Y

27: Underage

[a/n]: so this is gonna be the last author's note until the end to make for smoother reading. this chapter is heavy and there is so much angst i'm shocked i'm capable of it. these updates are becoming quite frequent, here's to hoping that Y is completed before 2017. - imo X

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27: Underage

Devin asked me what it was like to be in love once. I remember with a distinct clarity, the way her hair blew back in the wind—tones and colours I didn't know existed illuminated when the sun hit her curls—eyes piercing me into my seat. It was the last county fair she'd attended, one of the first times I remember seeing her out in public when she wasn't under Grant's arm.

I was with Charlie at the time—still unsure if what we had was pure enough to call love, or if we were facing the truth and calling it out on the bitterness that it was. I get carried away when I look back on my memories without the tint of emotion to mar them—I manage to surprise even myself with how young I was. "Love," I said, voice caught in a laugh that never happened, "it's like . . . coming home. It's warm."

Her lips pursed in thought, "Well," she said, sipping at her lemonade. "I damn well don't have that with Grant. He's jagged—cruel and I think someday I'm going to end up cutting myself on him." I'd never understood Devin then, because she may have been the same age as me but she was infinitely older. Even then, I just didn't get how you could cut yourself on a person, what Devin meant, what she wanted me to understand.

"Maybe we love in different ways," I'd suggested, overcome with this desire to prove useful to Devin, caught in a trap which had me performing even when I didn't want to. "Maybe we accept love differently."

"Maybe," she'd said, looking over my shoulder. I turned around to catch the flash of a man in police uniform, but my view was obstructed by Idris stepping forward.

◦ ▲ ◦ ▲ ◦

Charlie lunges up from the chair in his anger, and I struggle to put the diary back in his bag. "You filthy piece of shit," he hisses, backing Idris up against the wall. I'm frozen in a moment I can't escape, watching fascinated as Charlie's hands tighten into fists, one of them rising to pin Idris by the neck. "You're fucking disgusting."

"So you've got the diary then, huh?" Idris chokes out, a smile on his face. "I'm sure it's a great read, dude, but you need to remember exactly who Devin was. She's a fucking liar—"

"She wouldn't lie about this," I say, standing up. "There's nothing for her to gain by putting it in her diary."

"Oh," Idris laughs, as though Charlie's left hand isn't around his neck, as though he hasn't just been called out for having sex with an underage girl—a girl who's now dead. "And now the two of you know her so well, do you? Get over yourselves, reading a few lines from a diary doesn't mean you know her. Not like how I did."

"Were you in love with her?"

Before Idris can answer, Charlie is quick to interject, tightening his hand causing Idris to choke. "Doesn't matter if he was. He's still a sicko who slept with a seventeen year old girl."

"So I fucked her. What's the big deal? It's not like it was just me at the scratching post. Man," Idris laughs, coughing, "it's Devin."

"Is that supposed to mean something?" I wonder, "Does it make it okay because it's Devin? Devin was seventeen, Idris, she was stupid and infatuated with Grant, she'd have done anyt—"