The Last Year of Innocence

Chapter Two

Like it was in every other class Kara had taken in her life, the roll sheet was in alphabetical order. Since her last name was Cunningham, she was the fourth person called.

“Cunningham?” Adrienne repeated when Kara lifted her hand in response. “Any relation to Felice?”

Every pair of eyes in the class zeroed in on Kara.

“My mother.”  

Adrienne’s eyes filled with pity, but she didn’t say anything else. Instead, she moved on in the roll call, and the rest of the class returned their attention to her.

Ethan:

As soon as he came out of his third period class and spotted Roman and Braden waiting for him, Ethan’s shoulders sagged. Though he knew they’d be there, the tiniest part of him hoped maybe they’d forget to show up. No chance of that though. These guys seemed dead set on doing their jobs.

They didn’t need to ask what class he had next, and he didn’t need to tell them. Somehow, they already knew his entire schedule. Neither of the boys moved though. They didn’t even speak, not that he wanted them to. There was only one thing he wanted, and it took just a few seconds before he got it.

“You guys see that girl over there?” Ethan asked.

“Which girl?” Roman said.

“The short one with the dark hair.”

“What about her?” Braden spoke up.

“Her name’s Kara Cunningham. I want you guys to find out everything there is to know about her by the end of the day.”

              “Are you serious?” Braden demanded.

             Ethan narrowed his eyes. “Are you questioning my orders?”

            “Of course not,” Roman assured him.

            “Good, and make sure you keep this between the three of us. I don’t want anyone else to know about this, not even Solomon.”

            “Sure thing, Ethan,” Roman said, and Ethan smiled at him.

            For the first time in his life, Ethan understood the power of being who he was, and he liked it.

Kara:

“I didn’t know your mom was Felice Cunningham.”

Ever since Adrienne Ambrose took the roll, Kara had been expecting Shirelle to ask about her mother. Expecting it and dreading it. They’d no sooner made it out the door of vocal enrichment than Shirelle brought it up.

“It’s not something I really like to tell people. As soon as people find out who my mother was, they always want to ask me questions about her and how she died and stuff.”

“I wouldn’t have done that.”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t tell that in one meeting,” Kara pointed out, and Shirelle’s expression brightened. “By the way, how are you going to spell Sugar?”

“What?”

“Your stage name will be Sugar, only not spelled like it.”

“Oh, right. I’m going to spell it s-h apostrophe g-a-r.  It’ll be a contraction of my first and last names. That reminds me, what’s The Green Mile?”

“It’s a movie based on a Stephen King book.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s kind of old. It was made in the nineties.”