High by @((Y^!@ Allyvia (books to improve english txt) 📖

bedroom, "did you really teach Mary Jenners how to Shotgun?"

 

Kingsley, rolling his eyes and throwing a dirty sock in his stepsister's face, managed to smile half-heartedly. "It was Candace Bayers, and I only taught her how to roll a blunt. Get your shit together, Luce," he teased, closing the Calculus text book he had been religiously staring at, hoping to soak up some type of information with no such luck.

 

Lucy, laughing quietly, curled up comfortably in the beanbag, watching as her brother's face became solemn once again. Since their parents had started dating when the two were in eighth grade, Lucy had found herself in a comfortable big-brother-little-sister relationship with Kingsley, even when he was more annoying than Chico, Mr. Abraham's yappy chihuahua. 

 

"What'd your dad say about it," she asked in a much more serious, quiet voice. Kingsley shrugged, sitting up on his bed and biting his bottom lip. 

 

"The usual. How I'm a failure and will never get into Harvard, like he did. I will never have a successful lawyer job, like he does."

 

Lucy, raising her brows in interest, sat up a bit, waiting for her stepbrother to continue. 

 

Kingsley, sighing, continued. "Well, then I told him I want to be a drug dealer when I get older. So, I've been practicing the art."

 

Lucy, her smile twitching, looked at her stepbrother seriously. "You know he just-"

 

"Wants what's best for me," he interrupted, his eyes darkening before he snapped, "I know, Luce, okay? I just said it to piss him off."

 

"Yeah," she muttered, "you seem to do that a lot."

 

Kingsley, rolling his eyes, threw the Calculus book onto the floor, making Lucy flinch. 

 

“I know, as much as it pains for you to understand this, Lucy, you’re not my mom. I know you think ‘Poor, Kingsley, he has no motherly condolence’, but really, I’m fine. I’ve heard this shit from my dad, I don’t need to hear it from you,” he snapped, watching as those large brown eyes watered. As if to rub salt on the wound, he angrily added, “I’d say go bug one of your friends, but I just remembered: you don’t have any.”

 

Lucy, her face scrunching up in hurt, jumped from her spot on the beanbag, her eyes filling with tears she never meant for. The sleeves of her baggy sweater rose up in the process, exposing the words written in dark marker on her arms. Creep. Freak. Loser.

 

“I just... I just want you to be okay,” she muttered, before wiping at her eyes and quietly sidestepping the book he had all but thrown at her. Kingsley didn’t exhale until the door latched shut behind her, and the room was silent except for the whir of the ceiling fan.

~~~

Dinner made Kingsley want to slit his wrists. The awkwardly angry tension at the table made him on edge, as he fed scraps of pot roast to Chico and rearranged the mashed potatoes on his plate to make crude pictures.  

 

The sound of plates and forks scraping against each other was slowly going to drive him to the brink of insanity, he decided, as he began putting spoonfuls of peas in his gravy. His father, brows furrowed and frown tugging at his wrinkled features, glared at him from the head of the table. 

 

“So, I got an A on my-,” Lucy began, only to be cut off by an enraged Richard Abrahams. Richard, a Harvard graduate, rubbed at the stubble that crept along his jawline before snapping at his son.

 

 “You’re going to volunteer,” he said stiffly, glaring at Kingsley and almost daring him to challenge his father. Lucy’s mother, Claire, looked up from her plate, her features sheer mirror imagery to her daughter’s- same dark eyes, sable hair, olive skin.  

 

Kingsley glared at his father; they had already discussed his punishment: no hanging out with friends (he scoffed at that one; what friends?); he was only allowed to go to and from school, no stops between; no personal laptop for two weeks.... the list could go on and on. 

 

“Dad, I already told you-”  

 

“Do not interrupt, Kingsley Harris,” his father boomed. For once, Kingsley listened to his father. “You’re lucky your principal and I reached an agreement. We decided you are going to volunteer after school- reshelving the library and cleaning up campus.”

 

 “Aren’t those the kind of things-- I don’t know-- librarians and janitors do,” Kingsley asked smartly. He could not believe his father. He hadn’t even started the fight! 

 

“Do not talk back to your father, Kingsley,” Claire warned, before dropping a bit of mashed potatoes on her tie-dyed t-shirt. The golden bangles on her wrist jingled in the silence. For an artist, she was... zany. 

 

She always wore turquoise rings, one on each finger, and those jingly golden bangles. Her hair, in braids and knots and crimped curls, sat on top of her head in a bun.  

 

“That’s how a conversation works,” Kingsley grumpily mumbled, before standing from the table and clearing his plate into the miniature dog’s food dish. 

 

“Kingsley! Get back in here,” his father called after him. Kingsley wasn’t listening anymore. He was just craving. Craving the high.

 ~~~

The next day before first block, Amanda Nichols, her stomach heaving once more as she threw up the residual bits of the Slim Fast shake she had downed earlier, shook as her head hovered over the toilet. Her cheerleading uniform had been... ill-fitting lately, she realized one night when a bulge of fat had been exposed while practicing the splits in her bedroom. 

 

The sound of the bathroom door opening made her jump from her spot on the cool, tile floor of Hamilton High’s public girls’ restroom, and wipe her mouth with the back of her hand. 

 

“Mandy,” Amy Herring’s familiar voice echoed off the linoleum tiles and plaster ceilings. Amanda let out a sigh of relief, and flushed the toilet before walking out the stall. Amy, her blue eyes wide and shining in the light, looked as though she was going to cry. 

