9. Wren
The cafeteria is huge, just like the rest of the school, mostly deserted but still packed with options for food.
Everything smells delicious, and I almost squeal aloud when, after grabbing some fried fish, mac and cheese, and a few other things I can’t resist, we end up in front of a table full of desserts.
“Wow, where did you go to school before this?” Julez asks with a chuckle, and I whirl around to find him standing next to me.
I’d been so excited about the food I forgot he was here.
“I went to a nice private school, but the food wasn’t anything like this.” I turn back to the table and grab a cup of chocolate pudding and the softest, freshest chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever seen.
I try to resist, but I fail and shove half of it into my mouth before it even hits the plate.
I hum in approval and grab two more for good measure as Julez continues to chuckle beside me.
“Wow, you're adorable,” he says, making me scowl at him, but that only makes him laugh harder.
“Hey, Julez, baby!” Someone yells as we turn away from the desserts, and I see Julez go stiff. It only lasts a moment before he relaxes, and a wide, fake smile pulls at his lips as he turns to look at the girl behind us, who I assume called him.
She’s pretty, with long dark hair, rich tanned skin, and fuck-me eyes.
The same perfect, pretty kind of girl that used to throw themselves at Jordan.
She doesn’t even glance my way, and that’s probably for the best. Most girls don’t seem to like me, and they like me even less when I’m ‘in their way.’
Thankfully, the cafeteria is pretty self-explanatory.
I move to walk around Julez to a table, but he stops me. His arm snaps out, his hand wrapping around my bicep.
“Where are you running off to, Pookie?” he asks, turning away from the girl who was mid-sentence, talking to him about some upcoming party.
I glance from Julez to her just long enough to see her eyes narrow and her jaw tick before I turn my attention back to him.
Great.
I’m sure this will end fantastically.
“I was going to have a seat. I don’t need a guide to find a table.” I pull my arm free of his grasp and miraculously don’t spill my tray, but it doesn’t matter; I don’t make it far before I’m stopped again.
Julez sidesteps so that he’s directly in my path, and I nearly slam into him.
“What kind of friend would I be if I let you sit alone on your first day?”
Is that what we are? Friends?
He bats his eyes at me, and I really look at him. For a second, I thought he was teasing me, but now I think it’s more than that.
“A bad one.”
The smile that curves his lips is breathtaking, and I swear the girl who called him is going to crack a tooth if she doesn’t unclench her jaw soon.
“Sorry, ladies, duty calls,” Julez says, offering them little more than a wave before he turns and heads toward the table on the far side of the room, leaving me to follow or be left to the wolves.
Wonderful.
I feel her gaze even after I’ve sat down, having cowardly put my back to her.
“Thanks, asshole, now she’s going to be ruthless all year,” I whisper-yell at him as I shove another cookie in my mouth, and damn it, it’s so good I almost forget that I’m mad.
Almost, but not quite.
“Nah, Rose couldn’t hurt a fly if she wanted to. She’s a pampered princess.” He waves me off as he tucks into his own mac and cheese.
I chance a glance over my shoulder, but really, I don’t have to. I can feel her glare as she attempts to burn a hole through my head.
Bullshit, she looks like more than a pampered princess.
“But thanks for that. I owe you one.”
I turn back around with a sigh, feeling the weight of the day as it attempts to crush me, and I haven’t even started classes yet.
“No, you don’t. I could see the way you were nearly begging me to save you. I would have had to be a monster to leave you to her.” I stab my mac harder than necessary and only get a single noodle to pop into my mouth.
Stupid.
Julez is quiet for much longer than I‘ve heard him manage since I met him, and I glance up to find him gawking at me.
“Do I have something on my face?” I wipe at my mouth, feeling horrified as he just continues to watch me.
“Julez!” I hiss, and that seems to snap him out of it.
“Oh, no, sorry,” he chuckles, but it sounds forced. “You just caught me off guard, is all.”
“What?”
“You better eat so we can get going. This school is big. If you want a chance to see it all, we need to get moving, or we’ll miss dinner.”
He'd better be joking.
He wasn’t joking.
We’ve been walking around for hours now, and I feel like all I’ve really seen are classrooms, a few different types of gyms that Julez said were specialized, and the lounges, which I guess are for studying, though his air quotes make me think it might be used often for other things.
Note to self: don’t go there.
Though the one thing I can appreciate is nature.
