Chapter One
Adam
Everywhere Adam looked there were signs of the impending season change. The fall semester of school had resumed, the leaves were steadily turning into more vivid colors and the air seemed thinner and less suffocating. The grass I was standing on was browning and crisp under my sneakers. A large magnolia tree, with spreading blossomless branches, cast shade over me and protected me from what garish summer sun was left. I took another drag of my cigarette, from a pack I bought to calm myself down after the day’s events, and stared up at the big house ahead of me.
The house itself was gorgeous. It was a two story home, painted a crisp white that looked almost blue as it stood above the lawn of dying grass. The entry way was opened to the world by a large glass wall that revealed the stairs and gave a peak of a living room off to the left. I exhaled my smoke, my mouth dry and lips pursed in thought.
I didn’t live there.
To be honest, I had never even been inside the house before. I wasn’t terribly close to anyone who lived there, at least not in any way that they knew of. I had been under this tree, and in it, more times than I’d like to admit though. Something kept drawing me to the house, had a grip on me even. I think I was trying to prove myself right more than anything else.
As I sat there, filling my lungs with more smoke, I told myself that this was the last time I’d be there. This was the last time I’d ever risk being caught, the last time I’d ever smell the sweetness of this tree above me as it gave me shade. I had to admit my own defeat and move on. I hadn’t slept the night before. I was tired. I was ready to move on.
A car started down the road and I ducked out of sight for just a moment, breaking my gaze. When I looked back up, I saw her.
Brooklyn White.
She was at the top of the stairs, walking down, her slender hand on the banister, her bright emerald eyes distant.
Brooklyn was the most interesting person I’d ever seen. I’m not here to wax poetic. I’m not going to tell you every detail of her soft smatter of freckles or her perfect figure that was earned through cheerleading and running. She ran enough that I had begun to learn her schedule. I didn’t come around until after seven or eight at night, late enough that I knew she wasn’t going to be running. Even when she ran she was beautiful, her hair in a tight ponytail, her perfect legs in a pair of tights that made her look almost like a deer darting past you for its life.
Her wide, beautiful green eyes helped cement that look.
Brooklyn checked off every cliché she could though. When she was in her cheerleader role, she did a great job acting like she knew what people expected from her. She seemed to be able to wear a skin that changed based on how people expected her to act.
She was always surrounded by her four harpies. These girls were predators in the social world. They each knew their role and had the skills necessary to ensure the school stayed under their thumbs.
Jamie, her best friend and fellow tyrant was the daughter of the sheriff, who let them get away with way more than they needed to. Kim, who was brilliant and way smarter than she let on, kept their grades up despite their shenanigans. And then, there were the twins. Sam and Laura were the daughters of the cheerleading coach; their place in the social ring was built out of necessity. I had never cared for or even felt comfortable around the rest of them. Not like in the way I cared about Brooklyn.
I’d had a couple of run-ins with her and one run in with her entire group.
The first time I had interacted with them I hadn’t seen Brooklyn for who she was yet. I thought she was vapid, nothing more than a symbol of what a dictatorship would look like if it started in a high school. I had been asked to stay after school to make up a test I missed, my grades and attendance had been slowly dying off. I was stressed from my home life. The school had been mostly empty. Those left were either in detention or were freshmen waiting around for their parents to pick them up.
I’d headed to my teacher’s room, deciding that I had messed around enough and I should just get the test over with, when I heard giggling. I turned down a hallway that I didn’t need to so I could see what was going on. My curiosity had always gotten the best of me.
The giggling had been coming from Brooklyn’s squad.
They’d been in one of the halls filled with lockers, and from what I could tell at the time they were gathered around just one of them. I’d kept my gaze averted as I approached them, and listened carefully to what they were saying.
“Jamie, I don’t know if this will work,” Brooklyn had said softly. Her voice was smooth but dangerous, like toxic velvet. Jamie, who had been tinkering with the locker, looked up. She’d obviously been concerned about Brooklyn’s opinion.
“I promise it will,” she’d replied. Brooklyn had leaned against the locker beside their “project” and kept her gaze on what was happening. As I got closer I smelled super glue and I’d had to steal a glance.
