Glass Cutter

Somewhere along my walk after leaving Dane, I came across a gas station, texted the name of it to what I assumed was Oliver’s new number, and after what felt like an eternity, Oliver’s battered pickup truck pulled into the parking lot and skidded to a halt about two feet away from my outstretched legs on the curb. He jumped out onto the asphalt and practically ripped me up from my sitting position.

He held me there for a long moment, his hands on my shoulders, just staring at me and studying my face.

“You look worse than I feel,” I mumbled; and that was the truth. His hair was matted to his head, and it looked like he hadn’t showered since I’d last seen him. The dark circles under his eyes were even darker than Dane’s. He was wearing his usual Lo Pros, a pair of navy blue basketball shorts, and his usual winter coat, and he smelled like an ashtray, instead of his usual Old Spice and cigarettes.

He merely furrowed his eyebrows and led me into the passenger seat of his truck. He walked around to the other side, started the engine back up again, and before I knew it, he was speeding off along some major highway that I didn’t recognize.

I peered over to him and noticed his knuckles wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel that they were a brilliant white beneath all the tattoos.

“Dane Hawthorne is bad news, Amanda,” he finally said.

“Huh?” How the fuck did he know I’d been hanging out with Dane?

He picked up his iPhone from the cup holder next to his leg, maneuvered around the screen for a moment, and then handed it off to me. My body went cold at the sight of a picture with my face next to Dane’s in his car, grins on our lips and needles in my lap. The caption underneath it from his social media site read, Cute, isn’t she? ;)

I swallowed hard as I handed Oliver his phone back. “How do you know Dane?”

He shook his head, as if he was a disapproving father chastising his daughter. I almost hated him for it.

“Dane used to go to a lot of Bring Me The Horizon’s shows when we were first getting started,” he answered, momentarily distracting my resentment. “He was in that band I told you about, Broad Daylight, for a while until he beat the shit out of their drummer’s sister. He’s on probation for it.” He glanced at me then, trying to stress the seriousness of the situation, but my still drunken mind didn’t really believe him completely. Dane was so fragile that I was pretty sure he couldn’t hurt a fly even if he’d wanted to.

“He’s the reason why Jordan and I almost got possession charges, okay?” Oliver almost sounded desperate to make me believe him. I almost felt like he was telling tales in order to do so. “He was fucking Rayne for a while, got pissed off when she ditched him, and decided to set me and Jordan up because of it. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Amanda?”

“Yeah.” I scratched my forehead in desperation of finding some solid ground to foot myself on. Maybe it was because of my intoxication, but nothing was making sense to me anymore. When had things changed in my head from trusting Oliver Sykes so implicitly to questioning him so suspiciously?

His car suddenly slammed to a stop in the shoulder lane. He threw the gear into park and turned to me with nothing but anger written across his features. “Listen, I know you’re fucked up right now; I know you let that bastard stick you; and I know you probably fucked him while you were at it. All I can say is if you want me to bring you back to The Royal, tell me now so I can stop wasting my fucking time trying to get through to you.”

I rolled my eyes and rested my forehead against the cold window of his passenger side door. “Do what you want, Oliver,” I mumbled. My head physically hurt from the confusion and desperation.

He was quiet for a long while. Not even music filled the air. There was nothing between us except the hum of passing cars in the early morning hour. A shiver ran down my spine at the thought of actually hoping that my heart would stop as we sat there in the silence. Where was my purpose in life if Oliver didn’t love me and I didn’t have a single friend?

Before I had time to respond much more to the newfound height of misery, I instinctively threw open the car door and flung my body out onto the cold asphalt so more bile could spew from my mouth. I didn’t know how long I was on my knees, heaving dry coughs of nausea, when one hand pulled the hair away from my sweaty face and the other rested against the small of my back for comfort.

I finally felt the wave of nausea pass. I peered at Oliver to find him already staring at me with soft eyes. He looked miserable in the dim lighting from the highway. I could only imagine how bad I must’ve looked.

He bit down on his lip, sucking on the silver hoop for a moment. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Amanda,” he began, his voice quiet beneath the whirs of the highway, “but I wish I did. Why are you doing this to me?”

I felt my eyebrows furrow at him reflexively. “Why am I doing this to you?” Why was he doing whatever “this” was to me?

He shook his head and sat down on the asphalt with his back against the side of his truck. “I fucked up, didn’t I?”

“Yup.” It came out a little harsher than I’d intended.

It was silent for a long while before he finally spoke again. “I should’ve never gotten you involved with me.”

I scoffed, folding my arms over my chest. “No. You should’ve never gotten me involved with your game.” I couldn’t say I was entirely dissatisfied with the brutal honesty intoxication helped me possess.

“It wasn’t a game,” he defended. “I meant every word I ever said to you, Amanda—about loving you and wanting to change Menlo for you. Whether you still believe me or not is a different story, but it doesn’t change what my intentions were.” He sounded so sincere. I felt like my heart was literally breaking at his words.

