Текст книги "The Avery Shaw Experiment "

Автор книги: Келли Орам

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

I didn’t really have time to think about Avery’s current stage of grief. Depression was something I’d never understood. Anger and guilt made sense, but I’d never felt depression. I didn’t get how someone could just be sad all the time.

I figured that when Avery was ready to get over it, she would. It didn’t occur to me that she might be unable to pull herself out of it until her mom came to my house the morning after the state championship.

We’d lost the game, which was okay—second in the state is still awesome—but it was one of the biggest games of my life, and Avery had blown me off when I asked her to come. I honestly wasn’t in the best mood that morning, and seeing Kaitlin sitting at my breakfast table only reminded me how much Avery’s brush-off had hurt.

Kaitlin and my mom had made up, but she was still really mad at Aiden, so she hadn’t been to the house as much.

I looked around for my mom, but there was nobody home.

“Morning, Kaitlin,” I muttered awkwardly as I went in search of some juice.

“Afternoon,” she corrected. There was a nervousness about her that didn’t make sense.

“What’s up? Where is everyone?”

“Your parents went to Home Depot. Something about re-tiling the upstairs bathroom?”

I rolled my eyes. My parents were obsessed with remodeling. Real Do-It-Yourselfers. A strange hobby, if you ask me, when they could afford to hire someone to do it for them.

“I haven’t seen Aiden,” she added.

Not surprising. “Not many do these days. He’s been pretty pathetic since Avery’s birthday.”

Kaitlin suddenly sent me a desperate look. “I actually came to see you. I’m really worried about Avery.”

“Don’t know what I can do to help,” I grumbled.

Kaitlin’s face fell in disappointment. “I know you’re frustrated, but try not to be too upset with her. Please. I need your help, Grayson.”

She had my attention instantly. She’d been walked out on by her husband when Avery was four. She’d become quite the independent woman since then. Asking for help was something Kaitlin Shaw did not do.

“I know she’s been sad and a little depressed lately, but I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“It’s more than a little,” Kaitlin whispered. “She sleeps most of the day. She’s losing weight because she’s not eating. She failed her math test this week. Failed! Avery! Several of her teachers have called me, concerned about her. I tried to ask her about it, but she won’t talk to me.”

Kaitlin started to cry. “I think Avery has a serious problem. Libby’s been over a couple times, but nothing seems to work.”

I could hardly believe what Kaitlin was telling me. I’d known Avery was having a hard time, but none of that sounded like her. I couldn’t imagine a world where Avery Shaw failed a test and blew off Libby. I knew she was blowing me off, but I figured that was just because of Aiden. It’s what she did when she felt guilty. I suddenly felt awful for giving up on her.

Kaitlin’s hand came down on top of mine. She was shaking. “Grayson,” she whispered. “Please.”

I was shocked at the swarm of emotions that swept through me right then. I think that one word caused me to go through my own stages of grief all at once. Shock, anger, depression, frustration, and even grim resignation overwhelmed me in mere seconds.

“I tried,” I said. “I tried everything I could think of, but I can’t help her. You should talk to Aiden.” My voice dripped with bitterness.

Kaitlin gave me a heartbroken smile. “Don’t give up on her now. She needs you.”

It actually hurt to hear her say that. It hurt because I wanted it to be true, but it just wasn’t. “She doesn’t want my help! She wants Aiden! She’s always wanted Aiden!” I took a breath. I shouldn’t be yelling at Kaitlin. None of this was her fault.

Kaitlin shook her head furiously. “She loves you. I know she does.”

I suddenly felt like I’d run a marathon. I was tired of trying. Tired of lying to myself and trying to make something true that wasn’t. I couldn’t do it anymore. Not even for Kaitlin. “She loves my brother. He doesn’t deserve her, but if she really needs help, he’s the one she’ll listen to.”

Aiden’s voice startled both Kaitlin and me. “That’s not true.”

He walked into the kitchen looking pale and rumpled. He stuck a bowl and spoon in the sink and then turned to Avery’s mom. “Kaitlin,” he said in a strangled voice. His eyes filled with tears, and he couldn’t get any more words to come out of his mouth, but the “I’m sorry” was obvious.

I think Kaitlin wanted to be mad at him, but she couldn’t do it with him looking so pathetic. “I’ll forgive you if you forgive me,” she said.

