The Quiet

While I told Cari about the first time Liam hit me, the right side of my body seemed to throb with the memory. I watched her face twitch and her eyes get dark as she listened to me, and the only thing I could see now was horror in her expression.

“That bastard,” she said when I finished. “He could have killed you. Did you tell anyone?”

“I was fifteen. No one wanted to hear anything I had to say.”

“He hurt you, Clay. You should have told someone and gotten him expelled.”

I held up my hands. “That wasn’t possible. Liam Callahan had money. He would get out of it somehow, pay someone off.”

Now Cari looked outraged. She looked mad enough to punch someone, not that I blamed her, because that’s exactly what I’d wanted to do for years.

“Why don’t you do something about it? Clay, you owe it to yourself for never standing up to him before. Show him, even after all this time that you aren’t afraid of him.”

I don’t say anything. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure what I could say. If I told her I wasn’t going to do anything, she might have just taken it upon herself to set Liam straight. Normally, I don’t do anything without thinking about the consequences. Every step I’ve taken in my life has been thought out, and things are not done without reason.

“It wouldn’t make a difference now,” I told her. “It’s three years too late.”

Cari didn’t say anything. She tied her hair up in a ponytail and I watched the white part of it as it glistened in the sun. She looked at me with her dark gray eyes and sighed.

“You know, when I moved here I didn’t realize how much drama I would be getting into.” She smiled, so I’d know that she was kidding. “I left to avoid that.”

Before I could say anything else, I spotted Lena as she came out of the school. She looked a little less pissed than the last time we’d spoken. She looked in our direction, her eyes narrowed, but not at me.