I sighed as I pulled my knees up to my chest and buried my face in my hands. “I wish I could die right now,” I groaned. Was this real life?

Oliver pulled me into his embrace and kissed my hair. “Please don’t say that, Amanda,” he whispered. Desperation and pain sounded thick in his throat, like it really hurt him to hear the words leave my mouth, but who was I to know him like that, anyway?

“I just need to know,” I mumbled, pulling back far enough so I could see his face. “Did you ever really love me? Do you love me now?”

His face dropped as if I’d just given him the worst news of his life. “I love you more than anything, Amanda. Why are you suddenly questioning that now? Is that what this whole thing of you drinking and getting high is about—because you think I don’t love you?”

I stayed silent. It sounded pretty stupid when he put it that way.

He sighed. “What could I do to prove it to you? Tell me, and I will literally do anything in the world.” Something about how desperate he seemed to want me to believe him made me feel guilty for ever questioning him.

What if I was just insecure? What if he wasn’t lying to me about anything? I remembered him confiding in me his plan to steal millions of dollars from Carl Weston. A person would never do that with someone they didn’t trust; so what if Oliver Sykes really did love me?

“I don’t know, Oliver,” I grumbled, shaking my head and feeling the dizziness take over. The forest along the side of the highway swayed from side to side before me.

We sat there like that for a long time. Oliver got back into the driver’s seat after a while, but when I didn’t move from the asphalt—mainly because I couldn’t—he eventually came back out, cigarettes in hand, and sat back down beside me, inhaling deep drags of gray smoke. It wasn’t awkward, really, but it was certainly painful. I wanted to know what he was thinking.

“Do you want me to take you home?” he finally asked after a collection of cigarette butts had formed beside his knee.

I shook my head. “My car’s at Alex’s dorm.”

Oliver didn’t respond—not verbally, at least. When I glanced over at him, though, I saw him roll his eyes and drop his head back against the bed of his truck. “Jesus, Amanda,” he groaned. “So who haven’t you fucked?”

A scoff—more of a mocking laugh, really—came out involuntarily. “You wanna ask me that, Oliver? Really?” He was the one that had slept with half our school’s female population.

He just rolled his eyes and lit a sixth cigarette. He laid the pack and his white lighter down on the asphalt between us, so when he seemed pretty engulfed in the lightening sky beyond the horizon, I quickly slipped a cigarette out for myself and lit it. He only glanced at me and shook his head disapprovingly in response.

“So where do we go from here?” Oliver finally said, breaking the deafening silence.

“Seattle?”

He glared at me, obviously thinking I was being sarcastic—only because I clearly hadn’t been coming off as drunk as I still felt.

“Oh, you mean with us,” I acknowledged upon seeing his expression. I could only shrug. “I don’t know. You’re the one that’s used to breaking up with people.” It came out a lot more nonchalantly than I’d wanted, but the misery had already sunken so deep into me that I didn’t think officiating anything would make it worse.

“So we’re breaking up then?”

I just inhaled a drag off my cigarette in response and peered over at him. His expression was only blank.


Oliver didn’t come to school for the entire next week. The first time I’d seen him since he’d picked me up in Olympia was on the first Monday of February, after a snowstorm had turned the high school parking lot into a type of ice skating rink. As he took his seat beside mine in our chemistry classroom, he looked more attractive than ever in a pair of dark, ripped jeans, a white tee-shirt under a solid, black cardigan, and his normal Vans Lo Pros.

“Hey, Amanda.” He gave me a small smile. Despite how perfect he really did look, his eyes seemed tired. They reminded me of Dane Hawthorne’s.

“Hey.” I couldn’t stop my eyes from following him as he fidgeted in his stool. Unlike the way I thought I would’ve reacted in finally seeing him again, I actually wanted to punch him in the gut and then move my seat.

“How are you?” he asked.

I peered over at him just as the bell rang. I was wearing a pair of black yoga pants, my dad’s old, gray Princeton University crew neck, and a pair of tan moccasins with my hair pulled back into a messy ponytail—wasn’t it obvious that I was miserable?

Oliver spent the entire forty-minute period doodling in his notebook with a pencil I’d given him before our winter break. While my pages were filled with notes about naming organic chemical compounds, his were covered in grayscale images of cartooned cats missing eyes or ears, winged angels with skulls for heads, and torn roses dipped in blood.

My head remained distracted with the noise of the lead against his papers. I had never had to deal with a failed relationship before, and I certainly never had to sit next to someone for forty minutes, five days a week, after the fact. Unhappy didn’t even begin to describe how I felt.

Before I knew it, though, the bell signaling the end of class was ringing in my ears and Oliver’s bright, hazel eyes were staring at me intently with a sickeningly sweet hint of a smile. I really wanted to slap the smirk off his face. There was literally nothing even remotely funny about our situation. He had broken my heart, and I wanted to break his face—what about that was a reason to smile?

“Are you going to Roy Radke’s party next weekend?” he asked, his gaze following my every move as I stood up from my stool.

“Um—” I cleared my throat.