Aiden nodded miserably and then blushed as he tried to wipe away the evidence of his tears.

Kaitlin stood and gave Aiden a hug, then said she needed to go. As she walked out the door, she gave me one last pleading look. “Please don’t give up on her. She needs help, Grayson. I’m trying, but no one has ever helped her as much as you did.”

The door clicked shut, and I just sat there at the table, overwhelmed by Kaitlin’s visit. I didn’t want to let her down. If Avery really was that depressed, then I wanted to help, but I just didn’t know what else I could do for her.

Aiden plopped down in a chair across the table from me and met my eyes. “Kaitlin’s right about Avery.”

I was surprised. Aiden and I hadn’t exactly been on speaking terms for the last few months.

“You changed her,” he admitted grudgingly. “At first I was so mad at you for it. One lunch with you and suddenly she looked different. She was hanging out with other people, going to basketball games and parties. It was like I didn’t even recognize her, and I hated you for ruining her.”

I realized I was grinding my teeth when my jaw started to hurt. “If she changed, it was only for the better.”

Aiden looked down at his lap. “I know,” he said quietly. “You can hardly even notice her anxiety anymore. The old Avery never could have gone off on me the way she did on our birthday. She’s stronger because of you. Healthier.”

Aiden gulped, and his voice shook as he forced the next words from his mouth. “Until we fought at the condo, she was happier than I’d ever seen her in our whole lives. You did that.”

I scoffed. “Yeah, right. If I made her so happy, then what happened? She’s rejected me a thousand times over again and always for the same reason—you. She loves you.”

“You are so blind.”

“You have no right to call me blind when you missed her feelings for you for seventeen years.” I felt my anger boiling up inside me. It pissed me off to hear him saying these things when I knew he was the one she wanted. “You better have been clueless, anyway, because I’d hate to think you realized what you were doing to her all those times you broke her heart.”

Aiden glared at me, but he was just mad at himself for that one. “So we’re both idiots,” he said. “Doesn’t mean she didn’t fall in love with you.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I flew to my feet so fast I sent the chair crashing to the floor behind me. “Everything we’ve ever done together has been about you!” I yelled, slamming my fists down on the table. “All the time we spent together was because of you! She didn’t hang out with me because she wanted me. She was trying to get over you! I’m just a damn science fair partner to her!”

Aiden rose to his feet and met my volume with a shout of his own. “Why do you think I went to the condo on her birthday? It wasn’t because I thought she would sleep with just anyone. I knew she was in love with you, and I couldn’t let you hurt her!”

He rolled his eyes when I glared at him. “Are you really going to blame me for thinking you could? How many countless girls have you made fall for you and then tossed away when you got bored with them?”

“I didn’t mean to make them all fall for me,” I said defensively.

Aiden shrugged. “They still fell. Every single one of them. Avery’s no different.”

I started to argue, but Aiden glared at me so hard I shut my mouth.

“You think I don’t know her well enough to see it?” he hissed. “You’ve been her friend for two-and-a-half months. I’ve been her friend her whole life! I know everything about her. I know what she’s going to do before she does it. I know what she actually means when she says something and she’s just trying to be nice. I even know all of her different laughs and sighs. I know every single facial expression she has, and the way she looks at you? Trust me. Avery is crazy about you.”

Aiden glared at me again like he was hoping I might explode into a pile of ash. I didn’t think he could make me any madder, but he had some freaking nerve. “If that’s true, why the hell should it piss you off?”

Aiden’s face flushed deep red, and he came around the table to stand toe to toe with me. I was quite a bit taller than him, but it didn’t stop him from getting right up in my face. “Because she should be mine!” Aiden screamed. “She was mine! Yeah, I really, really screwed up, but I could have fixed it. I knew by the end of school that first day that I’d made a mistake. I was going to dump Mindy and apologize, but you’d already swooped in like a damn vulture! Then you did what you always do.”

“Excuse me?” I asked incredulously.

Aiden glared at me as if he loathed me more than was humanly possible. “Don’t act like you didn’t! You took her out. You made her popular. You kissed her. For a couple weeks you were perfect, caring, charming Grayson Kennedy until she fell for you. Then you got bored and dropped her like every other girl you’ve ever dated, and now she’s so depressed, her mother was over here begging you to fix it!”

