Chapter 20 #2
“Kai had a really hard time at our old school,” Kiki says abruptly. I whip around to face her, but she’s not looking at me. She’s laser focused on mixing a mint green cream with the precision of a neurosurgeon.
“Oh, um, he never told me that,” I say when Kiki doesn’t continue, unsure what kind of response she’s expecting.
Kai, with his infinite charm and infectious laugh and bright-as-the-sun smile, doesn’t seem like the type to have a hard time with anything.
Whether Kiki means he struggled with his grades—which has never seemed to be an issue for him, from what I’ve seen—or whether she means socially.
It’s impossible for me to imagine a world where Kai isn’t beloved by everyone he meets.
Where he’s bled dry of all the warmth that draws people to him.
“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” Kiki continues, setting the cream down on the vanity and handing me a paper towel.
She gestures for me to wipe off my mouth when I stare at the towel blankly.
Quickly, I clean the lip product off and take in a quick deep inhale, grateful to have one less thing weighing on me.
“Can’t blame him,” Carla mutters from over my shoulder. She seems to know more about what happened at Kai and Kiki’s old school than I do.
“What happened?” I ask tentatively, torn between not wanting to pry about something Kai hasn’t chosen to open up about and wanting to know more.
“People were just really shitty to him after he came out,” Kiki explains, her voice unusually hoarse as she tosses a fresh packet of under-eye patches to Carla.
I swallow hard. Flashes of my own past—of Joel—echo in the back of my mind. Kiki still doesn’t look directly at me as she picks the cream back up and brushes a swipe of it along my chin, focused on applying an even layer across my face as she continues.
“They made his life hell. No matter what we did, no matter how many teachers we talked to, nothing ever changed. At one point Kai was skipping school almost every other day just because he didn’t want to have to deal with it.
The principal was threatening to expel him if he missed any more classes, even after we told him a thousand times that he was skipping because he didn’t feel safe there.
” She pauses with the brush pressed to my cheek, and exhales sharply.
“So, our parents pulled us out and moved us across the state to be closer to our grandma. Because we knew if we stayed, things would never change. They’d only get worse. ”
Tears spring to my eyes and I hope Kiki doesn’t notice.
The story is achingly familiar. I’ve never told mine out loud, but I wonder if I’d be able to control my emotions the way Kiki is right now.
Then again, hers is easier to tell because the story has a happy ending.
Kai is okay. Not just okay but thriving.
My brother is gone.
Kiki shakes herself off slightly, picking up where she left and swiping the brush along the slope of my nose.
“When we started at Millcreek, I knew things had to be different. I tried so hard to protect my brother at our old school, but it meant nothing in the end. People didn’t care if I threatened them, or if I landed them in detention for what they did or said to him.
They just did it again, and again, and again.
But we had a fresh slate here. Nobody knew who we were—what we’d been through. ”
She stalls again, the brush dry of product.
The cream feels ice-cold on my skin, almost cold enough to burn.
Kiki doesn’t dip the brush back into the pot, though.
Instead, she finally looks at me head on—the intensity of her gaze pinning me in place.
The heat of it warming my chilled skin. Her eyes narrow slightly, something darkening behind them as she leans in just enough for me to feel the heat of her breath against my skin.
“I knew from the minute I stepped foot in that school that I wasn’t going to let anyone fuck with Kai. Anyone.”
Slowly, the missing pieces of the puzzle that is Kiki Thompson come together. How the twin sister of a boy who is as warm as pure sunshine can be so cold. Why she’s so willing to tear others down, to strike fear into people she barely knows.
It’s a survival tactic.
From the moment Kiki and Kai arrived at Millcreek, they were the center of attention.
Our class is made up of the same hundred or so kids we spent elementary and middle school with.
New kids are rare. The sudden spotlight could’ve easily sunk them—landed them in the same position they were in at their last school.
I can see those first few weeks of the school year from Kiki’s perspective now.
Showing up in a new environment with a blank slate—a chance to make yourself whoever you want, or need, to be.