Why every building needs to be its own instead of connected, I have no idea, but the paths are winding and beautiful.
There are flowers just about everywhere, but a few strategically placed clearings with benches or picnic tables offer a chance to study or eat outside.
There are trees, some bearing fruit, some just there to offer shade. Julez pulls an apple off one as we pass and bites into it. The juice drips down his chin before he tosses it to me with a smirk.
“It’s always best when it’s fresh,” he said, and damn it, I had to try.
He made it look so good, so I spun the apple around and took a bite from the back, and I’ll be damned if it really wasn't the best apple I’d ever had.
I always wanted to go to one of those places where you pick your own apples, but if we went with Mom and Dad, I can’t remember, and anything with Auntie was out of the question.
I may have finished the rest of the apple, unfazed that a practically would-be stranger took a bite out of it.
Great, now I’ve got cooties.
I look at Julez as he strides down the path, like he owns it, and heads turn.
Cooties might be the best-case scenario; something tells me he’s more than a little friendly with a few more people than I can imagine, if the way they look at him says anything.
Or maybe I’m wrong; who knows.
“Stop overthinking it. I can hear your brain smoking from here, Pookie. We’re friends, and friends can share an apple.” He smirks back at me over his shoulder, and I chuck the core at him, making him laugh, and I join in.
Being here is so different, so freeing in a way I never knew was possible.
I can’t ever go back.
We turn the corner, and I freeze in my tracks as the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen sits in the middle of the path that splits to go around it.
“Wow…”
“Yeah, it’s pretty amazing, huh?” I feel Julez stop beside me, but I can’t bring myself to look away.
I’ve never seen anything like it before.
“It’s wisteria.”
“I didn’t know trees could be this color,” I tell him honestly, making him chuckle.
“Yeah, not many, but this one they say has been here for over a thousand years now. That’s why they made the path around it. It would be a shame to cut it down when this was its home first.”
Just the thought makes me sad, and my fingers itch.
I take a deep breath in through my nose and hold it before slowly blowing it out through my mouth in hopes of pushing off the emotions that threaten to hit me like a tidal wave.
It doesn’t happen often, not anymore, not since…
No, there hasn’t been anything I enjoyed or beautiful enough to capture in that prison I called a home. It was suffocating, a constant reminder of what once was, memories on every wall in every room, taunting me.
Auntie had forced me to continue with my training and studies after Jordan died.
I had to perform at his funeral…
Everyone said it was hauntingly beautiful, and maybe it was, but I knew better; it wasn’t to honor him, it was to torture me.
And it had worked. Auntie knew just how to get to us.
Jordan wasn’t as docile as I. After he outgrew Auntie, he got bold, and pretty soon it was taking her more to keep him under control, until she found the perfect weapon.
Me.
I became the target whenever he stepped out of line or didn’t do well. It had been terrible, but eventually we got better at being exactly what she wanted. Even still, the damage was done. My thighs and stomach would forever carry her marks.
I wrap my arms around my torso and once again thank the steam in the shower this morning for keeping that part of me that I hate so much but hold on to so tightly from anyone else.
It might sound crazy, but it’s the last part of Jordan that I have. Well, that, my necklace, and a few pictures.
Anything recent I’d been able to scrape together had been destroyed when Auntie smashed my camera and laptop to pieces.
I wasn’t allowed to use cloud storage; Auntie hated all the ‘new-age tech,’ as she called it. So when she took a hammer to them, every picture I had of me and Jordan from the last eight years disappeared with them.
She told me I knew better as she smashed them. Said it was a valuable lesson I needed to learn, that they were distractions anyway.
‘I would thank her someday,’ she’d said.
I cried, not when she smashed them, but that was why she’d smashed them, as a punishment.
No, I’d long run out of tears at that point. I’d cried at Jordan’s funeral when she forced me to stand and play for six hours without a break and without faltering.
And I had, but I’d dare to shed a tear, and being human, well, that just wouldn’t do for Auntie.
If we weren’t perfect, we were useless; it’s what she’d told us over and over for as long as I could remember. The reason I studied so hard and learned everything I could and why Jordan was so good at sports.
We had to be.
We were a direct reflection of her, and she took more pride in herself than anything else in the world.
I’d thought the part of me that craved creativity, an outlet, had died when she smashed that camera, but standing here looking at this beautiful tree that’s withstood hundreds of years in the harsh elements and who knows what else…
I feel inspired.
That’s dangerous.