My vision went red. I threw my fist so fast Aiden never saw it coming. I hit him so hard he flew back and landed on his butt. He blinked up at me in shock, while blood ran down his face. I was sure I’d just broken his nose, but I was too furious to care.

“I didn’t get bored and drop her, you asshole! I got rejected! I asked her to be my girlfriend, and she said no. She said it wouldn’t be fair to me because she’d only be doing it hoping it would make her forget about you. She fed me some stupid line about how I deserved someone who could actually care about me, and that wasn’t her.”

Aiden stopped worrying about the blood running from his nose and gaped up at me. “What?”

“She loves you, you undeserving bastard. If anybody fell for anybody in the last few months it was me.”

I sank back into my chair at the table. Now I understood why Avery had seemed so tired after she exploded on Aiden. Being this angry was exhausting both physically and mentally.

“I love her, Aiden.”

There it was. I’d been refusing to admit it for weeks, but there was no use denying it anymore.

“You . . .” Aiden’s face paled, and I don’t think it was from blood loss.

I shrugged helplessly. “She’s depressed right now because of you. It started the night you busted in on her birthday. I tried for weeks to cheer her up. I tried everything I could think of, but nothing I did helped. She didn’t want me. She never has.”

My head hurt too bad to deal with this anymore. “I’m going back to bed.”

Avery

I knew as part of the grieving process I would get here eventually, but I hadn’t meant to fall apart so badly. Depression runs in my family. I’d had problems with it before, and so I told myself I wouldn’t let it overwhelm me. But that’s the thing with depression. Sometimes there is no controlling it. Sometimes it sneaks up on you.

Obviously I’d known it was coming. I even realized when I said no to going to the dance with Grayson that I was starting to feel it, but suddenly I was so deep in it I didn’t know which way was up anymore. In fact it was so bad I wondered if maybe I hadn’t been feeling a bit depressed all along.

It was mid-March now. Over a month had already slipped by since my birthday. I’d barely noticed. I’d been too busy being sad to realize exactly how depressed I was until my mom woke me up one Saturday morning and forced me to go see someone.

After my counseling session—and after my mom filled the prescription of anti-depressants the doctor had prescribed for me—I wasn’t in the mood to talk to my mother anymore. I went straight to my room and stayed there.

It was two in the afternoon when the weight of someone sitting down on my bed woke me.

“Avery?”

His quiet voice was so timid, but it was still one of my favorite sounds in the whole world. It was a voice I knew as well as my own.

“Aiden?” I sat up and almost screamed when I saw his face. “What happened to you?”

Aiden shrugged like it was no big deal. “I pissed off Grayson.”

“Grayson did that to you? You’re disfigured!”

Aiden winced. “I really pissed him off.”

I hated to be so startled, but Aiden looked awful. Half his face was black and blue and his nose was swollen to twice its normal size. I couldn’t believe Grayson had hit him.

“Is your nose broken?”

“Not badly. Doctor said it would heal on its own.”

Once the subject of his bruises was out of the way, I wasn’t sure what else to say. I didn’t know what he was doing in my room, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted him there. Things got awkward, fast.

Outside, a dog barked, snapping us both from the thick silence that had settled between us. Aiden pulled his thoughts together and said, “Come with me to the Natural History Museum. My parents got me an annual pass for my birthday. I haven’t used it yet.”

It figured. “My mom got me a pass too.”

“I know. They thought we’d like to be able to go together.”

I couldn’t make sense of my emotions. I was feeling a whole spectrum of them. In that moment bitterness won out. “Must have bought them a long time ago.”

Aiden stood up and started pacing my small bedroom at the foot of my bed. “Actually, I suggested them for both of us a week before our birthdays,” he explained. “When my parents gave me mine that afternoon, I was going to come see if you would go with me, just the two of us.”

I’m not sure why that was so painful to know, but I had to close my eyes and push back tears. Then I figured something out. “That’s when your parents told you I’d gone up to the condo with Grayson.”

Aiden obviously didn’t want to go there. He stopped pacing and caught my eyes in an unyielding stare. “Come to the museum with me.”

I wanted to go with him. As much as I was mad at him, I could never hate him. He must have known that, or he wouldn’t be here. I missed him so much, but I was scared of him now, so I chickened out. “I don’t feel like going to the museum today.”

“I know you don’t feel like it. You haven’t felt like doing anything for weeks. I’m asking you to come anyway. I’ll beg if I have to.”

“No.”

