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Chapter 4 (iii)
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2024-10-29 19:42:56There was a flash of a smirk on Jayden’s lips, there then gone. He remained where he was, not leaning an inch closer, and I could see the mirth return to his eyes effectively diffusing the tension I was sure we’d built up in the last few seconds.
"You'll have to work on that if you really want to be one of us," he continued, making some effort to suppress the boyish grin that teased at his lips.
He was laughing at me, I knew. He’d seen the way the gears in my head had been turning and the way my body gave in so easily to his advance. My face grew warm at the realisation I’d once again made a fool of myself in his presence. I had to salvage my image somehow, shake it off, and be as unbothered as I’d presented myself to be.
"Who said I still want to be one of you?” I challenged, levelling my voice as best I could. “Maybe I'm not as taken as I was the day before. Maybe you weren’t that impressive."
My brow rose
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The following week found me hurrying from the house. Staying seemed like a bad idea with Mother having gotten Matt's first semester report card from our previous school sent over. Report time was never a pretty sight, no matter which school it came from. There was something about the straight line of D's going down Matt’s report that always seemed to scream 'Kai's fault', and there was never anything about my own A's that ever screamed 'hard work'.I would end up being responsible for his grades slipping whether through my refusal to help him study or the distractions I produced while locked away in my room minding my own business. Never mind the Xbox he played from morning until night if you let him; it had nothing to do with it. Forget the way he came and went as he pleased, always being out with his friends and never picking up a book. Were it not for the ease with which he navigated his video games, I would be convinced my brother couldn’t read.I gave
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"I'm really sorry about that,” I offered, albeit less repentant than I’d been when I first walked in thinking the world was about to end. “With the transfer and the move and everything, I haven't had the chance to really study and throw myself into things. I’ll do better, you’ll see."It was true. Ever since I started there, Mother had been down my throat about who I spoke to, who my classmates were, the times I was getting home—that sort of thing. I couldn’t figure out why it mattered, it never did, but she was adamant all the same. Whenever she felt I was being lippy in my responses, she’d smack me back into place or out of focus; whichever came first.It left hardly any time to lose myself in extra studying."Sorry? If these are the grades you get without studying then I imagine you could give Einstein a run for his money with just an hour of revision!" he exclaimed."...Huh?"Was he feeling alrigh
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Their eyes followed me across the gaping distance between the door and the teacher, curiosity overtaking the impulse to want me out of their space. The reluctance with which I handed over the principal’s note necessitated Mr. Burnes prying it from my hand, an action that brought snickers to my new classmates. Barely a minute in and I was back to making a fool of myself."Well, it's nice to have you, Ms. Deneiro. Please have a seat by Mr. Pryce. You're just in time, we're about to begin our lesson on vectors and matrices."My heart skipped a beat as, for the first time since entering the room, I dared to look down at the sea of students. There it was, the empty seat that beamed over at me from its position next to the stude
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I’d never admit it, not to his face, but I was relieved it was only him. For all the delicious tension that tended to settle between us, I didn't think he would try anything. On the first day, he'd said he'd only been joking and I’d believed him—I still believed him. It was an odd thought to have, or rather an unfamiliar one, but I felt...safe.The butterflies began to rise inside my stomach and my mind went back to the boardroom once again. Whatever would happen between us needed to happen sooner rather than later. I couldn’t continue to be reduced to a puddle every time he drew near. It probably wasn’t good for my heart, or anything else inside me that went haywire whenever he was around."Keep it down or they'll hear us," he whispered.My eyes remained fixed on him, catching the way his seemed to be drinking me in despite the poor lighting. An eternity passed with the two of us locked away in our own little world, the
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"Kai, talk to m—" "Hey, Kai do you have a partner?" a guy from my math class asked from across the table. He was oblivious to the tension that had begun to rise between us, unaware he'd walked into a minefield and was in danger of having one of us explode. In the end, it was Jayden. "Back off, man. Can't you see we're talking?" He was harsher than he needed to be for someone trying to force a conversation with someone who wasn't interested. "Relax, I was just asking a
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"How long do I have?" "Huh?" "Look, we don't have to beat around the bush. You already know I don't have any money or anything else I could offer to keep you quiet so how long do I have before you blow my cover?" "Is that what you've been agonising over for the last week?" "Answer the question." "I haven't decided yet," she said after a moment of silence. "You're the most interesting
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“There’s…there’s something I need to tell you.” I only needed the courage to find the words.Jayden’s brows creased as he took me in. “What is it…?”“You’ll be angry.”“I won’t.”“You can’t promise that; you don’t even know what it is…”“And you can’t be sure I will be until you’ve told me and given me a chance to react.”We sat at a silent stalemate as several minutes trickled by. I knew he was patiently waiting for whatever bad news I would spring, and I knew it would hurt him. The fear I harboured had nothing to do with ending the new fairytale I’d taken on and everything to do with the hesitation I felt following everything he’d done for me and now my brother.He didn’t deserve what I’d done, and it had been all for naught. I never got pregnant and didn’t h
