Chapter 2
Lukas
SIXTEEN YEARS OLD
The second bell rings for fourth period, and my eyes stay glued to the empty chair next to me.
Magnolia is never late for class. She’s usually the first one in, being sure to save the back lab table for us because she knows I hate to sit in the front row.
Looking around the room, I notice that the seat of her best friend, McKenna, is empty, and when I catch the eye of McKenna’s lab partner, she just shrugs.
Mags was fine this morning. We had government together first period; then she went off to French and geometry, while I had shop and gym.
Science is where we meet back together, and then it’s lunch.
My stomach twists, and while I know she’s safe somewhere inside these school walls, and that there is likely a perfectly reasonable explanation for why she’s now seven minutes late to class, Mags is never late.
She’s a people-pleaser, a perfectionist, the type of person that goes out of her way to make things okay, so the idea of something being wrong with her doesn’t sit right with me.
Before I can talk myself out of it, my hand is thrown in the air, and Mr. Benolio rolls his eyes when I ask for a hall pass.
I roam the empty halls, bypassing the art room and music hall, taking a left down the hall that holds row after row of lockers.
Mags and I have lockers on the far end; mine is one row past hers.
The closer I get to that end of the hall, I can tell that something is taped on the front of hers.
My brow furrows with each long stride down the tile, and the closer I get to her locker door, and the more I can make out the image, the tighter I clench my fists.
Blood roars through my veins, coursing toward my heart, causing it to thump a distracting beat. My ears ring, and I look around, ready to throw hands with anyone that might be standing by.
Because taped to the front of Magnolia’s locker is her school picture from last year, except blown up. Her smile is wide and beautiful, showing off her braces, because after nearly two years of me promising her she looks fine, she’s finally becoming comfortable in her skin again.
There’s what looks like a pad, or something girls use for their period, stuck to the picture, and in bright red ink, someone wrote, “shark week for brace face.” I rip the picture and pad from her locker, tearing it into what feels like hundreds of tiny shreds, before I gather it in a ball and toss the remains into the trash can.
My chest heaves, hands propped on my hips as I scan down the hall to the left, and then the right, wondering who has the balls to do something like this to someone like her.
Then I take off, weaving up and down each hallway, looking for something, anything, that might be out of place. Anyone left lingering with guilty eyes. Or anyone that would know where Mags is.
I turn down the hallway that parallels the cafeteria, and I spot McKenna standing outside the women's bathroom, with her arms crossed around her waist. She watches out the front windows that give a view of the parking lot, her gaze so focused she doesn’t see me until I’m standing right at her side.
She tilts her head to me; her eyes widening once she takes me in.
“Where is she?” I bark.
A faint sob comes from the women’s bathroom behind McKenna, and her hands come up to stop me just as I’m about to push past her to enter.
“You can’t go in there!” she squeals, grabbing at my arm. She pulls me out into the hallway, a few feet away from the door, and hisses at me under her breath. “I’ve got it under control, Lukas. She’s fine.”
“What the hell happened?” I grit out.
She stares at me, and I plant my feet shoulder width apart, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’m not leaving until I know she’s okay.”
She rolls her eyes, crossing her own arms over her chest. “She’s fine, Lukas. It’s just a girl issue. We’re waiting for her mom to bring her more clothes.”
Oh. A relieved breath wooshes out of me. My mom has supplies for all that stuff in the bathroom, and she’s starting to have talks with my little sister, Harper. I grew up on a farm for Christ’s sake. I've watched calves being born my entire life. A little blood doesn’t weird me out.
But then I hear another muffled sob coming from the bathroom, and my previous calmness vanishes.
“Her period hurts that bad?” I know she gets bad cramps, but Magnolia is used to a little pain.
She’s a life-long ballerina, I’ve seen what she puts her body through, how bruised and sore her feet get.
After a long day of practice or a straining performance, I’ve seen that girl stick her feet in a cooler of ice without even flinching.
I have a hard time believing she’s crying this hard over period cramps.
McKenna pulls me down the hall another few feet, looking to make sure we are alone before she speaks, her voice low and slow.
“Last class, she was called to the front to work on a problem on the board.” I nod along, waiting for her to continue.
