Chapter 8 – “Guilty As Sin?” - Taylor Swift
AUGUST
“GUILTY AS SIN?” - TAYLOR SWIFT
AGE SIXTEEN - NOVEMBER
“My brain isn’t working, Augustus,” Elena mutters from behind me where she sits on my bed.
“It must be working a little, or you wouldn’t have been able to say that.”
I can practically hear her rolling her eyes at that, even though I’m not looking at her.
I smile to myself, shading in the mountains that stretch across my sketchbook page.
I’ve been working on my landscape skills because as more kids from school ask me for tattoos, I’m finding just how many people want that kind of artwork permanently marked on their body.
Not that I’m complaining. I’m making enough money to cover the cost of my license as soon as I graduate high school.
I also met an incredibly skilled artist in San Diego this past summer who offered me an apprenticeship once I turn eighteen.
It feels good to be the only person my age who knows exactly what I want to do with my life.
Well, except maybe Leo. I don’t think he's capable of being anything but a professional surfer, so it’s a damn good thing he’s the best at what he does.
I push back from my desk and spin my chair, taking in the sight of Elena. She’s cross-legged on my bed in a worn-out Vans T-shirt and a pair of shorts, her dark curls falling around her shoulders as she stares down at the notebook in her lap, tapping her pencil against the page.
“Why isn’t your brain working?”
“I forgot words.”
“Well, there’s three right there.”
She lifts her head, and despite the glare on her face, I see the amusement in her eyes. There’s just enough that I’m able to dodge the pencil that comes flying at my head a moment later, laughing as I get out of my chair and flop onto the bed beside her.
“I’m kind of over writing poems,” she says.
“Yeah?”
Elena has been writing poems for years. Sometimes, she writes them about us—her brothers and myself, and I assume Zach too—but she never gives them to us directly.
She slips them into my backpack when I’m not looking or leaves them under my pillow.
She writes them in Italian, and while I can’t read them, I have no doubt they’re filled with the most beautiful words I’d ever read.
I keep every single one in a box inside my nightstand, right alongside all the drawings I’ve made of her beautiful face that I know I’ll never show her.
“I might want to write a book.” She tilts her head at me, biting her lip. “Is that stupid?”
“No,” I say immediately. “That’s amazing. Fantasy? Romance? Thriller?” Elena reads all those genres, and I could see her writing any of them, or all of them at once.
“Romance, but maybe with some elements of suspense? Like an episode of Criminal Minds , but how fun would it be if the horrible villain was actually just misunderstood, and in the end, they get the happy ending?”
I laugh. “You do have a ton of empathy for the villains in those shows. You’re always so eager to figure out what shaped them into who they are.”
She shrugs, looking almost embarrassed.
“I think that sounds like a lot of fun, Elena. I think if there is anyone out there who could do it, it’s you.”
“I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not.” I lightly place my hand on her thigh, enough to comfort but not enough to show her just how badly I really want to touch her.
I’m always riding that line. “You should write what you’re compelled to write.
It means you have something to say, which means there might be someone out there who needs to hear it, even if you haven’t found them yet.
” I shrug, turning over on my back to stare at the ceiling.
“Or, worst-case scenario, it sucks, and the only people who’ll ever read it are you and me. ”
Her pretty face interrupts my view a moment later, hair falling like a curtain as she drops her head to look at me. “Why do you assume I’d let you read it?”
I roll my eyes. “Of course you’d let me read it. You need my opinion.”
“You wouldn’t be honest. You’d tell me it’s great even if it wasn’t.”
“No,” I argue. “I’m always gonna be your number one fan, but if you wrote a book that truly sucked, I’d never let you publish it. I wouldn’t let you embarrass yourself like that, even if it hurt your feelings.”
She snorts, and I’m still staring at the ceiling as her weight leaves my bed. “All right, let’s go then.”
I sit up and she’s standing in front of my doorway, a perfect hip kicked out against it as she crosses her arms. “Go where?”
“Well, I need some inspiration. I’m never going to start writing a novel if I’m just sitting here in your room. We need to run around in the dark, be weird and creepy. I need to get into the mind of a villain.”
