Page 4 of The Young & the Sinner

She tried so hard to make a life for herself with her high-school sweetheart. She wanted to prove my grandparents wrong: that she hadn’t thrown her life away when she decided to keep me, despite everyone’s protest, that what she had with my dad was real, and that they were going to have the kind of love storybooks were written about.

They almost had me fooled. Then one day, my dad left without a backward glance, making it so that the last image I had of him was his back to me—a world of possibilities open for a man who didn’t have a child at home to drag him down.

For a year, I waited for him to come back. I was only twelve when he left; I still believed in fairy tales then. I gave up on him on my thirteenth birthday. Mom forgot she had a kid at home who needed her, as she drowned herself in the misery that her broken marriage had left behind.

And through it all, Max had been a steady presence, waiting for her to wake up one day and recognize that he’d been there all along.

She woke up one day and decided to leave everything behind instead, including her only daughter. I was nothing more than a throwaway child, and Max…

I let out shuddering breath, so sure I would break down from the slightest pressure, and I didn’t want him to see.

I often wondered if it wasn’t that she forgot about me sometimes, but that she wanted to. The only thing I got from her was her brown eyes. Everything else, I got from my dad. From my fair skin, to my upturned nose and my light chestnut brown hair. Did I look too much like him? Was that considered a sin in her book?

Max pulled into his castle, dragging me out of my thoughts, and parked his silver Mercedes in the attached garage. I didn’t have a car, even though I had a driver’s license. Mom had made some pretty bad financial decision in her life. This wasn’t the first time our house was threatened. It was two years ago when we received the first foreclosure warning letter—that Iknew of, anyway. I really thought we were finally on the right track when I got the job at the grocery store with her and was able to help out with the bills.

I didn’t know she decided to stop paying the mortgage this time around.

Sometimes, it felt like she wanted to lose the house. That she wanted to lose everything, because only then would she have nothing left to lose.

Pretty messed up logic, if you ask me. But what did I know? I was only seventeen. Still a kid in most states. Old enough to be able to take care of myself and young enough not to know how.

That was where Max came in. He shut off the ignition and turned to me.

I attempted a smile, but it felt more like a grimace.

“We’re going to be okay, kid,” he said confidently.

I nodded. I knew that. I had Max.

* * *

I tookthe bus to school Monday morning, as though my world hadn’t been turned upside down overnight, because it hadn’t. I refused to let my parents’ abandonment define my life. I refused to beg for love. So even though Max insisted on driving me to school, I told him I wanted to take the bus instead.

I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this. And the fact that I attended a relatively big high school meant that no one, save for Lizzie O’Connor, my best friend since middle school, knew what happened.

The bus stopped in front of the school, and I waited for all the kids to get off before I followed behind them.

Most of the kids that rode the bus were freshman and sophomores. I was one of the few seniors. I didn’t really care that I didn’t have a car, but I wondered if everyone was silently judging me because of it.

I wasn’t exactly popular or well-known around school. In fact, I spent the majority of my high school years in the background. And I didn’t mind it much.

I smiled at the bus driver and hopped off. Lizzie was already waiting for me by the curb, a cup of coffee in hand. My best friend was a coffee addict and brilliantly lazy. She was also exuberant, a scary movie junky, a night owl… the complete opposite of me. And yet, we clicked on that first day of seventh grade.

I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.

Lizzie was the daughter of an Irish immigrant father and a Japanese-American mother. She looked mostly like her dad, with pale skin prone to freckles, green eyes, and red hair. But she also had a few features from her mom as well, with her slight stature and almond-shaped eyes.

Today, she had on a pale-green jean jacket and muted pink shirt: a combination I never thought would go together, but on her, it worked.

She shot me a small smile when she spotted me, sympathy filling her green eyes. “Hey,” she said softly, as if I were breakable. Max had been using that very same tone with me all weekend. I wished everyone would stop treating me like a porcelain doll. It made my mom’s actions so much more impactful than they should be. I just wanted to move on. I wanted to stop hurting every time I thought of her, but that wasn’t possible when the two people I loved most in this world kept looking at me like that.

“Hey, you.” I tugged at a strand of her long red hair. “How was your weekend?”

“Uneventful. What about you?”

“Very eventful.” I smiled to let her know I was okay.

She smiled back and hooked her arms around mine. “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, especially with so much going on now, but the production of Cato’s Rapture is a no go.”

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