Another Now

Carol Silliard

The first day of school was on September 5th, 2017. Lisa and I intentionally dressed up in the same outfit to intentionally confuse new teachers. We did it every year, a twin ritual of ours.

Lark Creek Consolidated High School was a lot larger and intimidating than I thought it would be, I realized when we got up to its front doors. It was significantly bigger than Lark Creek School in every way; the doors were bigger, building was taller, even the American flag that draped on a pole next to the school seemed drastically bigger than the one at our old school.

"Here it goes" Lisa said at my side, taking my hand. We walked triumphantly through the doors together.

It took most of second period for me to realize that our former group of friends were the hot gossip of the first day. People were glancing in my direction, snickering, leaving me to wonder where I fit in all this. At lunch, Lisa and I met up as we didn't have either of our first two classes together. We only shared English; last period of the day.

"People are talking about Grace" I said, sitting down beside her. I watched her glance around the cafeteria, possibly to see how the victims of the latest gossip were handling it. Their absence made me wonder if that may have been the reason they weren't anywhere in sight.

"Yeah, well what she did was pretty bad. I want nothing to do with it" Lisa said, focusing her attention on her meal. I couldn't eat. I spent more time looking around for Mikey than I did looking at my food. I hadn't seen him since we broke up at his house over the summer.

Luckily, I had no classes with Mikey this semester. Although a part of me saw this as a bad thing. I knew it was okay to grieve, but I felt as if I was obsessing more than grieving.

I went to meet Lisa for our last class of the day, English, which we were in together, when I passed a group of ninth graders I knew from LCS. I nearly greeted them when I heard what they were discussing.

"I heard he's in juvenile prison or something" one said, in no way trying to keep her voice down.

"He like attacked his slut of a sister. He's probably handcuffed to his bed" the other laughed.

"I didn't think Tom was the violent type, except for maybe that time he and Burke fought Hoager and Manning behind the gym a couple years ago. And even then, Leslie 'accidentally' kicked his face in."

I had no idea what they were talking about. I hadn't heard a word from Tom or Grace since July. I didn't think anything particularly interesting was going on. I just assumed they all split off and went their separate ways.

"Excuse me, Vivian?" I said, stopping the two girls in their tracks. It took both of them a mere second or two to pinpoint who I was.

"Twin girl! I thought it was you" she said, even though it was clear she hadn't until then, "my head is swimming surrounded by all these new faces. What's up?" Vivian asked, clearly she didn't know I'd been eavesdropping on them. I kind of wish she had. That would've made it a bit easier for me.

"Um, what is it you were just saying? About Leslie and Tom?" I asked, pretending to only have heard the part about the 7th grade fight.

"You didn't hear?" Mora, the girl beside Viv said, wide-eyed.

"Hear what?"

"Tom Jacobs almost killed his sister over the summer. You know, the one in 8th grade who slept with Leslie Burke's boyfriend" Vivian said. A strange, unpleasant feeling settled in my stomach.

"Oh, yeah. I heard about that. I mean, Grace and.."

"Jesse Aarons."

"Yeah. But not about Tom. What happened?" I asked the girls. They exchanged a should-we-tell-her? look before facing me again.