"and really, it was a sad story. two kids with no family looking for them on christmas eve find comfort in each other's arms and lips, but honestly, beatrice was the greatest love story i've ever known."
a story about new beginnings and two girls sl...
the picture is how y'all are about to be after reading this part 💀
the next day, bea was allowed to return back to school, and this time, instead of pretending to be strangers, we walk in hand and hand an hour before the first bell, with a folder and a plan.
the day goes by as normal, taunting remarks from rose, teachers droning on and on, but when we talked about that day, we both agreed we felt new, somehow less tired, than the days before. bea didn't make some big announcement, but we weren't hiding anymore. she held my hand as we walked through the halls, i laughed at her jokes, i was a little bit less afraid to be seen.
it happened as we walked into the cafeteria. the overhead speaker crackled on, and the voice of our secretary echoed through the room.
"rose howard, please bring your backpack and report to the front office. thank you."
the cafeteria erupted in hushed whispers as rose walked out of the room, everyone speculating what it could be. the general consensus seemed to be weed. or premarital sex. both somehow against our code of conduct.
catholics are lowkey crazy.
in art that day, we were assigned a charcoal portrait of the person across from us, with a month to finish it. i wasted the entire class staring at bea staring at me, memorizing the way her hands molded the charcoal into a sketch that i'll admit looked remarkably like me. she was doing her favorite picture of me, one that she had taken at the bakery as i listened to maury tell stories. i'm smiling, with the end of my sunglasses in my mouth.
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later that day, me and bea laid in my bed, watching the latest national geography shark documentary, when suddenly, she sat up and crawled onto me, straddling my waist as i sat propped up in bed. "hi there" i murmured, and she laughed quietly. my favorite sound.
"i didn't realize you had freckles" she mumbled, staring at my face so intensely i felt like covering it with my hands. "just a few." and then, beas mind began to flit around like a hummingbird, and she told me about the time her brother took her to the huntington, about how she threw up the night she kissed her first guy, and thought she had a stomach bug, and now she thinks she might just be a lesbian. she told me about how she's allergic to cats, but not hairless ones, and scolded me for laughing when she asked if we could have a hairless cat "or five." she told me about violet, and how they were never close, and how bea thinks she might be adopted secretly, because violet looks nothing like her with dark hair and eyes, and bea, the blonde. and oh my god, until she was like ten, her hair was white. and then we sit, and scroll through beas phone looking at baby pictures, and i pulled out the small photo album i had, and the documentary was long forgotten.
i loved the way the gears in beas mind turned. it was so fast, so automatic, and so alive. we had conversations like this often, where she just voiced her stream of consciousness and i tried to keep up, and i loved it. i loved the fast paced way she worked, and i loved watching her gears turn.
she unraveled in the palm of my hands a little more every day, and i basked in the little pieces of her i had stored up. she doesn't like coffee, her first concert was the 1975, she doesn't sleep well after panic attacks, and when she can't sleep on those nights she likes her back rubbed. and slowly, i felt myself unravel too, and telling her about the way my mom decided we were too much and left, how i used to sing and record music with finneas but he had to leave too, how i do like coffee, and about my justin bieber phase, which i regretted when she changed my name in her phone to "billie beiber".
a few minutes after i had decided to shut bea up and kiss her, i heard footsteps down the hall. "leave." i said, stoically, but this time, she shook her head. "beatrice, leave. right now." i whisper-yelled, but she refused to abide. i tried to push her off me, towards the window, but she looked at me with the most serious expression i had ever seen her wear. "i'm not leaving. you come with me or i stay."
everything i do was for her. everything i do is to protect beatrice, and right now, i had to protect her from the biggest evil i had ever known. so, i did what i had to, and i reached into the bedside table and grabbed my already loaded gun, hands shaking.
a/n: this was so hard to write for some reason? shit did NOT flow like usual anyways, i hope u enjoy 😁
