Chapter Text
*Fifteen years ago*
Jeff walks the few feet from Liu’s room to the new one. He pushes the door ajar and steps in. The walls are all painted a sickly pink. It makes him sick. There’s a crib next to the window, too. It’s white, at least, not the pink that was all around the room.
He doesn’t know why his parents chose pink. He knows, logically, it’s because pink is the most stereotypical girl colour, and his parents are – were, he corrects in his head, laughing – strict ‘follow-the-rules’ Catholic. He doesn’t even know what the rules are, but there are some. Blue is for boys, pink is for girls, whatever else those rules are.
He walks over to the crib and rocks it slightly. His baby sister opens her eyes and coos at him. He pauses for a moment. If his parents looked so horrified, and Liu looked at least a bit scared, he expected the same from a literal baby.
“Lily.”
He presses his knife to the edge of her mouth and pushes it down slightly. She continues to stare up at him, looking confused, and then she starts crying. He pulls the knife away.
“Sorry, baby,” he says insincerely, glancing towards their parents’ room. He kinda fucked up her life, didn’t he? Oops.
He walks out of the room, out of the house, and into the forest.
-
*Now*
Claire slaps my hand. I turn to her, giving her a look. I would’ve said something, but we’re in the middle of class and I don’t want our teacher to yell at us.
“You were picking,” she whispers.
Huh. I probably was. I do that a lot. I should break that habit. I don’t even know where the scar came from. My mom told me that I had an accident as a child, but I don’t remember it. It’s just a small cuts beside my mouth. I think I probably ate something sharp.
The teacher goes on and on about something boring. I think he’s talking about math, since this is math class, but I’m really not paying attention. For all I know, he might be talking about a war or something.
My eyes wander to the door just in time to see it open. A boy — who I’ve never seen before, which is weird because this is kinda a small school — walks into the class. He has black hair, and he’s dressed like the most basic person ever. A white hoodie and black jeans. And, in this weather, too! There’s only a month until summer break.
The teacher turns to him. “Hello?”
“Sorry,” the boy says, but he doesn’t sound very sorry. “The person at the front desk told me to go here.”
“Oh, are you Jeffrey?” Mr. Rameras asks.
The boy nods. “Just Jeff.”
“You’re late. You can go sit next to Claire.”
Claire beckons him over, and he does. He takes a seat next to her and glances around the classroom. She glances at him, then at me, mouthing ‘hot’. I roll my eyes and shake my head. Claire… Well, she’s about the straightest girl on the planet. I can’t be talking that much, since I do like men, too. But, every guy to her is the most perfect man ever. Including a guy she’s never even talked to. Like this new kid.
“But, there’s mystery,” Claire whispers to me. “And that’s hot.”
I shake my head again. “No,” I whisper back. “Claire.”
She rolls her eyes, and looks back at her notebook. Oh, maybe we’re supposed to be solving problems. I honestly have no idea what’s going on.
-
Claire and I have most of our classes together, thankfully. And, this new boy also has a lot of classes with us, so we get assigned to give him a tour and show him around.
Luckily, my boyfriend, Joe, also has most of our classes with us. For all the bitching I do about Claire being boy-obsessed, it does kinda make me a hypocrite. I don’t really care if she bounces from boy to boy every other week; I just think she could do better. And, while I love Joe, I’m only with him because the person I wanted to ask out is straight. She’s a nice girl, but I never had a chance.
I like Joe enough, though.
He kisses my check when I walk out onto the field. “We’re running laps today,” he says. “Coach Anders already said.” He smiles at me, and I know what he’s going to say before he even opens his mouth. “Do you want to skip?”
I shake my head. We’ve already skipped enough gym, and we don’t really do anything important. I would be more inclined to skip if I could get a start on the homework, but Joe just wants to make out in the bathroom. And, more, but I’m not still interested in going down on him. I probably never will be, honestly. It seems disgusting.
“Why not?” he asks. “Surely nothing could be worse than running laps in this heat.”
I can think of a hundred things off the top of my head that would be worse. He would roll his eyes and tell me I was being ridiculous if I shared any of them.
“We can’t fail gym, Joe,” I say. “If we do, we’ll have to retake it next year.”
I don’t like gym. I could think of less than a hundred things that would be worse than retaking gym. Besides, gym is actually important. I hate it, but I can appreciate why we have it. Most teenagers — myself included — don’t exercise enough.
So, that’s that. Joe’s a bit annoyed with me, but we go on running our laps for Coach Anders. Joe gets annoyed when we run laps because I’m faster than him. I don’t want to slow myself down and let him keep up this time, but I do. I’m not sure why. Habit probably.
-
Joe doesn’t walk me home. He doesn’t even know where I live. I know where he lives; I’ve been to his house a lot. But, he’s never been to mine. But, he walks me through the forest I take to get home. It’s not an actual forest, but it’s a little side path that has tree and animals and it’s a free streets long.
It’s not that I don’t want Joe to meet my parents, or vice versa. They would love him. It would just add to me being their perfect little daughter. I have three more years before I can cut the act and stop pretending to be anything close to what they want me to be.
Joe’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s… Well, he’s the perfect high school boyfriend. I’m no going to marry him or anything. I can’t marry him. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.
But, I let him hold my hand and kiss me and walk me through the forest that I take to get to my house. It’s temporary, but he’s good enough for now.
“These woods freak me out,” Joe says.
I glance at him. “Why?”
“It’s so creepy. A serial killer could jump out of anywhere and kill you. You should take a different way home.”
The only other way home would take an extra ten minutes. I am not going to do that. If Joe doesn’t want to walk in the forest every day, then he doesn’t have to walk me.
“A serial killer isn’t going to jump out of nowhere and kill us, babe.” The pet name feel wrong in my mouth, but it’s what I’m supposed to do. Be the nice girlfriend, be the good girl.
God, I fucking hate this place. I wish there was somewhere else I could be.
There’s a sudden pain in my head, and I fall to the ground. I hear Joe scream before I pass out.