“Why?” Aiden demanded. “Because you’re depressed? Because you hate me? Because you want to get back at me?”

All of his reasons probably applied, but they weren’t what was stopping me. I shook my head, but his eyes demanded an answer.

“Because I’m scared of you. I don’t trust you not to hurt me again.”

Aiden stopped pacing, devastated by my confession. He walked over to the window and stared out of it. I could barely hear him when he said, “I deserve that.”

We lapsed into another long silence.

Aiden noticed my new diary on my desk and, after reading the front cover, held it up to me with a questioning look.

I felt myself blush. “He gave me that for my birthday,” I muttered. “It’s a long story.”

Aiden set the book back down without saying anything and then looked at the large corkboard collage that now hung on the wall above my desk. It was the only thing that had changed about my room since the last time Aiden had been in here. It started out as an outline for the experiment, but then as Grayson and I began to go places and do things, it became more of a collection of souvenirs.

It had everything from a printout of our bowling scores to the tabs from our Red Bull cans glued onto an index card in the shape of a heart. And there were endless pictures. Pictures taken during science club and from Grayson’s basketball games. There were tons from the party and my birthday and a few of my favorite random ones of Grayson and me together.

Aiden had his back to me, so I couldn’t study his face as he looked at the collage, but watching him examine it made me feel bad. I’d done so much without him. Looking at that board, he probably thought I was a completely different person.

“I was planning to use it as a visual aid at the science fair. Just kind of a fun backdrop to all of the actual pieces of the display, but now it looks like I won’t need it. The Avery Shaw Experiment had been put on hold, most likely indefinitely.”

Aiden finally turned around and looked at me. He sounded cautious as he said, “Why?”

I shrugged. “The science fair is next weekend. I don’t think there’s any way to finish in time. I don’t know how to reach the last stage of grief, and I think my partner has given up on me.”

Aiden reached up to touch his bruised face and muttered, “My nose would have to disagree.”

Before I could ask him why Grayson hit him—I suspected I was the cause of their fight—he asked, “What is the final stage of grief?”

I felt myself blush again. “Acceptance,” I whispered, looking down at my lap. “Hope.”

Aiden didn’t say anything.

When I finally looked up, he was watching me. He was chewing on his top lip as if debating whether or not to say what was on his mind. He always did that when he was nervous.

“What?” I asked.

He pushed his hand through his hair and then sat down on my bed again. “Maybe you’ve just been looking for the answer to this one in the wrong place.”

I didn’t want to tell him I hadn’t been looking for the answer at all. I’d given up weeks ago. But right now he had me interested.

Aiden knew me too well. He knew that playing to my analytical nature would work better than graveling or bribing or anything else he could come up with. He was “playing the science card” as Grayson called it, because he knew I wouldn’t be able to resist that.

“What do you mean?” I asked slowly.

Aiden smiled at his victory.

“People who lose their loved ones often visit gravesites,” he said. “They talk to the dead. They get all their feelings off their chest in order to make peace. You haven’t done that.”

Hadn’t I? Was he forgetting what happened on our birthday? I think I unloaded quite a bit of my feelings that day.

Aiden knew exactly what I was thinking. “You yelled at me,” he said. When I opened my mouth he quickly cut me off. “You had every right to do that. I don’t blame you for it, but maybe you have things you want to say now that you’re not so mad.”

“I don’t know what there is to say, but I am still confused,” I admitted.

“Then give me the chance to explain. Ask me whatever you need to. I promise I’ll answer anything you can throw at me as best I can. Let me try to apologize too. I can’t ever erase what happened, but I can definitely try to make it up to you. Come to the museum with me today. Let me stand in for Grayson on this one. Let me help you find your acceptance.”

My heart pounded at its first glimpse of hope in months. Was there really a chance I could find acceptance? Aiden’s theory made sense. Facing the cause of your grief is necessary in order to obtain acceptance. How could I ever get closure without ever trying to make sense of what had happened?

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized this yet. I’d been trying so hard to push Aiden under the rug and forget him, but people don’t forget the loved ones they lose. They make peace with them being gone. In order for me to get over my broken heart, I had to make peace with the person who broke it.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it. Let’s go to the museum.”

We didn’t say much on the hour-and-a-half drive to Salt Lake City. I think we’d just automatically come to some sort of silent agreement that the following discussion should wait until we were walking through the exhibits of the Natural History Museum. Friendly ground and all that. We were both at home in any museum. Washington DC was our Graceland.

