Combat class. This is what we were here for. Yes, bribing some free room and board out of people was a huge reason we had come to LGSFA, but the real reason we came was because we were legitimately useful here. We knew more about the school's final opponent than literally anyone else on the planet, except maybe his parents, but they made him the way he was, so no one was gonna ask them these things.
The teacher wanted to cut right to the chase. I guess I couldn't blame him. I haggled the school into letting me and Lillian come for free, so I might as well offer what I had to offer. Unfortunately, they couldn't even be considerate enough to put Lillian and I in the same class, so I was left to face this alone.
"Ok, so you want me to be frank?" I asked my new classmates. "This is the exact story I hate telling, and repeating, and answering questions about. I'm not gonna bother telling y'all about the hellhole of my life if you refuse to understand: Eli, as I grew up calling the Shadow, ruined my life. Before he became a threat to the whole world, he destroyed my family. He took everyone I ever loved and killed them, and I was left with literally only one person: a child who needed me to care for her, though I was but a child myself. Only one person who knew how monstrous Eli could be, even on a family level. And nobody even cared about how terrible he was until he killed their families. So I'm not gonna bother telling you what I know if you don't care. If no one cares, I'm grabbing the one person I have left and I'm leaving. And no one will know what I know."
"...What do you know?" a voice asked. It was one of the girls who had left the first time I sat with Grey.
So I told the story I had told Lillian a million times. The only part I left out was how much I used to love Eli, and that I still had his guitar. That was the kind of thing that would fuel the haters. I did feel the need to address that Eli didn't live in the best household, but I didn't try to excuse his behavior.
Of course the stupid rich kids couldn't keep their mouths shut. Someone had to ask:
"So, if being a terrible person runs in his family, you're raising the Shadow's kid because...?"
"Because Lillian isn't Eli's kid!" I shouted. I took a few breaths. Lillian would tell me to calm down. I wished she could help me out here. "I was homeless at nine years old. Who gave me a will to live? Lillian. I was going insane without a family to keep my sights up. Who was my family? Lillian. I was a flower of a person, drowning in violence and then shoved in a dark drawer. Until one day one person took me out of the drawer and became my sunshine, keeping the dying flower alive. Does any of that sound like the Shadow to you? Eli is Lillian's father, but Lillian is my sister's daughter."
"And where does that put you?"
I looked at my new classmates. I was standing right there and they couldn't see me! "Not here," I replied earnestly.
And like the goody-two-shoes I am, I walked out the door.
YOU ARE READING
What Is Your Name?
Teen Fiction"The one thing Sky has never told me, though it's the one thing I've always wanted to know, is my mother's name." Sky and Lillian, ages 17 and 13, are all the other's got. They are held by the bond of Lillian's mother, Sky's older sister, the first...
