Chapter 7
BETH
Callan. His name is Callan.
Mornings in this house had always been slightly off. Some days, it felt like the world woke up without me. Other days, it woke me instead, pressed trauma into my hands, or shoved it down my throat, and warned me not to choke.
I crouched on the floor next to the table, shards of glass surrounding me, glinting like scattered stars near my knees.
Over the longest line on my right palm, red bloomed from the piece of glass that sliced the skin. I didn’t even realise I had been cut until I saw the red. The sting hadn’t settled in yet, not when the one in my heart felt like a dagger wedged and twisted inside me.
The frame that just broke laid face down. A few minutes ago, it was still hanging on this very wall, holding a piece of me that was once untouched by the chaos, that once reminded me that in another world, I could be someone special.
Awarded by The Raskov Charity Foundation—the silver plate at the bottom read. I wondered how that particular part still managed to be whole despite all the cracks in the glass.
It was really strange indeed, how the smallest part of the frame was the one that survived the fall.
I threw my head back, blinking to stop the tears burning behind my eyes. Then I grabbed the sleeve of my blazer, pressing it into my palm, watching as the scarlet drop threaded into the fabric.
I should tuck the homework I did late last night which still sat on my study desk into my rucksack.
I should’ve put on my shoes and worn my tie.
I should be heading out now. Because Kenzo’s car engine hummed out on the lawn, right next to my window, steady, patient, the type that belonged to a better morning.
But I knelt there like a nun in prayer. And all I could think about was that day again.
Me sitting at the reception of Lumina Dome, the largest convention hall in Braemont, my poems scrawled in uneven lines across a page torn out of the old diary that I wrote my little thoughts.
The little thoughts Kenzo loved to call poetry.
I had been nervous, my fingers trembling, heart racing.
And he held my hand–Kenzo, told me I would win because I was a brilliant girl who ‘felt too much’.
I smiled and nodded even though I didn’t understand what he meant.
I looked deep into his bright eyes as if those little golden rings around his irises were the magic I needed.
I wanted to win the poetry award, because I wanted to follow him everywhere.
I wanted to leave my old school and follow him to his expensive one for rich kids only.
I wanted to follow Kenzo Takahashi to his laughter, to his smile…
to his light. He didn’t know it yet then, but several pages of my diary held my heart for him.
And now years later, the thing I won for loving him too deeply laid in pieces on the floor.
I picked up the frame. My reflection fractured in the glass. How ironic that even my victory ended up bleeding too.
A loud, frustrated horn jolted me back. Kenzo never honked twice. He knew how much I hated the sound. Sniffling, I hurried to gather the broken pieces, pressing them carefully into the trash.
Dusting my hands on my plaid skirt, I rushed over to where my polished doc martens sat beside the bed and slipped them on. I threw my notebooks haphazardly into my bag and slung it over my shoulder.
Before I headed out, my gaze rested briefly on the wall that once held the frame. It looked naked now, like a wound without a scab.
The slam of my wooden door resonated down the quiet hall when I left my room, the sound louder than I would have wanted it to.
“What broke?” Mother’s voice came from the kitchen, cold and surgical as ever. “It sounded expensive.”
My hand was already on the doorknob, ready to exit.
“It’s nothing,” I whispered, keeping my eyes down.
I didn’t want to look at her. I knew that expression by heart.
The tight curl of her mouth, the revulsion she tried and failed to pass off as concern.
She always looked at me the way you looked at something ruined, something dangerous, something better kept at a distance.
“Better,” she added, which would have been mild if her tone wasn’t cynical. “Because you really don’t have anything to keep losing.”
The word struck me like a cold whip.
The poetry award was proof that there was once something I wanted and got it. I wanted to win and I won. I wanted to attend the Lochborne Academy of Arts so I could be closer to Kenzo and I did.
I actually won something in life.
But now, even that had been shattered. Everything I held dear would always shatter, be ripped right from my fingers.
Nothing would ever truly be mine.
???
I had come to a bitter conclusion that my existence was simply a glitch in the cosmos, a shock the earth couldn’t make room for.
Maybe this was the reason I had never really found a place where I felt like I truly fit in…never able to slip into the seam of belonging.
My home was an uncomfortable prison, a tiny box stripped of light and colors.
And my school was like a party I wasn’t invited to yet showed up to anyway.
