Chapter 3 The Past
THE PAST
AMELIA’S brEAKING POINT
Today, we were taking a field trip for history class. The same class that Caiden and I shared.
I woke with dread in my heart.
The sky outside was corpse-pale, unconvincing in its cheeriness. I dressed in silence, layering myself in dark cotton and denim, bracing for the long day ahead.
I shrugged into my faded hoodie, the cotton threadbare and soft against my skin, then wrestled into jeans that were too small.
My footsteps echoed through the narrow hallway as I passed Mom’s door. I paused, heart thudding, and peered inside.
She sat on the edge of her bed, a small amber lamp flickering beside her, hunched over the nightstand. Lines of fine white powder glistened on the oak surface.
She pinched a rolled-up dollar between trembling fingers, bent her head, and inhaled. A quiet sniffle escaped her as she turned, revealing hollows beneath her eyes and cheeks pulled taut over sunken bones.
The woman I once knew was gone, replaced by a pale ghost who drew poison into her lungs.
My breath hitched. I pressed a hand to my heart and vowed, with every last echo of dread, never to follow the same path. I would not lose myself in haze and emptiness.
As I stood there, a figure peeled out of the shadows behind Mom. Tall, angular, features swallowed in half-light.
My pulse hammered, and I stumbled back as he latched the door shut, severing me from refuge.
The man’s smile glistened. He watched me with a hungry clarity that made my skin try to crawl away from itself.
“Hey there.” His voice was syrup-slow, the kind that stuck to the roof of your mouth. “You Judy’s little one? Don’t think we’ve met.”
The man’s eyes glittered. “You want a bump? First one’s free,” he said, and patted the pillow beside him, like I was a dog he wanted to coax closer.
He grinned at me with catlike, unblinking eyes, then made a show of licking his lips. His hair was a greasy halo, and the way he leaned against Mom’s dresser made my skin crawl.
“Don’t be a bitch, Amelia,” Mom muttered, voice thick with contempt. “Take a bump and get to school, okay? Jesus.” Her hand was already reaching for the next line, knuckles white, veins spidering blue beneath the thin skin.
I wanted to vomit.
I offered a bitter smile and ducked into the bathroom, locking the door with shaking hands.
I stood there for a long time, forehead pressed to the cold metal of the lock, listening to their laughter seep through the drywall.
My palms sweated, my teeth buzzed. I didn’t dare move. I could see the needle’s shadow in my mind, hovering at the edge of the mirror.
Once I felt it was safe, I tiptoed through the rest of the house, hoping to find Lillian waiting with sleepy warmth.
Instead, her door lay shut; soft snores leaked through the crack. Disappointment was a bitter chord in my chest.
I stepped outside into the cool morning, the ache in my gut swirling like storm clouds.
The wind nipped at my ankles, pulling at the loose threads of my jeans, and I thought about how the cold made every memory sharper, how every passing day carved me thinner.
At the curb, a battered yellow bus squatted beneath maples, students crowding at its door in a loose, shuffling pack.
I almost wished Dante could be here, but he wasn’t in this class with me, leaving me alone with Caiden, his best friend.
Mrs. Grant, our history teacher, perched at the top of the bus steps, clipboard in hand, yelling names over the tangled chatter.
I kept my eyes on my sneakers and handed her my permission slip, not trusting my hands not to shake.
She barely registered me.
I squeezed past a cluster of soccer girls, their laughter bright and mean, and picked an empty seat near the back. I pressed myself to the window.
Ten minutes passed. More students filtered in, filling the seats with the chaos of young bodies and too-loud voices.
My thoughts drifted, webbing out across the parking lot, and I almost didn’t notice when a person sat next to me.
I looked to see Caiden, his rigid frame so sudden and large.
The air tightened between us as he sprawled, elbows wide, thigh pressed hard against the outer edge of my jeans.
I looked around helplessly to see all other seats were filled.
Caiden didn’t say a word at first. He just let his gaze burn a hole in the back of the vinyl seat in front of us, jaw flexing, fists opening and closing on his knees.
I used all my willpower not to flinch when his hand twitched within inches of mine, fingers curling as if about to break the seat in half.
I mustered my voice, brittle with effort. “You planning to murder me in a bathroom, or just maul me before we get to the next stoplight?”
He snorted, eyes not moving. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
I could have laughed, then. I almost did. But the sound stuck dry in my throat, a piece of brittle straw that wouldn’t dislodge.