“You’re not asking me to like…kill someone, are you? I mean, I’d definitely help you bury a body, but I’d hope it’d at least be manslaughter.”
“Augustus,” she mutters, caramel eyes rolling. “No, I just need to get out of the house. Let’s go.”
I laugh, getting up and following her. Both of our parents are out in Carlsbad tonight, watching Zach and Everett play football. Elena and I don’t normally attend the away games.
Leo didn’t go tonight either, but he’s at home by himself.
All he tends to do nowadays is sulk and surf.
Despite only knowing her for a couple of months, and knowing it was just for the summer, Darby did a number on him when she went back to Kansas in August without saying goodbye.
He fell way too hard for her, way too fast, even going so far as to make me tattoo her name on his chest.
She got a tattoo for him, too, and the worst part is, she wouldn’t let him look at it.
She left, and he never saw the dainty scroll I inked across her hip with his nickname.
I feel weird telling him about it now. I’ve decided it’s not my place, so we don’t talk about it.
We don’t talk about Darby at all. Elena hates her for leaving Leo, but I think she was hurt by it herself, too.
Darby was the first real girl friend she’d ever had, and she didn’t say goodbye. She just disappeared.
We tried having an intervention for Leo last month because he wouldn’t stop writing Darby letters and leaving them on her grandmother’s doorstep, despite the fact that Darby hadn’t returned a single one.
He’s still wearing the necklace she gave him—a simple chain with a gold ring attached to it—around his neck.
We urged him to move on, even tried setting him up on dates.
He wouldn’t have any of it, told us not to bring her up again, and isolated himself until we finally stopped.
Their mom, Monica, said that as long as he was eating, surfing, attending school, and not doing drugs, we needed to give him space to mend his broken heart on his own. She promised he’d be okay eventually, but she looked sad when she said it, like she wasn’t sure if she believed herself.
So we give him the space he needs for now, but I miss him being around more often.
I don’t have to ask Elena where we’re going; within ten minutes of stepping out my door, we’re crawling through the shrubs we’ve spent two years clearing a pathway between, and emerging onto our secret cliffside.
It’s a new moon tonight, so it’s darker than usual, but the stars are brighter than ever.
“The stars look insane tonight,” Elena gasps, voicing my thoughts.
She runs ahead of me before plopping down in the center of the field and lying on her back.
I take my time walking toward her, admiring how beautiful she looks when she’s invested in something.
She goes through small phases of hyper-fixations, whether it’s crystals, tarot reading, a certain book series, or her most recent one, astrology.
Once she shows that kind of interest in something, though, it never really goes away. She has an incredible talent for remembering everything. She could’ve read a random fact about Scorpios on the internet two years ago, and she’ll still use it to judge someone now.
Luckily for me, she says my Taurus moon and her Pisces moon make us compatible, though her Aries rising and my Aquarius rising could make us butt heads.
I silently lie down beside her.
“Can you find Leo for me?” she asks, pointing at the sky.
I have a better knack for finding the constellations than she does. She says the stars morph together in the sky and she can’t make out their shapes unless I point to them for her.
I tilt my head up, tracing the stars until I find the nine dots that make up the symbol of the lion. I raise my hand, pointing to the north. “There.”
I turn to her, watching her eyes squint as she attempts to follow my arm. “I can’t see shit.”
Laughing, I reach into my pocket and pull out the fine-point pen I was shading with at home. I can’t remember why I tossed it in my pocket when we left—what I thought I’d need it for—but I’m glad I have it now.
I roll up, moving into a cross-legged position at Elena’s side. “Give me your arm.”
She doesn’t question me, doesn’t even take her eyes from the sky as she tosses her forearm across my lap. I press dots into her skin with the pen, connecting them to form the constellation. She giggles as my pen slides along her arm, and I realize she must be ticklish there.
I wonder if my brother knows that.
I finish the constellation, placing her hand back in her lap. “Raise your arm and then find the constellation in the sky that matches the one I just drew.”
Her arm shoots in the air, a bright smile spreading across her face as she studies her skin and the sky.
“You are a genius, Augustus.” She traces two fingers over the ink.
“This would be cool as a tattoo. When are you going to tattoo me, by the way?” Elena turns her head, shooting me an unconvincing scowl.