 

“Amy? What’s wrong,” Amanda asked, coming closer to her friend and gently wrapping an arm around her shoulder. Amy exhaled loudly, catching wind of the vomit on Amanda’s breath. 

 

“Ugh... it’s Matt. And Nix,” Amy admitted. Amanda nodded in understanding. Amy had been in love with Nix since... well, before anyone could ever really remember. Amanda nodded, gesturing for her to continue.  

 

“Well... I don’t know, Mandy. Nix doesn’t even notice me! And Matt... the kid is killing me. He’s too sweet!”

 

Amanda, chuckling, went to the sink and turned on a faucet. Cupping ice cold water in her hands, she brought the handful to her mouth and slurped it up greedily, swishing it around her mouth to get the taste of regurgitated Slim Fast out of her mouth. 

 

After grabbing a disposable paper towel and wiping her face, she grinned. “Amy, you’re complaining about a guy being too sweet. I don’t know about you, but that’s relatively unheard of-”

 

As she braced herself to continue, the door to the bathroom swung open, and all three girls froze. Amy, her eyes narrowing in disgust, glared as Lucy Edwards stood in the doorway, a blush spreading through the smaller girl’s cheeks like wildfire. Her tiny, petite frame looked almost like a statue, frozen in fear. 

 

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Amy muttered, before pursing her lips and digging through her purse to find a shade of pink lip gloss she was sure Nix would have to notice. Lucy, as though just realizing she was out of the red zone, scampered past the two cheerleaders and into an open stall.  

 

After a few awkward moments of Amy smearing on lipgloss in the graffitied bathroom mirror, and Lucy peeing-- a surprising amount for such a tiny girl-- Amy and Amanda turned as Lucy opened the stall, the sound of the flushing toilet bouncing off the walls loudly. Both cheerleaders-- Amanda and Amy-- watched as Lucy rolled up the sleeves of her baggy, black sweater to reveal words written on her arms in Sharpie, and began to wash her hands. No one said a word, and yet they were all thinking the same thing: awkward. 

 

When Lucy finally made her way to the door, Amanda jumped.

 

 “Lucy,” Amanda blurted, making the little girl flinch.

 

Lucy turned, her muddy eyes looking up at the two slightly intimidating girls that towered over her, and Amanda sighed in defeat. 

 

“Look, could you tell Kingsley to meet me in the main hall for probation after school? I’m not, like, doing probation, or anything, I’m just a volunteer.  I’m supposed to help him out, and...,” Amanda trailed off, realizing she was rambling. Lucy, a small smile tugging at her plump lips, nodded.  

 

‘Great,’ Amanda thought sarcastically, her eyes filing with plastic niceness. She already knew her day was going to suck. 

 ~~~

Lucy, smiling as she made her way to her stepbrother’s locker, was excited to tell Kingsley the girl he had not so secretly coveted was going to be stuck with him for four hours after school, but was stopped short when Nick Keating almost bull-dozed into her. It happened so quickly, before she could respond, her books and journal fell to the floor, scattering on the ground with a thump.

 

Nick, cursing, crouched. Lucy, still a little stunned, joined him on the floor, gathering stray gel pens and scraps of poetry she had tucked into her copy of The Great Gatsby.

 

“God, I’m sorry,” Nick sighed, his eyes meeting hers as he handed her a red spiraled notebook. A small, charming smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and Lucy felt herself blush. She was so busy blushing, she hadn’t even noticed he had slipped the journal-- the one he had watched her pour her heart and soul into, the one she never let anyone see-- into the pocket of his book bag.

 

“I-It’s fine. I would say I meant to do that, to impress you, but...,” she joked weakly, trailing off as she looked into those golden brown eyes. Nick chuckled, his fingers brushing against her as he handed her the last of her strewn things, and scanned the floor to see they had gather everything up. Helping her stand, Nick brushed his hands on the back of his jeans. His hands were moist, sweaty, Lucy noticed. 

 

“Hey, I’m impressed you read,” he shrugged, tapping on the cover of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. Lucy grinned, tucking a stray zany curl behind her ear. 

 

 “You read Gatsby,” she asked, trying and failing to hide the surprise in her voice. 

 

 “Of course!  Gatsby’s my boy,” he joked, making a small smile tug at the shy girl’s lips. Nick, his heart pounding madly against the walls of his chest, wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans again, glad Lucy hadn’t noticed. She looked beautiful, he thought, using a word he only saved for those who really were. 

 

 Her dark and sable, crazy curls fell onto those slim shoulders, the ones he really wanted to kiss. Her muddled brown eyes were things you only expected to see on puppies and baby deer- so innocent and clear and crazily beautiful he had to clear his throat and tear his eyes away to keep from saying something stupid.

 

 “I... I have to go,” Lucy said quietly, tearing Nick right out of some dirty daydream involving those innocent eyes. 

 

“Right,” he nodded, about to walk off. Halfway down the hallway, he stopped, Lucy still standing where she did earlier. He suddenly loomed over her again, those broad shoulders and tall physique shadowing her.

 

“Did you like it,” he asked, searching her face. Confused, she furrowed her brows. 

 

“Like what?”

 

“Picoult. Did you like The Pact?”

 

He watched those lips draw up into the biggest smile he had seen on her, and felt his heart lighten to the weight of a feather. He thanked his mom, one more time.