I could see pull-string firecrackers and it hadn’t been hard to piece the rest together.
As Jamie had continued to glue them into the locker, Brooklyn was nudged by one of the other harpies, and looked up at me.
Her eyes were as gorgeous then as they were now as they realized that I had seen what was going on.
“You tell anyone about this and we’ll pin it on you instead,” she had said plainly, her voice commanding and unquestioning. Something about it had heated me with more than just a minor annoyance. I’d rolled my eyes and continued on, not interested in getting mixed up in their pettiness. Instead I had started plotting my path to get back to my teacher’s class without having to pass them again.
Looking back on that moment, I wish I’d have paid more attention. I wish I had noticed then what I now know about her, that there was something deeper. At the time all I’d noticed was that the next day when the owner of the locker opened her locker and automatically set off the set of firecrackers, the noise exploding down the halls was deafening. I’d heard that all she had done was ask out one of the harpies’ boyfriends and that none of the squad had gotten in trouble for it.
I’d thought those girls were the worst. I’d thought they were pointless bullies who just wanted to stir the shit and see who they could upset for fun. I’d thought that Brooklyn was a bored narcissist who got a kick out of hurting people.
The second time I came upon her was the only time I saw anything that changed my mind, although, admittedly, I saw more than I needed to.
It had been my lunch hour, the school had three different ones scheduled, and I was walking through the halls without really thinking, just wanting to move. A bit of motion in what should have been an empty classroom caught my eye and I paused to peer through the small window to see. The classroom had been mostly dark, cast in blue shadow from the light outside. I could see her as she began to take her shirt off.
I had heard that Brooklyn was so popular and had such an influence over even the teachers, that she got to have her own changing room so she didn’t have to hang around everyone else. Suddenly it made sense why. On her pale, naked, ribcage, in that darkened classroom, I could make out a long purple and yellow bruise. I had paused just long enough to understand what I was seeing, and then left immediately. I hadn’t known where I was going; I just knew that I needed to get out of there.
We lived in a small town and I’d heard murmurings that her father was horrible to his wife, but I never considered anything happening to Brooklyn—she seemed too strong. I’d felt like an idiot as I continued walking, I knew exactly what it was like to be abused, and yet I hadn’t seen the signs on her. Nobody is too strong, or too good, to be safe from abuse. I’d assumed that she was just an arrogant idiot, but at that moment I realized it was all just her coping mechanism.
People coped differently, and I had never gotten to see someone else’s coping mechanism first hand like that before.
I started hanging around her house several nights a week. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, what I was waiting for, but I knew I wanted to be there for her. I also needed to be there for myself in some ways. She’d only seen me out there once and she hadn’t even paused to look at me, but I didn’t mind. She was beautiful inside and out to me now, now that I understood exactly what she was going through. Firecrackers and other small pranks weren’t anything that could actually hurt anyone. She just wanted to let off some steam.
I understood that.
I had my own coping mechanisms that involved me working out and trying to build my body as much as I was building my mind. I spent a ton of time every week either in the gym or running. I’ve been taking martial arts classes ever since I’d been old enough to pay for them myself.
This, though, I thought as I stood under that huge tree, was the last time I’d stand outside her home. I hadn’t seen any glimpse of what I had assumed was her family. I had talked myself through circles of trying to make sense of it, she was a cheerleader and the bruise could have been from that, or her father could have been smart enough not to abuse them in front of a large window.
I took another deep drag on my cigarette and sighed as I watched her walk down the stairs, disappointed in myself, and almost relieved that in the last few months I hadn’t seen anything. Brooklyn probably was not abused, I thought, so she was safe. If I left and never checked in on her she would more than likely survive. The sun was setting in gold and pink across the sky, and I decided it was about time to leave and not come back.
Moments later I was proven wrong.
All at once, there was a huge commotion downstairs and then I saw a blur as her father ran and caught up to her on the stairs. He greeted his daughter with a slap across the face. I could hear it through an open window and my blood chilled in the summer air. My pulse rose, hot and hard with anger. I dropped my cigarette, not pausing to check if it went out, and started running towards that damn house.
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