But instead of going on, she rolls her eyes, mumbling under her breath about how I’m such a boy.
“She got her period … had to walk to the front of the class.” She waves her hand forward, as if expecting me to catch on.
“Ohhhh, did she leak through her pants?” Yikes, that’d be embarrassing to stand in front of the class with blood on your clothes. Even though all of the girls likely have theirs, or will get them soon, I’ll bet the whispers started immediately.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad, but Billy had to make a scene over it.”
My jaw clenches together, my back molars hitting with an almost audible crunch.
Billy is nothing short of an asshole. He’s had a crush on Mags since we were in seventh grade, and when she made it known she wasn’t interested, he didn’t take it well.
Since then, he’s been a dick, picking on her and taunting her every chance he gets. “What. Did. He. Do?”
I’m trying to keep my cool and pretend like it’s genuine curiosity that has me questioning her, but McKenna sees right through it. She steps back as her eyes look me up and down. “Don’t you dare make a scene about this, Lukas. You’ll make it worse.”
“What. Did. He. Do?” I repeat.
She sighs, looking to the side as she worries her bottom lip back and forth.
“He started laughing, pointing. Magnolia didn’t know what was going on, then he went on to loudly make jokes about his Aunt Flo coming for the weekend.
He asked if it was shark week on TV, those kinds of things.
Almost the entire class was laughing before Magnolia realized it was about her. ”
Shark Week for Brace Face. The picture I ripped off her locker. He’s so dead.
I push past McKenna, crossing the forbidden threshold that is the women's bathroom. I bend over as I walk, looking underneath all the stalls for a set of shoes I recognize. “Mags?” I whisper, and I hear a gasp, followed by a throat clearing.
“Lukas!” she whisper-hisses. “You can’t be in here!”
I stand outside the last stall, leaning my head down, forehead resting against the door. “I know,” I say, pausing for a second to straighten my thoughts. “But are you alright?”
She sniffles, and I can hear her roll out some toilet paper before she loudly blows her nose. “Fine, nothing like a little public humiliation before lunch time.”
I raise my hand to the door, wanting her to let me in, but I opt to rest my palm against the cool plastic. “McKenna said your mom is on her way?”
A weak “yeah” is the only response I get.
“Are you going home or is she bringing a change of clothes so you can stay?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“For what it’s worth, I think you should stay.”
The lock on the door fidgets, and I take a step back as she cracks it open.
My heart breaks when her tear-streaked face peeks out.
This last weekend we went to the mall, and Magnolia bought some eye makeup kit that supposedly had the best colors for brown eyes.
She was all dolled up this morning, shadows on her lids with a dark mascara. So pretty I couldn’t speak.
The shadow has disappeared altogether; the mascara now a mess of gray smudges under her eyes, some even up by her brows. Her cheeks are flushed, eyes bloodshot, a clear indication she’s been sobbing for the last half hour.
But God, she’s still pretty.
Pretty is too simple of a word to describe Magnolia Banks. Even like this, in a state she would probably call her worst, she still takes my breath away.
My fingers itch to hold her, and maybe standing in the women’s restroom isn’t the best place to do this, but seeing how badly she’s hurting does something to my insides.
I reach a hand up to smooth some of her hair out of her face, pushing it behind her shoulder.
She tries to smile, but then her bottom lip wobbles, and I think, Fuck it.
Both of my arms reach out as I take a step closer, and I pull her to me. She immediately wraps her arms around my core and presses her face to my chest as her soft cries are muffled in the fabric of my sweatshirt.
I press my lips to the top of her head, gently enough that she probably doesn’t feel it. “Stay, please. Don’t go home.”
“Why do I have to stay?”
I reluctantly release my hold on her, and when her arms fall from my sides, I take a step back, and another, shoving my hands in my back pockets. “Because Billy needs to apologize to you.”
She furrows her brow at that, crossing her arms over her chest. “We both know that will never happen.”
I dart my tongue out to lick my bottom lip, an idea forming in my mind. “Wait here.”
I’m already at the bathroom door, pushing past McKenna when Magnolia gasps, calling out for me to stop.