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“I was out of it when I got the call about my Dad,” he seethed, barely moving his mouth as he took a step closer. Our chests brushed, shivering against one another. “You were right, okay? I do have insomnia, and I sometimes lose a grip on things. Then my phone was dead, and I forgot my charger. Happens to people all the time. And Dean’s place? Yeah, it was a shitty thing to do, but was it really the end of the world? Did you fucking die?” He crooked one eyebrow.
I almost laughed. He looked so dead serious. Like I was the one making a big deal out of nothing.
“And about Georgia…” he continued. “You and I aren’t exclusive. We established that long before I touched you.”
My heart sank. Pain filled the space between us like a black hole we were both scared to fall into. “You did. And now I’m telling you that I don’t do non-exclusive relationships. I’m asking you to accept that, respect that, and leave me alone. You made it perfectly clear that I’m not your girlfriend. And that’s fine. But I don’t think we should keep in touch. We’re bad for each other. Always have been.”
I took a deep breath, thinking about my eighteen-year-old self. Alone and scared, staring at the world through wide-eyes and erratic heartbeats, with no one to look after me but myself. The bus rides from city to city. The “I’m-okay” letters to my family. The hurt, the shame, the pain. All Vicious’s fault.
“You know…” I smiled sadly, ignoring the sleet that threatened to freeze us to the sidewalk. “I used to think of you as a villain, but you’re not my villain. You’re your own villain. To me, you were a lesson. An important brutal lesson, nothing more and nothing less.”
I lied, because I wanted him gone. Because I wasn’t a good person at that particular moment. Visions of him clawing Georgia’s dress, the same one she wore ten years ago, assaulted my imagination. After he touched me. After he marked me.
“I’ve already secured myself a job at the gallery. This time, you don’t get to make the rules. This time, Vicious, you lose.”
That night, I did something I hadn’t done since the day I moved out of my parents’ house. I pulled out The Shoebox. Everyone had that shoebox with their little sentimental secrets. Mine was different, because it wasn’t full of things I wanted to remember. It was full of things I wanted to forget. Still, I’d carried it everywhere with me. Even to New York. I tried to convince myself that I’d taken it with me because I didn’t want anyone to find out about it, but the truth was, it was hard to let go of what we were.
Of what we could have been.
In a small and tattered Chucks shoebox lay the reason why I fell in love with Baron “Vicious” Spencer in high school.
It was a tradition at All Saints High to have an anonymous pen pal from the same school and same grade for the whole year. Participation was mandatory and the rules were simple:
No foul language.
No dropping hints about who you were.
And absolutely no switching pen pals.
Principal Followhill, Jaime’s mother, thought it would inspire students to be nicer to one another because you could never be sure that you weren’t actually talking to the pen pal you’d established a written friendship with. It was surprising how such an old-school, dated game stuck. People didn’t actually mind writing to their pen pals, it appeared. I saw the looks on people’s faces when the designated teacher for that day slid envelopes into their lockers, wishing they could pounce on said teacher and ask them who the heck their pen pal was. It was useless, though.
Principal Followhill was the only one who knew who was writing to whom.
But the students never did. The letters were always printed, not handwritten, and we were supposed to sign with fake names to keep our identities hidden.
All the same, I grew attached to my pen pal from the very first letter I received during the first week at my new school. Maybe it was because no one gave me the time of day at All Saints High. Black had decided to start our conversation like this:
Is morality relative?
—Black
It was a philosophical question an eighteen-year-old wouldn’t normally ask. We weren’t supposed to share our letters with other students, but I knew for a fact most pen pals talked about school, homework, the mall, parties, music, and just regular stuff, not this. But it was the beginning of the year, and I was feeling hopeful and pretty damn good about myself, so I answered:
It depends on who’s asking.
—Pink
We were only required to exchange one letter a week, so I was excited to get a letter back in my locker only two days later.
