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My skin itched.I had to wonder if just being near my aunt had caused some sort of allergic reaction. She reeked of mothballs and that awful old lady perfume she always wore to try to cover it up. My eyes felt puffy from it. Definitely allergic to her.
“Why do you put up with her?” Grey asked, following behind me to grab a tray and fill it up with what remained of the breakfast buffet and the start of lunch items being brought out in the cafeteria.
Ahead of me in line, Brianna picked at a bowl of grapes, sneaking glances at me from the cover of her lashes. I wanted to stuff her face into the potato soup, but that would only render it inedible, and it was my favorite.
“AJ?” Grey hedged when I didn’t reply right away, drawing my attention back to him.
“Because her aunt is paying for her tuition here,” Corvus replied for me, and I rolled my eyes at him. Not even a little bit surprised that he would know that. He’d done his homework. I’d done mine too. At least as much of it as I could. His history had been the most unattainable of the three. With almost no information whatsoever anywhere in the state or the neighboring ones.
“Is that it?” Grey asked, confused. “You’re a Saint now, AJ. If you want to go to school here, we’ll cover it.”
I didn’t know how to explain it to them: the deal I had with my aunt. Maybe the whole thing was a moot point now.
My aunt promised me tuition to a good college or university plus my own apartment in the city and a monthly stipend. I could have all of it if I graduated Briar Hall with good grades and got accepted into college. It was her guilt-wrapped gift to me for not being around when my dad was still alive.
But what did any of that matter now?
I’m a Saint.
No matter how many times I repeated that to myself, it didn’t ever sound any more true. But it was a fact. And I couldn’t see Diesel St. Crow being chill with me going away to college and renting an apartment in the city. What good was my aunt’s money now?
I couldn’t explain it to them because it didn’t make sense why I was still dealing with her bullshit other than the one thing she said that struck a nerve; we’re the only family we have now.
It was true.
Mom was gone, and I hoped she never came back. Dad was gone now, too. Mom’s family was never around and Dad’s sister, Viola Humphrey, was the only living relative he had left.
The only one I had left now that he was gone.
They didn’t get along, but he mentioned her sometimes. How he worried about his older sister alone in her big house after her wealthy husband passed away.
How he wished he could’ve seen eye to eye with her so that I could have grown up with a rich aunt to spoil me.
It felt like spitting in his face to say to her what I really wanted to: to fuck off and never contact me again.
She’s right, Dad would tell me. I was a shitty dad. A liar. Always gambling our money away.
My dad was a lot of things, but he knew exactly who he was and what he was doing to us. He was just powerless to stop himself. Like my darkness, something greedy and morally gray writhed within him that he couldn’t purge.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to purge mine, so how could I be angry that he couldn’t do the same?
“You going to ladle that?” Grey asked, and I blinked, realizing I was standing with the soup ladle poised over my bowl. Empty.
I shook my head.
“Sorry,” Grey muttered as I went back to filling a bowl of soup. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. Family’s…a tough subject. I get it.”
Something told me he really did get it, and I was glad at least one of us did.
We went to join Rook and Corvus at the table, one of only three still occupied by students this late in the morning.
I knew Brianna transferred out of homeroom sometime last week, the fucking coward, so I wasn’t totally surprised to see she’d opted for an open period instead of enrolling in a new class this late in the term. But the others, her little posse, seemed to have joined her, and I knew for a fact they were still in homeroom with us.
The other table was just two guys studying. More students with an open first period.
Fuck, if I had an open first period, I’d be spending it sleeping.
I slid into a seat at the table beside Rook, and Grey slid in next to me. Corvus drank a smoothie, scowling at his phone. Rook drank a glass of orange juice that suspiciously didn’t look or smell to be spiked. Surprising.
