UNORTHODOX | KAI PARKER

XXII. IGNORANCE.

Chapter 22

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Maybe it's because I never really got to experience a normal teenage-hood to its fullest.

Other kids at sixteen— sneaking out of their bedroom windows at night to meet up with friends. To meet up with a boy, or whoever. Hanging out in the depths of the night in the danger of abandoned establishments, engorging themselves in underage drinking and smoking and unsafe sex. The adrenaline rush of teenage rebellion the only thing keeping them afloat in the crashing waves of adolescence and angst.

Sure, I experienced that to an extent.

Sneaking out. Drinking. Getting high and pretending to like the taste of cigarettes because that's what everyone else does. Partaking in unsafe sex with people I didn't even like because that's what everyone was doing. It was thrilling, sure. But it wasn't the same.

Wedged between the limbo of the all-encompassing black grief, and looking over my shoulder with hitched breaths to the shadows of monsters in the night— I didn't have time, or the emotional capacity, for teenage rebellion. Monsters I then knew for a fact were there. Lurking.

There was underage drinking and smoking. Of course there was— I was sixteen. But to fill that empty spot inside of me that left me cold all over, where my parents previously sat warm. A black hole that was previously a star of burning light. There was sneaking out at night to meet up with people. With boys. But those people wore the face of humans, of men, while the monster lurked behind the skin. Sorry, Stefan. But it's true.

It just wasn't the same.

Wedged between the purgatory of grief and monsters.

So maybe it's because I never got to experience normal teenage-hood that all of this feels so exhilarating. Sneaking off in the depths of night into danger. To meet up with a boy. With Kai.

"This might be the worst movie I've ever seen, and I watched some doozys in the prison world," Kai deadpans, blinking dumbly at the screen as if he can't believe his eyes as he shovels a handful of microwave-popcorn in his mouth. "I'm offended on behalf of Malachai's everywhere."

The two of us are lounged on his bed. Kai's legs stretched out over me with mountains of empty take-out containers piling around us while I sit cross-legged beside him. Some horror movie playing on his TV hoisted on the wall. A Children of the Corn remake from 2009, I think. Kai's favourite movie as a kid. Which... explains so much about how he turned out. He hasn't been enjoying it, as he's loudly been professing over the past hour.

I roll my eyes, trying to focus on the horrifically awful movie while chewing on leftover popcorn kernels. "There's probably only like... five of you out there. I honestly don't know what your parents were thinking with that name."

He scoffs in offense, digging his sock-clad foot into my stomach and flinging a piece of popcorn at my head. "Blame Joshua, we already know he's a freak."

He doesn't like talking about his mom, I've noticed. Never even referencing her since his fleeting divulgence in the prison world. Liv doesn't like talking about their mom either. And I can't help but think for similar reasons.

Joshua blamed Liv and Luke, Liv once spoke into the darkness of the night. Sitting on the floor of my dorm with nothing but the glow of a TV show emanating from my laptop. Not disclosing the cause of her death, but just that she was gone and it was their fault. I think Kai blames them, too.