Immature Mistakes | mj.q✓

Seventeen

'Dad!' Evelyn shouted as she raced towards the door.

'Stop!' Ava shouted behind her, but Evelyn had already grabbed the door handle and twisted it open. Ava jumped on Evelyn, making her fall into the house inside and land on the floor.

'Get off me!' Evelyn screamed.

'Hey!' Michael said as he walked towards the door with a soda in his hand. 'I'm watching TV okay!? You're making lots of noise out here!'

'Sorry dad,' Evelyn apologized. 'Just that Ava...'

'Stop!' Ava shouted.

'What's up with Ava? Get off your sister Ava, I want to hear what she's saying.' Michael replied.

Ava slowly got off Evelyn, reluctant to say the least. Evelyn sat up and fixed her uniform, then looked at their father.

'Dad,' she started. 'Ava was about to fight me then her dear counselor interfered, and she totally listened to him. Totally didn't touch me.'

'That's not true!' Ava immediately replied. 'He held me back. He grabbed my bag and wouldn't let me go. Otherwise I was gonna beat her up real bad.'

'And it wasn't because you were listening to your counselor?' Michael asked seriously, stepping closer to the girls.

'No dad.' she immediately shook her head.

'Then fight her now.' he folded his arms and watched expectantly.

'What!?' Evelyn cried.

Thinking over Jiaqi's words, Ava didn't want to fight Evelyn. But she had to do it in front of her father. If he ever imagined or believed that she was turning into a good kid, she would probably be put through hell.

Without warning, Ava threw the hardest punch to Evelyn which she could muster. Evelyn was sent flying to the floor, and she looked at her sister with disbelief and annoyance, putting her hand on her aching cheek.

'You did not just do that...' Evelyn quickly got up, ready to fight Ava.

'Stop,' their father demanded and rubbed his temples. 'I just wanted to see if it were true. Just know that I wouldn't allow that kind of behavior in this house. This...this is for your own good. If you're going to be someone who listens to the "good guys", and fails to act when you're supposed to, you won't make it in this cruel society. You got that?'

'Yes dad,' both the girls answered.

'Good.' Michael returned to the leather living room couch and continued watching the game that was on the TV.

...

That evening, Jiaqi sat at his desktop computer in his room. He typed Janine Liu's name on his social media site. He looked through several girls of the same name, before finally finding her profile and pressing on it.

Janine had just recently updated her new profile picture, and she was still as beautiful as Jiaqi remembered, except she had a few scars on her face. He couldn't fathom how people could actually believe that he caused those scars. He went through her timeline, having never checked it out before.

She still posted so many photos, so Jiaqi believed she was better than he had thought. She had many friends and seemed to enjoy herself with social events and parties. Most of her friends were male, and Jiaqi was somewhat surprised by that. He thought that if she was traumatized by "what he had done", she would have avoided being around men. Maybe he had the whole thing wrong and that wasn't how it worked.

He took a deep breath and decided to ask her directly in a message why she had said that it was him who assaulted her and who actually did it. He went to her chat and wrote her a message, thankful that she was online.