Being there with Aiden was as familiar as it always was, and yet it was different now too. It was strained and slightly awkward in a way it never had been with us ever in our lives. It wasn’t just the unresolved issues. We had both changed over the last few months.

We were well into an exhibit on the history of ancient civilizations when we finally started to talk. We were standing in front of a display of Zallinger’s March of Progress when Aiden brought it up. He looked at the figure of the Modern Man and sighed.

“You know what I think it was?” he asked. At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. He pointed at the statue and said, “This is you. You are fully evolved. I’m still just here…” He walked over to the next figure down the line—a statue of good old Cro-Magnon Man.

Somehow I managed not to smile. I studied the less-evolved human a moment and then pushed Aiden a little further down the line. Neanderthal Man was tempting, but I walked him all the way back to Homo Erectus.

He looked at the hunched over figure, who was almost more ape than human, and frowned. I don’t know what his problem was. It seemed about right to me.

“I don’t even merit early Homo Sapiens?”

“I thought this was generous,” I said dryly.

Aiden tried to be offended, but he ended up smiling. He looked at me a second too long. “I miss you, Aves.”

His smile widened, but the fact that he missed me hurt. I had to start walking again.

“Avery.”

Aiden grabbed my hand and pulled me to a stop. “It’s the truth, Aves. I miss you like crazy.”

When he didn’t let go of my fingers right away, I jerked back and folded my arms. “Why’d you stop talking to me?” I tried to keep the hurt out of my voice, but my eyes welled up, giving me away. “I don’t understand what I did to make you hate me.”

Aiden started to reach out to me but stopped himself and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I never hated you. I was never even mad at you.”

“Then what happened?”

Aiden sighed. He glanced around us. “Dinosaur bones?”

I nodded, and he tentatively held his hand out as if he wanted me to take it.

Nervous energy spiked through me.

“Come on, Aves.” He curled his fingers up in a “give me” gesture.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I placed my hand in his. Aiden wrapped his fingers around mine gently and then smiled at me. I felt my face get hot, so I looked at the ground.

Aiden began to walk with me across the museum. I concentrated on our hands, swinging loosely in the space between us, and tried not to freak out. I had more questions now than I did before. I knew this was something boys do—Grayson took my hand pretty much every time we walked anywhere together, and sometimes he held it when we were driving—but Aiden had never acted like this before.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Aves. I was really confused. The way we were raised was…”

His voice trailed off when he couldn’t find the right word for it. I would have supplied something, but I didn’t know how to describe it either.

“Do you remember when your dad split and you and your mom lived with us for a couple months? I remember crying every night for weeks after you guys got your own place. I didn’t understand why you had to leave.”

I smiled at the story, but it made me sad too. I had my own set of memories from then. First I lost my dad, but Aiden was there and made it okay, but then we left him too. It took me a long time to understand why.

“Growing up the way we did,” Aiden said. “It was like I had a twin sister who lived a mile away. You’re my best friend. You always have been, but it’s like we never had a choice about that.”

My lungs tightened in my chest. He felt forced into being my best friend?

“I’m sorry.”

“I never minded, Avery. I couldn’t have asked for a better best friend. When I started talking to Mindy, all the sudden nothing made sense anymore. I liked her. I’d never really liked anyone before because I always had you. But I didn’t like you the same way I liked her.”

I tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach. “You liked me like a sister.”

Aiden shook his head. “I always knew you weren’t really my twin sister, but I didn’t know exactly what you were to me, either. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, I guess. But why didn’t you ever tell me? You were in that class with Mindy all semester, and you never mentioned her even once.”

Aiden sighed, and his pace slowed to almost a stop. People in the museum weaved around us. “I think that was my first mistake. When I got partnered with Mindy at the beginning of the semester, she helped me a lot with my speeches for class.” He shrugged. “I liked giving the speeches. It was fun and I was good at it, and I liked Mindy because she was different. I didn’t tell you because it was the first thing I’d ever done on my own. You and I did everything together. This was something that I could do by myself. I’d never needed that, but once I had it, I really liked it.”

Aiden stopped in front of a large dinosaur display and raked his free hand through his hair. “We did so much together that it was like I wasn’t my own person. I didn’t know how to separate us. I didn’t know who I was without you. I needed something that was mine, you know? Mindy and debate did that for me. I was afraid that if I told you about them, I would lose that feeling.”

