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[CHAPTER WARNING:
This chapter includes scenes and stories related to domestic violence and alcohol abuse. If any of these topics trigger you, please refrain from reading or skip ahead. Reader discretion is advised.]
I learned how to lie when I was fifteen.
"What happened to your eye?" Maia asked me when I sat down next to her in chemistry.
When I told her 'my uncle', I was in the counselor's office the next day.
Papers in front of her. A face of disconnected concern, a stranger's sympathy straining for mutuality in a child she learned the name of ten minutes ago.
"Am I in trouble?" I asked.
Mrs. Eve shook her head. "No, no, sweetie. You're not in trouble." She was woman retired from her age, glasses thick as brick and face sagging with time, gravity, and underpaid work. "I'm just concerned. We got a very disturbing report yesterday."
I knew about what, but I still said, "About what?"
She folded her hands on her desk. "Angel, what happened to your eye?"
I didn't answer. And when I left it like that, she rephrased it with, "Who did that to your eye, Angel? Did someone hit you?"
I panicked at that. Because I knew what 'yes' meant. And if my uncle went away, as much as I loathed him, I didn't have any other relative left to go to. Besides, my slow-building plan to finally leave him—one day—was barely in action yet.
'No' was just easier.
"No," I said. "It was a punching bag."
"Someone reported that your—"
"My uncle and I were boxing together in the garage," I lied, the words acidic in my throat. "I hit a bag too hard and it came back and hit me in the face. Someone might've misheard."
Mrs. Eve stared at me, face calculating. "Angel," she said calmly, in the way that someone does when they don't believe you but think you don't know that yet. "This is serious if someone hurt you. Especially someone at home."
"No one, ma'am," I said. "Can I go back to class now?"
"Angel—"
"I have a test in five minutes," I lied. "Can I go?"
She gave me this disappointed face, like she wanted me to say it was someone at home, like she wanted me to be more hurt than I was. Like that would be a better story to feed off of, a sweeter fruit to chew on. Like it would give her something to fix. Everyone wanted the glory of fixing someone else.
"Sure," she said, putting the papers away. "You can go."
I went.
I decided, from then on, that telling anyone anything about my family, past or present, was a no-go. As much as I hated my position in life, I hated the idea of someone else meddling with it even more. Changing it would make it a thousand times worse than it already was.
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Suicide Buddies
Teen Fiction"My mother once told me there are three, and only three, truly defining moments in your life. One: When you don't know. Two: When you realize you don't know. Three: When you know. This is about the third one." --- Angel Young is going to die. Or at...
