The Anatomy of a Broken Heart //Completed//

Everything I Never Said

Seventeen-year-old honors student Odette wrote a single letter to a boy she needs. Then the wrong boy read the letter. When her next-door neighbor, Jace gets hold of a very personal letter Odette has two options: Let Jace show his Instagram followers the contents of the letter, or let herself be blackmailed into helping him complete his summer school project. She does what any sane girl would do and decides to help Jace. As the summer grows hotter, and their time together grows longer, her strictly structured plan for the future begins to derail out of control. He drives her crazy, to the brink of rage, but she's not totally sure that's such a terrible thing anymore.

EXCERPT:

CHAPTER ONE

Dear Oliver,

I think you're amazing. You are incredibly intelligent. You and I would make the perfect team. Though I know high school is the worst place to find someone because obviously high school relationships don't last and it really shouldn't because we are so young and our brains technically don't stop developing until we're 21 therefore we don't really even know who we're going to be in three years. However, having said all of that, I think it's paramount you understand that despite all of that, I like you a lot. And I want to know if maybe you'd be interested in discussing further over coffee.

Sincerely,

Azura Luna Odette Villalobos

As carefully as I can, I fold the letter I just printed into a blank envelope and tuck it into my backpack which is already overflowing with books and notebooks. When I sling the bag over my back, the straps dig into my shoulders despite the tweed jacket I wear. It's still early and my parents are both probably asleep. Dad's a fifth grade teacher so he's off on summer break and Mom works from home so they both get to sleep in until their bodies can take it, which is usually around nine or ten these days. My younger brother, Elliot is off at football camp and my little sister Scarlett is probably sleeping over at one of her friend's house until Mom remembers to go pick her up.

I grab two apples from among the strange amalgam of food in the fridge—Mom's taken it upon herself to cook a dish from a different country every day and there are a lot of leftovers—and I exit the house. Next door, a dog barks, and a car rumbles to life but I don't see who it is because the summer bus is already rounding the corner and I'm running to catch it. Technically, I should be driving the little Honda Civic dad got me for my seventeenth birthday a few months ago, but I haven't quite mastered the art of driving with other people on the road. Thankfully, Hank, the trusty driver of the bus spots me and screeches to a halt. I give him a grateful smile as I climb on and hand him one of my apples which he immediately takes a bite from and I go sit in the near empty carriage. A few tops of heads are visible as I walk towards the back. Most of the kids are asleep with headphones on or look like they'd rather be dead than going to school during summer break.

Summer school isn't ideal, but I'm not really going to school. I've taken a summer internship with my guidance counselor, who invited me to apply towards the end of my junior year last year after I asked her for a list of places offering one. I wasn't too convinced about taking it, but she assured me that if I wanted to ever be considered for a scholarship for any psych program in any of my top ten schools, I needed experience with a certified psychologist. Apparently, she did more than just organize our school schedules. I readily accepted after that. It's been a week since I started and I've yet to learn much except her particular filing system.

We get to school, which is an unextraordinary cement construction built in the late 80s. There's rust in the hinges and I'm pretty sure it's full of asbestos, a fact confirmed when I sneeze as soon as I walk through the old wooden doors. My oxfords click on the tiled floors as I make my way down the hall towards the counselors' offices. Rita is already waiting for me, or rather, the stack of work she left piled up on her desk is. It's difficult to shadow her, see how she works as more than a guidance counselor but an actual therapist when all I do is file. Technically, since I'm still a student of the school, I'm not allowed to see what the kids' services are or sit in on one of their sessions, so I mostly do a lot of desk work. Either Rita is too busy to notice, or she's bending the rules, or just plainly doesn't care, but the paperwork I file usually has a lot of revealing information about my classmates. Still, she manages to record all her sessions with the kids and lets me listen, though only listen, and she makes sure the ones I hear have no revealing information, such as names. Though I can tell who some people are based solely on the timbre of their voices.