Learning How to Swim

It’d been two weeks. A whole two weeks since she’d gone back to Beckham. My parents still hadn’t said anything about the possibility of sending Kara away, so I assumed they either decided against it or were giving her a few days.

I had learned just how addicting that stuff could be. I couldn’t believe that I had trusted Kara when she said she had quit. I didn’t have a very addictive nature—though Kara did—so I knew that I could stop anytime I wanted to, but it filled a hole in my heart. I took it just for the satisfaction of knowing I could. I’d gone through the rest of that bag, but I had found even more hidden in her bedroom. I made sure to take some before and after school every day. Steven and I didn’t talk anymore, but I would occasionally see him staring at me, as if trying to figure out what was wrong with the girl he saw.

I think I hid it well. I wore baggier clothes to hide the weight loss, and I didn’t experience the side effects too severely, unlike my older sister. I had just visited her two days ago, and she told me to watch out for hawk-eyed annoyances. She knew—that much was obvious. But I hadn’t tattled on her, so she wasn’t going to rat me out.

I’d even made some new friends after being at that school for five years of my life. My mother told me they weren’t the kind of people I should be hanging around, but then I’d just given her the middle finger and stormed up to my room. She didn’t come after me, though, because she was too stuck up on Kara to even think about me.

I was friends with the druggies now, but they were nice enough people. Adam was the lead singer of a band, so I always went to his garage practices. Then there was Roselyn, Vincent, Quincy, and Alicia. Roselyn and I had promised each other to be bests forever. She had a thing going on with Vincent, and we all knew that Alicia was head over heels for Quincy. That left me with Adam, though we weren’t in anything serious. We all promised each other we had no diseases before we shared the needles.

Of course, Steven had told me plenty of times that I should get out before I couldn’t. I had told him to stop watching me because he wasn’t my mother. He had asked me when I had heard that from Kara, so I had told him to fuck off, only more explicit. Then I had been given detention for swearing in the classroom. Roselyn already had a detention, so that hadn’t mattered.

“Do you have your paper, Alyssa?” the teacher asked me as I sat at my desk with my face on my book.

“No. I’ll have it tomorrow,” I mumbled.

“No, you won’t. You’ve been saying that ever since Monday. You’ve had four days more than everyone else. Do you have it?” I shook my head and he sighed. “I’ll put you down for a zero then.”

“Knock yourself out,” I muttered, slouching in my seat. I hated history: it was the only class that none of my friends were in.

“You’re going to fall behind,” Steven told me, staring dead at me. I shrugged.

“I’m going to enjoy the ride, Quigg.” That’s what Adam called him. And everyone else in the school.

“Look, it’s been two weeks! I’ve tried apologizing plenty of times!”

“Yes,” I agreed, nodding furiously, so out of it. “You have.”

“So when are you going to forgive me?”

The bell rang and I slung my bag over my shoulder, shifting it a few times.

“Don’t hold your breath,” I whispered in his ear, taking off down the hall before he could say anything.

Who would’ve thought I would turn out to be the girl that the mothers told their children not to end up like? Not me.

Or Steven, obviously.