The music played was not mine, the dance felt foreign yet everyone knew the steps.
People chatted and laughed in cliques and I was left alone at the corner of the room with an empty cup, the drink long gone from the bowl because no one knew I would show up anyway.
This was my fifth year in Lochborne Academy of Arts.
I could walk to any part of the school blindfolded without getting lost. I knew every crack in every wall by heart.
The architecture was so memorised that I could almost tell how many bricks were put together before this building could stand this tall.
All this and yet, the school’s cafeteria was still a foreign land to me.
It would buzz like a hive, laughter and excited chatter drifting into the air, the smell of over fried potatoes clinging to clothes, but I would still be a ghost in the corner, never blending in, never able to absorb the cheer and life.
Then again, maybe I was the problem. Maybe it was never about belonging. If I didn’t fit in, perhaps it was me. I grew up believing everyone else was better than me. So I always made sure to stay in the shadows because places were better without me. No one needed my cursed spirit. My bad energy.
But I envied them. They laughed easily, ate easily, and lived easily. Yet I struggled for everything, had to fight for a half a slice. Like I was to life, an afterthought. Everyone else took the lion share and I was left with just the crumbs–
My thoughts were interrupted by the gasp that ripped out of my lips when something cold pressed against my left cheek. My hand flew to my face, the skin cold and moist against my palm.
A shadow chuckled behind me, soft and easy, then moved to stand in front of me. Dark brown eyes and a bright smile. Over jelled hair shining under the glow of the cafeteria light.
Banks Awolowo.
“What are you thinking about like that?” Banks asked, pressing the cold chocolate milk he had touched my cheeks into my palm, leaving it there. He didn’t wait for my invitation. He pulled out the chair across from me, sitting.
“Nothing.” My smile was forced but I hoped he didn’t notice. Or better still, I hoped he did. Maybe he would realise I didn’t want company. That I wanted to be alone. But then again I should have skipped lunch. The cafeteria wasn’t a place for solitude.
“I stood beside you for five minutes,” he chuckled. “You didn’t notice.”
His gaze dropped to the thin white bandage Kenzo had wrapped around my wrist in his car earlier.
“That must hurt.” A slight frown stretched across his face, his eyes filled with genuine concern. “Are you okay?”
“It was just a small cut.” I lifted the bandaged hand, cradling it to my chest. “Kenzo went overboard with the wrapping.” I added with a light chuckle. I didn’t want to be an object of scrutiny.
“Sorry–”
“–Your order has arrived, madame.” Kenzo failed at a French accent. He was at the table now, the smell of fries enveloping me.
Taking that as a cue to leave, Banks stood, his eyes falling on me briefly. Then he smiled, “See you around.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, raising the chocolate milk in his direction. “Thanks for this, by the way.”
“Anytime,” he flashed me a smile, then turned to Kenzo. “Practice later today, yeah?”
“Yes,” Kenzo replied, pulling out the chair Banks just stood up from. “Coach said after third period.”
“Alright.” He nodded, turning to me. “See you later, mami.” He patronised me with that charming wink of his before flipping around and striding away.
Mami, I turned the unfamiliar nickname over in my head, my gaze following him as he headed for the table he shared with his group of friends from the football team.
He high-fived a few, they laughed about an inside joke, then he plopped on the empty seat, stealing a fry from one of the plates and popping it into his mouth.
The action earned him a slight jab into the ribs by the owner of the plate, and Banks’ laughter rang across the room.
He was so goofy. And cute.
“Accepting gifts means you have accepted his feelings, you know,” Kenzo commented casually as he dropped to the seat.
I rolled my eyes, scoffing. “I don’t think that’s how it works.” I unlatched the straw glued to the body of the tiny milk box, punching the sealed hole at the top. “Besides, it’s just chocolate milk. Everyone gives anyone chocolate milk. It’s not an offering of affection. Or a bride price.”
Then he lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug. “Whatever you say.”
He dragged his tray closer to himself, going for the fries immediately. Before he dug in, his eyes flickered to my hand.
“How’s it?” he asked, nodding at it. “Did the painkiller work?” He had rushed to the nurse’s office for painkillers the second we pulled into the school. I told him it was just a dull ache. But he wouldn’t have it.
“Mhmm,” I hummed, slurping on the chocolate milk. It tasted nice and cold…refreshing.
