Briar Preparatory Academy

Cutting Ties

Celeste POV

"What was your mom's name?" I say quietly after guzzling one of the water bottles Joe brought into the cell. He glances up in surprise, his eyebrows raised.

"My mom's name?" He asks, tucking his hands into his pockets and kicking his heels. I've started to notice that he's always moving a part of his body. He never stands completely still. "Why do you wanna know that?"

I shrug, shaking my head from side to side. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, I didn't--"

"No, it's fine," he interrupts, "I just don't talk about it often. It's strange."

"Understandable. I'm the same way. The only person who knows details about my parents is Kate and Seth. And even then, I don't know much about them myself. They were just the people who raised me for several years."

Joe nodded. "Her name was Elaine. My mom, I mean. That's the extent of what I know about her. That and apparently I looked nothing like her. I've always been told that I got my appearance from my dad. But I have no idea what he looked like either."

I shake my head. "I don't know what my parents were like. All I have is a few pictures of them, and they don't tell me much."

"Who do you live with then? I mean, whenever BPA isn't in session."

"My foster parents and sister. They adopted me about a year after my biological parents... yeah. They lost their first child and they didn't want their daughter, Blaire, to grow up alone. So they picked me up from an orphanage right after my fourth birthday. I've lived with them ever since."

"Do you like them?"

I shrug. "They've taken care of me since I was a little kid. I don't really belong with them; I'm kind of on the outside, but they're the only family I've ever known."

Joe looks away, towards the steel door. If anything, I would say he wants to get out of here. Like my words have scared him in some way. I chew on my lip, wanting the silence to pass. "Do you miss your mom?"

His reaction makes me want to swallow my words back up, but they are out in the air already. His shoulders tense up and he balls his fists together, his knuckles turning white. "I'm sorry," I say quickly, "You don't have to answer that either."

He presses his lips together and comes to slump against the wall next to me. He places his elbows on his knees and looks up at the ceiling. "Growing up, I always thought about that. You know, missing her and my dad. And for a while I was in a state of denial, saying that I was just living with Jasper for a short period of time and my parents would come back and pick me up one day. I always thought that missing someone gets easier as days pass, because even though you're moving farther away from the last time you saw that person, you're one day closer to seeing them again. I thought about that every day, convinced that I would see my mom again. I must have said it to myself for three years or so before I realize that she wasn't going to come back. It was just a dream of mine as a little kid." He swallowed and glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes. "But I guess we all have to grow up eventually, don't we?"

I look over at him, listening to every word and holding on to it. I find myself agreeing with him. I think back to all those times that I stared at the few pictures I have of my biological parents and wondering if everything that I was living in was a dream and one day I would wake up if somebody screamed my name loud enough.

All these naive thoughts that I still wish could be true.

Joe closes his eyes and inhales deeply, waiting four seconds before exhaling. I observe the dark bags under his eyes and the constant frown. The slight sag of his shoulders that he does his best to cover. I think about the way he acts, and how it is different from the typical senior boy at the Academy. Outside of these concrete walls, I don't know what his duties are or what work Jasper makes him do, but I can tell that it is taking its toll on him.