt Banks.
“So, you game to come over to my house and play some COD?” He asks, taking a large bite of the fruit, his grin quickly turning into a regretful frown before coughing, swallowing the fruit down – another bad idea, I’m sure – and chucking the crabapple off into the distance. “I hate those things.”
“You always try to eat them and you never like the result. I don’t know what you expected.”
He rolls his eyes and turns away from me. “Don’t come at me with logic. I don’t like it.” He chuckles after saying it and returns to walking. “You coming over or what?”
“I really need to get this stuff done, so I’m going to head back to the warzone. Maybe we can hang out another day.”
He looks over at me with a goofy smile, almost tripping over a rock but catching himself first. “Sure, Hen. Good luck.” He keeps his jaw tight and talks through his teeth, but the grin doesn’t leave his face, telling me he isn’t actually so happy that I’m not going home with him. It makes me feel bad, but I have priorities I need to keep in check.
We exchange a few words before going our separate directions to home, him quickly picking his pace up to a slow jog – I assume in a rush to continue procrastinating his studies. Usually, I’d be joining him, but today I turn to walk in the opposite direction, the quarter mile or so to my place.
My house is a pretty modest one, but it’s comfortable for the four people who live in it. A single-car garage with a dent in a corner of the door, from my first-time driving, which is a story I’d rather not tell. The driveway and sidewalk leading up to the front door are both lined with pink and yellow tulips, somehow still alive despite the time of year. Our bay window is stained glass, with images vaguely resembling the Virgin Mary, and some… sheep, or something. Our front door has a crucifix door knocker, complete with a partially melted Jesus that has always creeped me out a little bit, and just above it is a wreath that very inconveniently covers the peephole.
I’ve tried to warn my parents about that for years, but they don’t tend to listen to me. Or anybody.
Stepping onto our welcome mat, it doesn’t make for a soft landing at all, so old that some of the letters are worn down, and you can only somewhat make out the bienvenido a nuestra casa that is supposed to greet people. It used to be my grandfather’s mat, and the fact that it’s even still in a single piece – barring some ripping at the edges – is nearly unearthly.
The door isn’t locked, as usual, and I slowly open it, trying to stay as quiet as possible and not make my presence known in anticipation of what I may be walking into. As I step inside, my hopes shoot up for just a moment as I’m greeted by silence, but I quickly find that the silence was just a brief pause as the sounds of yelling echo around the corners. Slowly, carefully, I close the door behind me, somehow avoiding the majority of the creaking.
I quickly determine that the yelling is – fortunately - coming from the kitchen, which is at the back of the house and not in between my room and me, and as long as I’m undetected I can manage to avoid being sucked into whatever argument is happening between my parents and my sister.
Kicking my shoes off and gently placing them in the neat lineup of shoes on the indoor welcome mat – significantly less worn, as it was bought just last summer -I can’t hear what’s being said, other than a few indistinguishable words in Spanish and English, and I don’t really stick around to find out what is being said. Instead, I quickly make my way up the stairs and into my room, closing the door behind me. They don’t usually worry as much about my whereabouts as they do with my sister, and that fortunately allows the fighting to be background noise for me most of the time.
I set my bag down on the floor and pull my homework out of it, tossing it on the bed before turning on my music, quiet enough so that it doesn’t bother my family and loud enough so that the yelling is – mostly – drowned out.
Walking into school the next day, I am not even remotely confident that I got a good enough grade on my homework, and I wish I could say that I felt proud of putting more effort into it, but I can’t really feel much other than annoyance until around the end of first period. Mornings are not my thing.
I turn the corner to the hallway that my locker is in and am greeted by an equally zombified version of Wyatt, leaning against his own locker, across the hall from my own, staring down at his phone incomprehensively, surely exhausted by a long night of yelling at the television and getting shot.
He gives me a lazy wave as I drag my feet over to my locker and fidget with the passcode. It – embarrassingly – takes me a couple tries to enter the same code that I’ve been using for the past month. Like I said, not a morning guy.
Wyatt walks over to me, leaning on the locker next to me and practically shoving his phone in my face. I immediately react by swatting it away, which earns me a scowl from him, but he immediately gives up on trying to get me to look.
“Apparently Taylor and her boyfriend overheard Ms. Pearson and the principal talking yesterday. They didn’t get much but it’s looking pretty grim for the art show.” He gives me a pitying smile, baffling me as to why he doesn’t seem to give a damn despite also having a project he’s supposed to show.
“I’m sure she’ll figure something out.” I respond, far too tired to turn this into a full discussion. I turn back to my locker to grab something out of it but am interrupted by another voice coming down the hall. Speaking of Ms. Pearson.
“Hi, Mr. Rivera.” I turn to the voice, spotting the instructor-slash-coach-slash-organizer for the art club. Ms. Pearson walks up to us, giving a brief nod to Wyatt. I give her an incredibly forced smile, already annoyed by how perky she looks at such an early time.
“Hi, Ms. Pearson.” I respond, gritting my teeth just a bit. It’s nothing against her – really, she’s great – but she’s one of those sunshine-and-rainbows people that can just be a little bit much to talk to, especially when running on four hours of sleep and no caffeine. I have no doubt that she’s been up and awake for far longer than most reasonable people should be by 8am on a Thursday.
“I wanted to let you know that we’re having a special club meeting later this afternoon in place of our usual meet, to discuss some of the funding issues the school has been having, and the situation about our upcoming shows.” She says all this with a bright smile, as if it isn’t the most nails-on-a-chalkboard news that one could possibly hear. “I was wondering if you could meet me in the arts classroom over lunch to discuss some things in more detail. You’re head of the club, and I think it’s only fair that you get a heads up on some things as well as some extra details.”
I give a slow nod, and start to respond when something else catches my attention. The sound of laughter – ugh, too early – bounces down the hall as a group of three or four of the soccer team come up the hallway we’re standing in, joking around about something or another.
I can immediately feel my temper flare, which is pretty standard occurrence when I’m around any of them, something that doesn’t happen often. The soccer team and the arts club at this school have been fighting over funding for half a decade, thanks to a flakey principal and a useless school board. When I was voted club leader – which, frankly, isn’t all that important in a club that’s mostly about individual skills, but it looks good on my college application – I was basically put in charge of hating the soccer team.
It was only recently that the funding issues became more drastic, as the school lost out on some funds and decided that the art club didn’t need all that much. As if the soccer team needs the funding more.
In the group of people coming down the hall, I can easily spot their team captain by the fiery red hair that most come to recognize him by – Jackson Blake. Stupid name, right? He was promoted to their captain spot midway through the season last year when their previous one got expelled, and then immediately preceded to use that position to come out to the school – something that surprised very few people. It’s an area of contention, in a school that’s pretty fifty-fifty on that subject.
But he’s never seemed bothered by it, or anything else for that matter, which has always rubbed me the wrong way despite not really having much interaction with him up until this point.
His head turns and he makes eye contact with me, for just a brief second. He looks so damn annoying, it’s like it radiates off him, bubbling up as what I assume is a ball of anger in my stomach. I desperately want him to return my scowl and give me even more reason to be mad at him, but he just once-overs me before a smirk crosses his features.
“Henry?” I hear from beside me, breaking me away from the eye contact. Ms. Pearson gives me an inquisitive look. “Is that okay? To meet over lunch?”
My eyes dart quickly back over to where Jackson is, but he’s already moved on to talking to his friends. I turn back to the people in front of me.
“Sounds good, Ms. P.”