If I were in her position—if I had a chance to start over with Joel—maybe I would’ve done the same thing.
Befriended Carla Gutierrez, head cheerleader and top of the social food chain.
Matched her easy cruelness. Made it clear that if anyone ever dared to fuck with her, there would be a problem.
Kiki built herself a suit of armor within weeks of arriving at Millcreek.
An armor that she knew would extend to Kai.
It’s admirable, really. How quickly she was able to rise through the ranks and establish herself as someone worthy of the entire student body’s respect.
To get her brother the fresh start he deserved.
“I get it,” I say, more to myself than to her.
Kiki stops swirling her brush through the cream to blink up at me with a furrowed brow.
In the mirror, I watch Carla stop filing her nails, interest piqued.
I bite my tongue, weighing whether it’s worth telling them about what happened to Joel.
Carla already knows pieces of the story—but maybe not the full thing.
And probably not the truth. Being Jose’s girlfriend, I’m sure he had his own version of events to tell her.
Sanitized and watered down until he looked like the type of harmless bully you laugh about once you’ve been out of high school long enough.
After Papi, the lines between fact and fiction faded completely.
The story of what happened between Papi and those boys has always started with Joel, but that chapter has faded away over time, replaced by a new beginning.
A more sensational one—about a coach driven by rage to murder his players.
Everyone chooses to forget we’d already gone through one loss before losing everything.
“My brother Joel came out as gay his freshman year,” I say carefully, testing the weight of the words on my tongue.
“Mostly just to our family. It wasn’t a secret or anything, but my mom is strict.
We had trouble making friends, and keeping them,” I say with a hint of bitterness.
“Joel was especially shy—most people didn’t even know him, let alone that he’d come out.
But my dad always thought he’d find his place at Millcreek eventually.
Make friends that weren’t me and my little brother. ”
I can see Carla and Kiki stiffen at the mention of Papi. I resist the urge to scoff or roll my eyes. He’s locked up in a maximum-security prison hundreds of miles away from us. They have no reason to be afraid of him.
I continue on. “My dad was coaching the soccer team, and he thought if Joel joined he’d have an easier time making friends, but…
” I pause, inhaling sharply. “There were these two guys on the team. They… they made things really hard for Joel. Cornered him in the locker room, said awful stuff about him to the rest of the team. Tried to get him removed because they said they didn’t want to play on a team with a…
” I swallow hard at the thought of all the horrible things they called him, names I can’t dwell on because they still hurt like a punch to the gut.
“You can fill in the blank,” I mutter bitterly.
“Jose said they got probation for what they did,” Carla says suddenly, earning her a glare from Kiki—either for interrupting me, or for daring to protest.
“They did,” I reply, fingers clenching into a fist. “But that was all the school did. Just because they weren’t on the team anymore didn’t mean they stopped. It only got worse after that. They found Joel in the halls. Cafeteria. After school.”
My throat tightens, knowing what comes next. Words I haven’t had to say out loud because everyone already knew.
“We lost Joel two weeks after those guys got kicked off the team.”
“They killed him?” Kiki asks with wide eyes, likely wondering how it was possible she’d missed that detail in the infamous Millcreek Murder case.
I shake my head bitterly, eyes stinging as I lose control and let the tears roll down my cheeks.
Globs of the face mask fall away from my skin, dripping down onto my hands, but I don’t bother to clean up the mess.
“He killed himself.” The words scratch and claw their way out of my throat, leaving me as raw and aching as the day Papi told me what happened.
When I realized I’d never get to hug my brother again.
Never challenge him to another race down the block or argue with him over the remote.
Never watch him paint another sunset or sing along to another ballad with so much force his cheeks would turn red as apples. Never get to say goodbye.
Kiki inhales sharply. Carla flinches, her attention shifting back to her cup as she swirls her half-finished drink. But I won’t let their discomfort stop me from telling the truth. She can ignore the truth about what her ex-boyfriend did, but I can’t. I’ll never be able to forget.