Taylor and Victor

Chapter 13

Taylor

"What's on your face?" Minh asks. They've just finished their dinner, still staying in their kitchen, and Taylor's father's upstairs in his room. "In the bridge of your nose."

Her throat stuck from answering. Her hands keep on washing the excess food of the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher. She knew Minh couldn't wait for too long, but she didn't know how to reply. Something to make her mother justify.

"Nothing," Taylor simply answered.

"Have you been fighting?"

She takes a moment to shake her head.

"Then what?" Minh asked.

"I trip and fall."

Her mother didn't say anything else for a second, she thought she could get away with that. Her luck can't always be so bad. Taylor got away from getting home late, in a weird situation of her breathing, clothing, and appearance, yet no one asked.

"Where?"

"It doesn't matter."

The house's back to its scary quiet. She did active the dishwasher by the time, and only sounds of a working machine making their house less of solitude.

Taylor walks upstair while Minh's slipping from her bamboo tea. Her act is normal, walking as if no one had just nearly broke her knee. She knows she could go to nowhere with this face. Her mother wouldn't let any make up in her room. Taylor turns around, she hesitantly between asking Minh and hiding her face up, or suck up with what she has being given and live. But her mother had already guessing before she speak up.

"Use my foundation if you need. I had a darker tone."

"Will you help me do it?"

Minh puts her cup down, tasting the tea in her lips. "Why would I?"

She lowered her head, walking up to her room without another word.

Her enthusiasm lost. Sam would still be talking to her on the bus, though she kept her mind out of the window.

"Did something offend you?"

"Nothing."

Though deep down she was still bitter and pissed about what happened, Taylor answered Sam in such delighted tone. She doesn't come talk to Mia in the hallway, only give her a hard glance and she'd know not to gossip around. The air between them is thick and dark, but for her own sake, Taylor didn't mind.

She puts on half a smile for a second, in hope of cooling down the air, before turning away and walking up to her classroom.

She tried to focus in her geometry class today. Her mind soon grows bored even when she's so willing to study herself. She looked around, seeing everybody around her was as uninterested. Taylor get inside her thoughts, if her present didn't do anything good. But everything is drowning her back to yesterday.

She tried to think of nothing. Her note is exactly copied from what's in the chalkboard.

Taylor's wandering around at lunch time, avoiding any place she could meet someone she knows. Even with her attempt of hiding her bruises, the marks were somewhere around, concealed but threatening to show up.

She doesn't know where else to go. And at the current time, kids are everywhere but inside classrooms. She thought of walking to her chemistry lab first for their after lunch period.

But when she got there, to the third floor, Sam was standing inside the room, and Victor was outside the door. Thought of them facing her wasn't ideal, but Victor noticed before she could turn and walk away.