Page 32 of Catch the Sun

“Hey!” I jump up from the bench. “Don’t touch me, you pig.”

One of Andy’s football buddies—Heath—stares back at me. Under the brassy cafeteria lights, his hair looks like the sickly shade of a jaundiced sun on a smoggy day and his eyes are one shade darker than vile. He shoves his cell phone in my face, flaunting the media footage of my desperate appeal.

I realize sticking up for a murderer on national television was a grave error on my part, but it’s hard to apologize for grief. Grief does what it wants whenit wants to. I was hardly sixteen years old; a devastated, confused child whose life was just blown apart by a semiautomatic shotgun.

I shove Heath’s arm out of my face and storm past him and the gaggle of sniveling girls beside him.

He grabs me by the back of the shirt.

My eyes bulge with shock that he had the nerve to put his hands on me. “What the hell? I said, ‘Don’ttouchme.’”

Heath sniffs, letting me go. “You don’t belong in our school. I’m surprised they even enrolled you here, considering how you’ve sided yourself with the devil himself.”

“He’s my brother,” I spit out through clenched teeth. “I was scared and grieving. Leave me alone.”

“Look at you in your fancy clothes, crying tears of sympathy for that murderer.” The no-name girl points at the video.

Heath rewinds the footage.

With my jaw clenched tight and more tears burning, I glance at the phone screen. I’m all dressed up in a nine-hundred-dollar pantsuit, my hair teased and curled, my lips slicked in bright-pink gloss. My eyes are bloodshot, lips quivering with loss. Mom stands beside me, holding on to me with one arm, her face buried in my shoulder as she breaks apart on camera.

Nausea coils in my gut. Bile crawls up my throat.

I won’t cry. I won’t cry.

“I’ve suffered enough,” I croak out, looking around at the assortment of hateful eyes on me. At the cliques and snickering groups of classmates. My judges and jurors. “My brother is serving his sentence and so am I.”

“What about that girl he slaughtered? And the guy she was fucking?” someone from the crowd blares. “They’re in the ground and you’re walking free.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You’re breathing my air and I don’t fucking like it.” Heath steps toward the table behind us and snatches my backpack from the bench. Shoving at me, he taunts, “Don’t forget your doodle bag.”

My cheeks are burning with the fire of a trillion suns and my oxygen is compromised with an edging panic attack. Everyone around me snickersand points. Heath smirks before flitting his hand in the air as if to shoo me away.

I spin around and book it from the cafeteria. From the school. From everything.

My legs carry me through the main doors and out into the balmy air. Sunshine beats down on me, doing little to brighten my spirits. I should have gone tubing.

I’ve hardly made it across the field when I hear footsteps coming up behind me. It’s probably Heath or Andy or No-Name Girl here to put me out of my misery.

And a hopeless, jaded part of me might just let them. I wonder if I’d even fight back.

“Ella! Wait up.”

My stomach pitches.

It’s Max.

For some reason, the sound of his voice angers me. He’s chasing after me instead of running me out, and that doesn’t make any sense. I whip around to face him, tears streaking down my cheeks despite my valiant effort to keep them contained. “What,” I seethe at him.

I sound furious, rageful, unhinged. He doesn’t deserve my wrath, but I didn’t deserve to lose everything days before my sixteenth birthday. Nothing is fair because there is no “fair” in this world. It’s an illusion. We’re sold the belief that there’s an order, a balance, but life has shown me time and time again that it doesn’t work that way.

Max stops just short of me, looking wounded. “Whoa. What happened?”

I narrow my eyes. “I didn’t think there was room for interpretation.”

“I was coming out of the library and saw you running down the hallway.”

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