Piece By Piece (Book #2)

Chapter Eight

If someone had asked me to discuss how my first week of school went, I wouldn't have been able to. I felt numb and I didn't know why. I went through every class period trying to act as normal as I possibly could.

That didn't stop the onslaught of stares I was receiving. They were all full of pity, and I fucking hated it.

What was I supposed to do? Explain to people that I had mommy issues? That I wasn't close with Amanda and that I really didn't care that she was dead?

But I did care.
I hated even more to admit that. It felt like a twisted ball of barbed wire was rotating in my chest every time her name popped into my brain. Every time someone asked how I was, her face would pop into my head and shred my brain into mush again.

So I stayed numb. I clung to it. I embraced it. It was the only thing keeping me from unraveling. No one understood this feeling.

Well, there was one person that I knew would understand.

But there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that I would reach out to Ari Munro to talk about dead moms. Plus, he had loved his mom. Or I assumed he did. It was always the taboo subject that we never talked about. I wasn't sure if he would even want to talk to me about it. I wasn't willing to take that chance and end up shredded even further than I already was.

By Thursday I was bursting at the seams to just talk to someone else that understood somewhat of what I was feeling. Elyse cried any time I called her. Tyler would sit and listen, not that I said much about it. We just focused on all the homework Ms. Colewood was dishing out. She had already become my favorite class because at least I had a distraction. The first week of school was filled with bullshit filler content in most of my other classes. I had nothing to ground myself into so I spent the class periods staring off into space.

Ms. Griffin the guidance counselor kept checking in on me. The last thing I wanted to do was tell a sixty something year old lady about my mommy issues. It just wasn't going to happen.

I got to Film class early with Elle. Ari was already in his usual spot in the back of the class.
I looked at Elle, "Can we sit in the back today. I'm getting sick of feeling like I'm on display in the front row."

She smiled softly and nodded. Everyone was handling me with kid gloves and I hated it. I went and sat in front of Ari. Elle sat next to me. I heard him shift his weight and mumble uncomfortably.

"What brings you two back here?"

I turned around and deadpanned, "I thought this was where the kids with dead moms sat?"

Too dark?

A small smirk ran across Ari's face. Okay he still had a dark sense of humor. 

Good. I needed that.

"Won't your boyfriend freak out?"

"There's a bigger chance of your girlfriend throwing a tantrum."

Elle chimed in, "How about we all just keep our mouths shut and pray all the minions in here do the same?"

I nodded and turned back around.

Mr. Hale was talking about how to conduct an interview and different ways to film it. We were going to practice just the interview part today. He started calling out names as random pairs.

"Harrison and Munro."

Ha. Fuck.

Mr. Hale then announced the prompt for the day. 'Find a topic you both have in common. Base your questions off of that.' Find out why or how you have this subject in common, what you both like or dislike about it, and then come up with two other questions to ask your partner.