Viper House

Cold Hard Truth

Over the next few weeks, things started going back to normal. Maia would come over to study and to help me with my chemistry class. Science, she told me, was her best class but the class she hated the most. At least she was willing to help.

For my eighteenth birthday, Elijah and Lauren gave me a phone. It was subject to their searching whenever they pleased as long as I lived with them, but it was mine. It was one less way that I was cut off from the world. I was scheduled to take my driving test with the promise that I would be able to borrow their cars when not in use.

The best part was that I hadn't heard from Julian or Kaylan. For a little while, I could forget that either of them existed. It wouldn't last forever, but I was going to enjoy the peace while I could.

I went to school, I went to meetings, I met with my parole officer, and I even started meeting with the school counselor. I still had a long way to go with my anger—or, as Maia put it, the effects of my abuse. Lauren and Elijah had really required me to go after I went off on them one day. It wasn't something that should have been a big deal. They'd just asked me to do something as simple as taking out the trash, and I'd flipped out on them. I was in the middle of studying for a test that I was already frustrated about. They hadn't deserved it, and I'd apologized later, but they'd told me if I wanted to stay—because I was legally able to be on my own—I needed to get it under control.

With the weather getting colder, our peers weren't as willing to sit out at the picnic tables. We started claiming one that was as far away from the door as possible. I dropped my backpack on the ground and sat next to Maia. We'd beat Dylan and Heather, which wasn't uncommon.

"Hey," Maia said, giving me a smile as she put mayo on her sandwich.

"Hey."

"Any word from your friend?" she asked. She'd started referring to Kaylan as my "friend" because I wouldn't tell her his name and she wasn't sure how to refer to him every day when she asked if I'd heard from him.

"No," I said as I took my lunch out of my bag.

"Maybe he's going to leave you alone, then," she said. She licked the mayo off her fingers and put the top bun back on.

"Maybe," I replied. I eyeballed the strawberries I'd found in the fridge that morning. When I was half-asleep, they hadn't looked half bad. Now, they looked really sad. I wrinkled up my nose and put them back in the bag, taking out the trail mix I'd scavenged instead.

"So...my dad is out of town, my sister is spending the weekend with a friend, and my grandma is going on some retreat for the weekend with her girlfriends," she said, rolling her eyes. "Do you want to come over and keep me company? I mean, your foster parents seem to really like me and trust me, so they'd let you come, wouldn't they? If we told them how responsible we would be, and they could always check in every hour or whatever to make sure that we weren't doing anything illegal or whatever?"

I smiled. Whenever Maia got flustered, she started speaking with long-winded questions. "I'll ask them."

She nodded, letting out a breath of air. "Good."

I nodded, putting a handful of trail mix into my mouth as Dylan and Heather set their trays down. They were arguing about a question that had been on their physics test. Dylan swore he was right, and Heather swore she was right even though they both had different answers and both got it marked wrong.

"I got that question right," Maia said nonchalantly.

"Shut the fuck up," Dylan said, slapping the table. "Of course you did!"