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Three weeks later, my brother and I dutifully attended our mother’s funeral. There were only a handful of people in attendance and even then, they were mostly family. The genuine friends my mother had made were no more than a handful and only one of them shed any tears.Aunt Rebecca was the only immediate family member to cry with even Nana maintaining a wall of stoicism while the pastor carried on with his final sermon. I didn’t hear most of his words. My eyes locked on the casket waiting to be lowered with a detached sense of disbelief. At any moment, it would open, and my mother would come out barking her laughter at all the fools who’d thought a single bullet would be enough to keep her from her children. She would hug Matt and promise she would never leave him then offer me a plastic smile as she assured me we would talk about it all when we got home.I’d spent the better part of the earlier service with my eyes fixed on the woman while the
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It was another seven minutes before the paramedics arrived and when they did, there was a race against time to get me stable. I’d already lost too much blood and kept slipping in and out of consciousness. I learned later that the police had also been called but in the haze I’d fallen into, I couldn’t say when they arrived on our usually quiet street.I was loaded into the ambulance with my brother and an officer accompanying us. It was Detective Charles, the man who’d promised my mother he would find out the truth about her ex-husband’s sudden, tragic death. He didn’t know what to make of the scene he’d come onto but knew there was a deep well that buried secrets so dark that two children had no business holding onto them.Conversations carried on around me, but they were too muffled by my fading consciousness for me to hear. The next time I awoke, I was on a hospital bed with my brother asleep on the chair that sat in the corn
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“No!” I answered quickly. I hurried to hold the note I’d written up for her to see but she gave it only the shortest of cursory glances before pulling back then throwing her entire weight into the smack she landed on my cheek. The force sent me toppling to the ground faster than I could right myself and by then, she’d begun kicking.“I bet you think you’ve found something, huh? HUH? Think you’ve got the upper hand now; that you can blackmail me because of what you’ve seen? Do you know who I am, little girl? Don’t you know that I will kill you?”I shook my head frantically as I curled into a protective ball. “I didn’t—I didn’t see anything, I swear!”“Don’t fucking lie to me!” Her next kick landed in my face, causing blood to gush from my nose.“I won’t say anything; I won’t, I promise!”“I shoul
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I set to decline Adam's offer but, in a flash, he was on his feet pulling on his own pants. “The bus might be a while. I don’t want you standing out by the bus stop waiting for however long.” He pulled for his shirt and slipped it on. “You hungry? We can hit up a drive-thru on the way.”The rumbling of my stomach betrayed any answer I could’ve given. Adam nodded his understanding then led the way from the house. He got me my usual off the menu then dropped me off in front of my house.Adam had tried to fill the ride with small talk, in what appeared on the surface to be a sincere interest in catching up, but I’d already begun to shut down. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to feel, to see, to be.“Hey,” he said as I set to walk away from his car. “Remember what I said, alright? I’m here for you.”I nodded, seeing no need to argue and not wanting to prolong the conversat
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I swallowed my pride, understanding the role I would have to play. It wasn’t an unfamiliar one and would require no great effort for me to slip into. I dropped the pitch of my voice, forcing it into a sultry invitation I knew he wouldn’t refuse.“Your pay’s built into this favour.” I hated myself.Adam pulled away to look at me, his eyes glistening hungrily. “I’m listening.”I took a deep breath to steady myself. “Emily’s…dead.”“Who?”A surge of hot anger rose in me at his ignorance, but I was forced to swallow it. Adam’s lack of knowledge was in large part my fault. I’d never allowed him to meet her, nor had I ever told him anything about her. She may as well had been a stranger to him—as she truly was—and in that moment, I realised the small stake he had in the decision I’d made…how…insignificant my plight was been for
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“Hey, Kai.” Madelyn stopped me on my way down the hall. “Wait up.”Reluctantly, I brought my feet to a halt then offered her a forced smile. “Hey.”She began rummaging through her bag as she drew closer before pulling out a pastel pink toddler shirt with a crown printed on the front. Madelyn extended it to me with a sheepish smile. “I saw this when my mom took me shopping and I thought…you know…it’d look really cute on your daughter. It’s probably a little big; we didn’t know her size, but she’ll grow into it, right?”I didn’t think I had any heart left until I felt another piece of it break off. She wasn’t wrong, Emily would have looked amazing in it, but she would never have a chance to grow into it, nor would she ever wear it.The strained smile I’d been forcing dissolved. A lump lodged itself into the back of my throat requiring me to take several m
The Girl with the Masks and The Student Body President Chapter 35 (iii)
I considered writing him a note asking that he take care of them, but much like everything else, it didn’t matter. What would I care if he ripped through my room like the Tasmanian Devil after I was gone?The air inside my mother’s room was still. It was the first I’d been in there—the first I’d been in any of her rooms since my father left. Matt was welcome to cuddle and watch movies from time to time, but never me. There was an air of reverence that came with the subtle warning I shouldn’t have been there. I was walking on holy ground as a tainted sinner. Such a transgression would normally fill me with fear but that particular feeling couldn’t have been further away.I took the time to sweep my eyes across my mother’s room. How foreign it seemed, as if I’d been transported to another world. Nothing was out of place and the bed had been well-made. The blinds were half open, allowing light into the room while blott
The Girl with the Masks and The Student Body President Chapter 35 (ii)
Uncomfortable and uncertain, the nurse returned to her desk. Seeing her whisper about me with her colleagues brought the laughter to the next level. My insides hurt from how hard I laughed, and I could feel a pressure building inside my head, but even then…I couldn’t stop laughing.Those around me grew unsettled by the persistent nature of my unprovoked laughter. One by one, they rose from the chairs closest to me and made their way to stand at the wall at the opposite end of the waiting room or by the nurse’s desk.Their evasion tickled my insides until they screamed. Those people had nothing to fear; I wasn’t the murderer.By the time I was allowed to see Jayden, the laughter had died. It was replaced by a subdued silence that stood in stark contrast to the boisterous half-cackle half-wail I’d carried on with earlier.I didn’t have the energy for it…didn’t have the energy for anything. I’d been dra
