Page 13 of Science Project

I reached up for my necklace—her necklace—but it was gone. He still had it.

Leaning forward, I rested my head on the steering wheel and cried. And I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried until my body began shaking uncontrollably. I must’ve leaned too far forward because the horn suddenly blasted.

The couple jumped in surprise and hurried back to their car, driving off into the night. With tears stinging my eyes, I stumbled out of my car, slammed my door shut, and wobbled toward the rocks.

Waves smashed against the rocks a little ways down, and part of me hoped that I slipped and fell into the ocean, washed away, just like Hannah had. It wasn’t like anyone would care if I suddenly disappeared. Hell, it’d probably make everyone’s lives easier.

So, I jumped down onto a lower rock, one closer to the ocean.

Then another.

Then another, until a couple of inches of water soaked through my shoes.

One more step. That was all it’d take for the waves to crash against my legs, for the pull of the water to whisk me away into its depths, to take me under and swallow me whole. Just one more small step.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, jolting me out of my thoughts. I ignored it, and then it stopped buzzing, but a moment later, it started up again. I leaned back against one of the rocks and pulled the phone out of my pocket.

Two missed calls from Akio and one text.

Akio: You left your clothes.

I clutched the phone in both of my shaky hands and stared down at his contact, then back up at the crashing waves. If he had called me a few minutes later, I wouldn’t have noticed. I would have been swept up, and I …

Truly, I didn’t want that.

Akio had saved me, and he didn’t even know it.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

AKIO

I sat across from Imani in her parents’ dining room the next weekend. Dad and her mother were in a heated conversation again about who would be at the top of the senior class once we graduated, but they obviously didn’t know that Sakura Sato had already claimed valedictorian. Her GPA was too high for even me to reach now.

Imani played with her peas with a fork, rolling them around, stabbing them, and crushing them between the tines. I stared emptily at the table in front of me, barely having touched my food.

God, I was so bad that Nicole had cried the other night.

The first and only time I’d ever had a chance to be with Nicole, and I’d had to completely fuck it up by making her cry. I wasn’t even sure what I had done wrong. She’d seemed to enjoy it, but maybe I said something or touched her wrong. And had I given her those bruises?

Had she even come?

I hoped that she had. It had been my first time ever being with someone, and I didn’t know if I had done it right. Maybe I would be the laughingstock of Redwood when she returned to school, whenever that was. She had practically missed the past week.

Imani kicked me hard in the shin under the table. When I glanced up at her, she nodded to the other room and excused herself from brunch.

Her mother gave her a dirty look, but Imani hummed, “We’re going to talk in the other room.”

My dad and her mom were always trying to get us together. So, they were overjoyed to let us spend some time together.

After stuffing my hands into my pockets, I walked into the other room and sighed. “Thanks for that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Imani said. “I couldn’t last another second in there.”

“Me neither.”

She scratched the back of her head. “About last night … I’m sorry about Kai.”

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