I narrowed my eyes at the window, refusing to let his stupid, smug words find their mark.
“Your obsession with me is getting embarrassing,” I said. “Maybe try therapy instead of homicide.”
That got a reaction. His hand twitched again, and then he forced a little noise. A chuckle. “You’re so full of yourself. You really think I spend my nights plotting ways to ruin you?”
“You already ruined me,” I said. The words slipped out before I could choke them back. I could feel his gaze then, pinning me to the grimy glass, as if he’d pressed my skull to the window and peeled back my scalp to see the softest bits inside.
“Listen, Amelia,” he spat. “You keep pushing, and you’re gonna find out exactly how much worse it can get.”
I turned, finally meeting his eyes. They were black holes, the kind that devour everything and spit it back as ice.
“I’m not scared of you,” I lied, my lips wearing a smile I’d never felt.
“You should be.” The words hung between us, and he must have caught my body shrinking away from him, a reflex of terror.
“Relax,” he muttered after a minute, voice lower than I’d ever heard it. “I’m not going to touch you.”
I squeezed my fists. “You already did,” I said, too quiet for anyone but him to hear.
He rolled his head against the seat, eyes boring into me, black and bottomless. “Don’t flatter yourself. I was drunk and angry at the world.”
A bitter laugh twisted through me. “Right. Because you only bother with the ones you think matter.”
His jaw worked, and for the first time, I saw the tiniest crack in his mask. “Whatever.”
We rode in silence. The bus rattled over frost-heaved roads, windows fogged with ghosts of breath and the lowing of other people’s easy laughter.
I pressed my forehead to the glass and watched the trees blur, bare as bones, their shadows a tangle of accusations over the dead fields.
At the front, Mrs. Grant’s voice wheeled above us, something about colonial history, about how the field trip would “bring the past alive.” Her words snagged in the thick air, but never made it past the bubble of us in the back row. We were going to some old, historic battlefield with a museum.
Beneath the roar of voices and the hollow laughter, I caught his breathing, just a little too loud, like he had to prove he was still alive.
“You know,” he said, after a mile of silence, “it’s funny how all those times you talk back, stand your ground. You think you’re righteous.”
I didn’t answer.
He leaned closer, his mouth almost at my ear, his words were molten. “But no matter what you do, your mom’s still a junkie, and your sister’s still a fuck-up, and you’re still the trash everyone steps over on their way to something better.”
The words should have gutted me, but I’d heard them all before. In my own voice, in the cracked mirror above the bathroom sink.
I stared ahead, eyelid twitching, refusing to blink.
I let my head thud, lightly, against the cold pane. I let him see that I wouldn’t even give him the blink, or the tremble, or the tears. I could feel him watching for a reaction, the whole ride, like a hungry fish circling the wound.
I let the poison eat its way through me. The worst thing you could do with someone like Caiden was show them the wound.
The bus jerked to a stop on the shoulder of some godforsaken back road, its tires crunching loose gravel.
Caiden’s thigh pressed harder against mine as the bus’s movement shoved us both sideways.
Mrs. Grant barked a warning, her lips puckered in the rearview. “Settle down, please! We’ll be at the fort in twenty minutes.” Her voice bounced around the metal shell, paper-thin, always on the brink of tearing.
Outside, the sun clawed through the haze, slicing the world into slabs of icy blue and dust. I watched crows fight over something mangled in the ditch.
I wondered if the other students could see, if they cared, if they’d ever know what it felt like to be the smallest thing picked by the world.
Caiden didn’t speak. He just flexed his hand, tapping the tips of his fingers against his thigh, one-two-three, restless, drumming some primitive code he probably didn’t even know he was broadcasting.
I tried to picture where his mind went when he wasn’t plotting ruin. Did he ever dream? Did he ever wish for anything but the next hit, the next fight, the next day to dawn?
He caught me watching him and his eyes flared before he clamped his face back into the steel I always expected.
His jaw ticked.
"You got a staring problem?" he said, voice low.
I shrugged, not looking away. I knew if I blinked, he’d win. I wasn’t about to lose, not today. "Do you get off on making people miserable?"
He arched a brow, like this was a stupid question. "The world’s miserable, Amelia. Some of us are just honest about it."
I rolled my tongue along my teeth, hating how raw his words left me. "Maybe some people don’t want to drown in your truth."
He grinned, all wolf, no heat. "Maybe they need to learn how to swim, then."