Take Me Away | ✔️

36. BETTER WASN'T BETTER

I THOUGHT THAT AFTER our breakup, I would immediately see Molly and Travis holding each other as they passed the hallways. Instead, all I saw when I finally decided to come back to school was just Travis with Lucas, Robbie, Riley, and Travis by his side while Sean was on mine.

It was a big awkward mess that nobody wanted to talk about except for the Golden Sisters, but they didn't decide to torture me about it because of my situation. The guys, I could tell, wanted to talk to me half the time but I decided to ignore them just like I was ignoring Travis. It was a full week and a half before he decided to give up on knocking on my door, throwing small rocks on my window, and calling my phone nonstop.

I kept telling myself it was for the better, that I had better things to do like talk to the principal.

The principal had understood what happened to me—after all, it was already broadcasted throughout the school that I had been kidnapped by some people who were after my father's money and the healing bruises and wounds around me were proof enough that I wasn't lying about it.

Of course, we couldn't say anything about Max, we couldn't say anything about how the Mayor's son just decided to come back from the dead in order to torture me. It would cause chaos and the simpler way to talk about it was that I was kidnapped by people whom I didn't know and when I escaped and told authorities were they were, when they got there they were gone. So, now, I'm trying to keep everything normal.

In order to do that, I had to go to school first and catch up on my studies so I would be able to graduate and to achieve that, I would have bigger work than others. Which they did—the days-load they gave me to do would take weeks for people, even me, to finish. It meant no sleeping time so I could finish them and it was a good thing, also.

It could keep me off of thinking that breakup. Some teachers didn't want to give the task to me but I had to insist. The more stuff I could do, the more I could forget in an instant what had happened—the kidnapping, beating, torturing, killing, and breakup.

"Alright, Romeo and Juliet," Mrs. Saunders, slammed the book down the teacher's table, smiling at everyone. "I made this an assignment. So, all of you better read this. If not, Advance Placement doesn't seem so advanced—"

"Romeo died because he loved Juliet so much," Everyone, except me, stared at Travis, watching him talk about Romeo and Juliet. "It was a beautiful tragedy. When she woke up from a fake death, she killed herself, loving him too much."

My head shook, chuckling. "It was toxic. They should've just ended their relationship because none of their families wanted them to be together. If they did, then, no one would've died. Romeo would move on and Juliet would just, I don't know, move on too. It'd be better."

"Better," he scoffed. When my eyes met his, he immediately rolled his eyes at me. "Better isn't always better. You think it's good to break up with someone just because everything gets a little too much for you? Romeo was in love with her. He worshipped the ground she walked on. So much so, that he couldn't live with her."

Even Mrs. Saunders probably already knew that he wasn't talking about the book. This was good—anger was good. It meant that when he hated me, he'll be able to get over me.

"Juliet didn't need that sort of baggage, the best—"

"Baggage?" He hissed, narrowing his eyes at me. "Wow. So that's what you thought of it? Romeo would have been there for Juliet; he would've bent over backwards for her and that's a show of dedication when he killed himself. Would you be like Juliet? Were you really in love or were you just too afraid of commitment when things get tough?"