I glanced up at Aiden. He was staring at the dinosaur but not really paying attention to it. As I looked closely, I could see how strung out he was. I hadn’t noticed it before because of the bruises covering his face, but he looked tired and stressed. His eyes and cheeks seemed a little sunken in as if he’d lost some weight recently. He was pale and his hair needed a cut. He hadn’t been his normal self for a while.

In that moment I realized that Aiden needed my acceptance as much as I did. We weren’t meant to be apart. Maybe we weren’t meant to be together the way I’d always imagined, but we couldn’t spend the rest of our lives avoiding each other, either.

I gave his hand a small squeeze. “I would have understood. I would have given you all the space you needed.”

Aiden squeezed my hand back and tugged me closer to him. “I should have realized that,” he said with a sigh. “I’m really sorry, Aves.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay. I was never really upset about that anyway. I just didn’t understand why you wouldn’t even talk to me anymore.” My eyes started burning again. “It was like you hated me. You were my best friend. You were the person I loved most and trusted most in the whole world, and all of a sudden you weren’t a part of my life anymore.”

I pulled my hand from Aiden’s in order to wipe the tears that gathered in my eyes. I walked down a little ways to a drinking fountain and gulped down some water. I even splashed a little on my face. It helped ease a bit of the panic. I sat down on a bench and attempted to get my emotions under control again.

Aiden sat down, leaving a foot of space between us like he wasn’t sure I wanted him near me.

“It was the same for me, you know,” I said, sniffling. “I didn’t know who I was without you, either. I don’t think there was a part of me that didn’t include you. When you abandoned me, it was like half of myself was just gone. First my dad left me, and then you. I didn’t even know how to breathe anymore. If Grayson hadn’t been there to hold me together, I don’t know what would have happened.”

So much for gaining control of my emotions. I started to cry, and Aiden’s arms came around me. I turned into his shoulder and clung go him. Then I lost all control and started to sob. “How could you do that to me?” I cried.

I’d never felt so raw in all my life as when I pulled the bandage off my damaged heart for Aiden right then. I’d been trying to suppress my feelings for so long, trying to be strong, but as I sat there with him, I opened myself up and shared all of my hurt with him.

Aiden tightened his grip on me, but the hug wasn’t exactly right. He’s so much closer to my size. His arms didn’t engulf me the way I was used to.

I breathed in deeply. My nose was filled with the smell of the soap Aiden uses and a hint of his peppermint gum, but I wasn’t settled the way I was expecting. He was missing a certain hint of sweet and spice. It took me a moment to realize I was missing the smell of Grayson’s cologne.

“Why don’t we go outside and get some fresh air?” Aiden suggested and then led me out of the building.

We didn’t say another word until we were outside and walking around the grounds of the museum. There was a layer of old snow on the ground, but the sun was shining and the fresh air was nice.

“I’m so sorry, Avery,” Aiden eventually whispered. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for hurting you the way I did. I messed up so bad.”

“What happened? If you weren’t mad at me, why’d things change so much? You said we would still be friends, but we weren’t.”

“It was because of Mindy. She was so threatened by you. When we got together, she asked me about you.” Aiden shot me a grim smile. “Probably didn’t handle that conversation very well, either. I told her I loved you more than anyone else on the planet. She didn’t take that very well, so I tried to explain how it was for us. Hearing about how we grew up only made it worse.”

I focused on the snow crunching under my feet as I listened to Aiden tell his story.

“I was determined to keep both relationships. You were my best friend, and Mindy was my girlfriend. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. I should have been able to have both, but that first day back at school when Mindy and I were officially a couple at school, so many people were so shocked. Everyone we saw asked about you. Mindy couldn’t handle it. She got angry and went off about how people didn’t have relationships like ours. She said our moms were wrong to force us on each other.”

Aiden got really quiet for a minute and then muttered, “She said a lot of stuff. She was captain of the debate team. She had a convincing argument. Plus, she was my first girlfriend. I’d never had anyone like me that way before. I wanted to make her happy.”

“I get it,” I said. I did understand to an extent, but it didn’t explain the malice I sometimes felt. “But why did you seem so angry? Sometimes you’d look at me, and I would swear you hated me. What did I do wrong?”