Ashley ✓

Eleven | Sauvage

SOTC: Wait by Maroon 5

Soulless.

The only word my head fathomed without a breath of the word as I draped my body over my bed that evening. That weird, prolonged beeping you hear in an abnormally quiet room rang through my eardrums.

I had this feeling once before.

It was when I sat in a metal chair at Beverly Hills Police Station. My palms had gripped the under part of my seat until the blood leaked out my pale knuckles. Before me a large cop had donned a clenched jaw.

Fun fact: it had been the father of the girl I got everyone to call barcode.

He flipped through my criminal record, each swipe of paper threatening a paper cut until he said:

"There's a better chance of you dying in the street than a family adopting your ass."

Each of my limps had paralyzed at the way his tongue threatened to spat against his pearly whites as he said it. That marked the day the remainder of my shocked cortexes seeped through the cracks of the last realization: I'd never accumulate enough cleverness to escape the depths of this situation's hell.

Because I wasn't Ashley anymore.

TAP! TAP!

My body jolted as I spun to the window between Sienna and I's beds.

There, Mustafa Fadahunsi pressed a note against the window that said:

Let me in.

God hates me.

I closed my eyes. My lungs gathered enough air to make a normal-passing breath so I paid less attention to the vomit-inducing anxiety enlarging the ball in my throat.

Then I went to the window and pulled it up.

"Sienna and Fedor are in Fedor's room," I muttered, getting out of his way so he swing his legs into the space.

"Actually, uh, I came to talk to you." Quiet notes dramatically altered his voice. The air in the room seemed to change upon it as I inhaled a subtle scent of his cologne. I smelled this scent cologne in the West side of Dillards once in May 2019. It was called Sauvage and it was first introduced in 1966.

Mustafa's eyes darted left to right before he then said:

"I didn't expect to get this far, but I have to say it."

I froze there in the stiffness of a deer visualizing headlights, my lips slowly parting.

He sighed. "That night we met, I did end up meeting Fedor. I asked about who you were, and he told me you were an exchange student from Beverly Hills. He must've panicked. I can understand why if you told him you didn't want anyone to know you were... y'know, a kid without parents."

I blinked a few times.

"Anyway, West High had two exchange students last year from a school in the upper end of Los Angeles. Everyone learned from their Instas that they were doing a project on what the 'less fortunate' did, but all they did was shake their plastic ass in TikToks during classes and bang the basketball team... mostly me."

My eyes peered away from him.

"I shouldn't have said that last part," he muttered. I looked at him again as he proceeded with, "But I had a strong prejudice against you because of that and I'm kinda— no, very— judgmental. Both reasons are stupid. There's no excuse for how I treated you, especially considering... what you went through. So I'm here to own up and say I deserved the pencil you threw at me. Honestly, you should've gouged my eyeball out with it."

"Cause I'm sorry," he concluded.

The knot in my throat from my disbelief muted any sound I could've made.

"You don't gotta forgive me, but I thought you should know." He paused, hanging his head down. "So... yeah."

"Thanks," I got through the knot, looking into those sparkling brown eyes as they peered at me.

"So your life went to shit in a minute, huh?"

I sighed. "Pretty much. Or I guess at this point, stolen. Everything I have is from the government except my clothes, but even my clothes are borrowed."

"Stolen, then."

There was a pause.

"I've seen one dead body in my life, and I never wanna see one again. But three... and two of them being your parents..." He trailed off. "I can't imagine that. You must've loved your dad. Your mom not so much."

"Actually, no. He was a fat cat version of Zeus," I stated.

Mustafa whispered an, "Oh."

"On the bright side, all I need is my letter from Hogwarts and I'll be Harry Potter."

The edges of his mouth tugged up.

"Usually someone's allowed to laugh when they like the joke," I assured him.

Mustafa full-on snorted, which made me laugh from the way it came out.

"So we good?" he finally asked.

"Yeah," I answered, pulling a strand behind my ear. "Yeah, we're good."

"Have a good night, Ashley."

Ashley.

"You, too," I said.

I stood there as he exited the room through the window and disappeared. I tilted my head, the energy of his past presence radiating the atmosphere. It breathed life into a sensational aura pricking my skin in the strength of that phantom aroma of Sauvage perfume under my nostrils.

Next chapter teaser: Ashley flexes her big brain