Page 55 of Avenged

“That was Ana’s sister-in-law, Rosa. She and Ana were close. They both worked at the high school.”

“They were teachers?”

I nodded.

“Were they your teachers?”

I nodded again. “Ana was the music teacher. She made us call her Ana, and she just…was beautiful. All the way through from her skin down to the deepest part of her.”

If I hadn’t cried already so much that morning, I might have cried again. I didn’t talk about Ana Perez much. I didn’t feel like I had a right to. She’d been kind to me from the moment my mom had died my freshman year, all the way until Dad killed her. I’d lost someone more than Dad that day. My actions had killed someone I’d liked. That I’d cared about. It wasn’t some stranger on the street who I could become desensitized to. Not that I wanted to forget or remove myself from the emotions. I needed to feel the guilt and hurt, because Dad never seemed to. He’d never once apologized. To me. To the Perez family. To Violet.

“What happened when you went back?” he asked quietly, as if he already knew the answer but wanted me to confirm it.

“You can imagine. I didn’t go right away because I was spending so much time at the hospital with Violet, but once she started getting better, I went to both our schools to see about getting make-up work. I didn’t want her to get behind… not that Violet could ever really get behind.”

“Genius.”

I nodded. She was. We’d never had her IQ tested or anything, but she really was the smartest person I’d ever met—and getting smarter by the day.

“But the boyfriend…Skip? He stood by you?”

I laughed, the sound a bitter chord against the waves. “God no. He told the whole world I’d basically walked out on him during sex, which wasn’t the case, of course, but he’d been pissed when I’d told him I’d called my dad to come get me. That’s how everyone knew what my dad was doing in the car that morning.”

“Jesus.” He shook his head, picked up a pebble from the sand, and tossed it out into the water.

At the time, I’d thought I was in love with Skip. I’d at least loved him enough to risk telling Dad about him. I’d loved him enough to let him get me out of all my clothes. I knew he was mad at me for leaving, but I was mad at him for spending the rest of our night drinking with his friends. I just thought it was a fight that would pass.

When he hadn’t come to see me at the hospital after I texted him that I was there with Violet, I’d just thought he was still mad. That he’d eventually get over it. But when he’d ghosted me completely, I’d started to get the picture. My heart had been broken for so many reasons over the course of such a short time. Sometimes, I wondered if it was just broken beyond repair. Like a grandfather clock wound so tightly it refused to ever keep time correctly again.

“Did any of your friends help?” he asked.

“Malorie saw me in the office the day I went to pick up my classwork. She came to warn me that it was really bad. Kids were talking about taping me to the flagpole and throwing rocks at me.”

Travis made a noise which was part disgust, part anger.

“What did the administration do?”

“You mean the ones who didn’t want to join the kids in their crusade?” I shrugged. I wasn’t sure why I was telling him this sad story. Maybe it was to prove to him that Rosa Perez was justified in her whispers and her hatred. Maybe to prove my guilt was justified. Maybe it was because I was so shattered from my day that I couldn’t hold it back behind my protective shield like I normally did. Maybe it was because he’d kissed me, and I’d loved every minute of it when I knew I shouldn’t.

“They were relieved I had enough credits that they could issue me a diploma without me finishing or walking,” I told him.

“You didn’t get to graduate.” He said it as a fact and not a question.

“I graduated. I just didn’t attend the ceremony. I wouldn’t have wanted to. They had an entire dedication to her that day; it would have been disrespectful for me to be there.”

“It was disrespectful of them to take it out on you,” he said, still trying to defend me.

A sound gurgled up to my ears, and I realized it was Travis’s stomach. It was growling. My body seemed to have stopped all its normal functions for the day, but Travis’s hadn’t. As I looked over, it grumbled again, louder, clearer.

I laughed, because it was so out of place with the talk we were having. This laugh was lighter than the one before. This one was full of humor and surprise. When I looked over at him, he was watching me but not returning my smile.

“You’re incredible,” he said gruffly.

I felt the words down to my bones but refused to keep them. “I don’t think your stomach agrees with you.”

He finally smiled. A wry smile, small but beautiful. Enough for me to look at his lips and feel our kiss on mine again.

I got up and held out my hand to him. “Come on, I think we have enough leftovers to feed that beast.”

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