“It must have really shaken you,” he mumbled around the chicken wing attached to his lips. “I didn’t realise it meant that much to you.”
I forced a smile, the kind that stretched but didn’t quite reach my eyes.
Of course he didn’t realise how much it meant to me. Six years later and he still thought I was only desperate to enlist in the school because I loved it.
“I’m sure it can be fixed,” he suggested. “It can, right?”
“Not everything broken can simply be fixed, Takahashi,” I sighed. “Even if it can, it will never be the same. It has already been broken once. The cracks, no matter how invisible, will always be there.”
He dropped the chicken wing, a frown on his face as he studied me for a second, looking at me the way he usually did when he realised I was hiding something or withholding information. But he didn’t ask. Kenzo was like that. He would never push. He would just wait until I unravelled on my own.
“Remember how nervous you were before going on stage that day?” he asked, desperate to change the air between us. “I was scared you were going forget.”
A soft laugh slipped from me. “You told me not to faint there. That you wouldn’t be able to carry me.”
“I would’ve though,” he whispered. “I would’ve carried you like a valiant knight.”
I smiled, the memory flickering in my mind. “The poem gave me everything I thought I wanted.” A passageway to his school…and maybe his heart too. Little did I know he already loved me, but not in the way I’d hoped. Not in the way lovers did. Because his heart wasn’t built to love me like I wanted.
“It gave you?” he echoed, brows furrowed as he emphasised on my choice of tense. “Did you lose it? What it gave you.”
“I just realised—” Before I could respond, a tray crashed somewhere behind me, loud, sharp, and metallic. The sound sliced through the noise in the room, causing my pulse to jump, my breath hitching.
For a second I was back in my room, the award frame flying off the wall, clattering to the floor with a loud shatter. The crimson liquid spreading across my palm, the world tilting on its axis.
“Beth?” Kenzo’s voice reached me, steady and soft.
I blinked and looked up. “Huh?”
“Are you okay?” He had stood from his chair, leaning across the table, hand firmly on my shoulder.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I was just…startled, that’s all.”
“Are you sure?” He didn’t look convinced.
“Yeah, of course.” I managed a smile, forcing it to last longer than a second.
“You should stop–”
My phone vibrated, cutting him off. I slowly reached for the device that was face flat on the table, flipping it over in my palm.
The name across the screen made my heart skip, my fingers trembling slightly.
“Who’s that?” Kenzo asked, nodding at the phone.
I lifted my gaze to him.
“It’s…snow white?” I was too shocked, unable to believe my eyes. It had been nearly a week. I didn’t believe he would ever call. I mean, what were the chances that he would have a panic attack and choose to call a stranger instead of his doctor?
But still, half of me waited, but half was a realist. Meeting him again was impossible no matter what angle I calculated it from.
“Snow white?” Kenzo asked, brows furrowed. “The babe who choked on the apple she found on the street?”
A soft chuckle rippled from my lips before I took the phone to my ear. Apparently, Kenzo’s grandmother had a different version of Snow White. And that was the only version he knew.
“H-hello?” My voice had a slight tremble. I cleared my throat, then spoke again. “Hello?”
“Hi.” His voice, velvety yet rough, broke through the speaker, and my heart nearly exploded in my chest, my face flaming up. “It’s me, Callan…from the book signing.”
Callan?
His name was Callan?
“You…called?” I asked, biting my lower lip to hide my beam from Kenzo who was giving me that judgmental look.
“I was wondering if your offer still stands.” He sounded hesitant. “About helping me with getting new books.”
My heart was racing, too fast, too excited. And my skin was red like I broke out with a serious disease.
“Actually um.” My fingers threaded through my hair, giving the scalp a scratch. “I’m kind of…at school.”
“Oh,” he murmured in realisation. “Sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t consider that.”
“Yeah, it’s okay.”
“I’ll just go run some other errands to kill time.” A wave of relief washed over me at his words. “I’ll wait.”
He said he would wait. For a second I thought it was a missed chance. That I had probably lost the only opportunity to ever meet him in this lifetime. But he said he would wait for me. That meant he really wanted to see me.
Why?
Was I special? Did he think I was special?
“Who?” Kenzo demanded the moment I peeled the phone from my ear and set it on the table.
“I know his name now,” I said, my grin too wide, the cloud above my head thinning.
“Sorry?”
“Callan. His name is Callan.”