Before I could answer, I felt a warm arm slide around my shoulders. “She’s going with me,” Delilah’s bittersweet voice chimed. “What’s it to you, Oliver?”

It was the absolute first time in my entire life that Delilah had done something nice for me. I felt the echo of the school bell run throughout my brain at the surprise. She and I had never really discussed Oliver much—save for a few snarky comments here and there—but it had to be more than evident that something between him and me had changed. I just never knew she was actually observant to her surroundings.

He scrunched up his nose and halfway rolled his eyes. It looked like he was about to say something in response, but before he got the chance to, Delilah was tugging me along towards the doorway. I peered over my shoulder to see him chewing on his bottom lip before the bright, red color of the hallway lockers blanketed my view of him.

“Thank you,” I murmured as she took her arm back to twist in the combination of her locker.

She grinned and pulled out her Spanish textbook from the top shelf. “You’re welcome. God only knows what you would’ve said to him had I not stepped in.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, nodding pensively.

What would I have said? Better yet, what would he have said? Why did he want to know about my plans, anyway? My stomach dropped at the notion that he might’ve been planning to ask me to go with him. To answer Delilah’s skepticism, I would’ve absolutely said yes in less than a single painstaking heartbeat. My intestines only tightened even more at the realization that I wanted Oliver Sykes to love me more than I wanted anything else in the world.

It was quiet between us for a long while. I briefly wondered what she was thinking as we walked to our classrooms, but most of my thoughts were consumed with images of Oliver. I reeled through every single memory I ever had of him and hoped for some sort of hint to our disaster, but my brain wasn’t as magnificent as his. I could’ve been missing key events, and I would never know because unlike his, time had cursed my amygdalae to already lose certain bits of the information.

“Do you wanna go shopping after school today?” Delilah suddenly asked before stopping at the door of her Spanish classroom.

I nodded again, offering her my most sincere smile. Going out to Menlo Commons Mall and pretending to be a normal girl sounded very enticing right about then, even with having to watch Delilah waste hundreds of dollars on clothes she didn’t need.


I found myself sitting on the floor of a dressing room in a store called Sundance, with Delilah twirling around before me. She was in a skintight, scarlet-colored dress with her backside about to fall out at the slightest wrong move. The dress would’ve actually been really cute had it been a little less skimpy. A black ribbon was laced into the front in a corset-like fashion, and a matching lace trim wrapped around the bottom of it. Of course, though, Delilah still looked stunning, even looking like a slut.

“What do you think?” Her voice pulled me back from my daydream of wishing I could pull off such a feat.

“It looks really good.” I gave her my best smile, but the way she lowered her eyes told me she wasn’t buying my expression.

She groaned before sitting down beside me. “What is it about Oliver fucking Sykes that’s got you so down, babe? Usually you always cheer up when we go shopping.”

My first instinct was to question what on Earth had made her suddenly abandon her disgust of public floors. Instead, mumbling, “I don’t know,” was my only response.

She rolled her eyes, sighing in what was clear exasperation. I almost wanted to hit her for all the times she’d complained to me about this guy and that one; she owed me at least one earful.

“I’m gonna give you a piece of advice,” she suddenly declared, peering over at me.

I stayed silent, signaling for her to go on.

“I don’t know what it could possibly be about Oliver Sykes that’s got you so wrapped up—” The ironic thing was that she actually did. “—and I’m not gonna pretend to get it either ’cause he’s a fucking slimeball. All I can say is that if you want him back—which, by the way, I’m also gonna say you shouldn’t because you can do so much better—” She nudged me with her shoulder at this. “—you gotta make him jealous.”

I didn’t know what to be more astounded by—the fact that she’d given me a compliment with no strings attached or that she’d actually given me real, friendly advice.

“And I know just the person to help you out,” she finished.

I peered at her quizzically. Who in Menlo would possibly be interested in helping someone out when they would get nothing in return? I certainly had nothing to reciprocate with, at least.

She grinned at me and wrapped me into a side hug. “Just wait until Roy Radke’s party. You’re gonna fall in love.”

Fat chance, I thought bitterly.


I found myself standing next to Delilah beneath the open foyer of Roy Radke’s living room in a loosely fitting, crimson jumper that fell a few inches over my thighs, a pair of solid, black leggings, and my combat boots. Everyone had been required to wear either red or pink for the Valentine’s Day party, so while I wasn’t alone in wearing such a bright color, I felt sillier than everyone else. I never felt like red had suited me very well.

I glanced over at her nervously. She’d decided to get the dress from Sundance and match it with a pair of black, suede stilettos, and I couldn’t help but feel even sillier at her side. She was just always so glamorous; I was also so ordinary. I even tried to look nice by letting her do my makeup darker than usual, but it was to no avail.

She’d promised me I looked “hot” before we left her house, but by that point in time, I was pretty sure she’d just been giving me compliments because she felt sorry for me; and it was just weird. Delilah Weston was not a nice person. She didn’t even pity kids with cancer, so she was most certainly not supposed to be pitying me.

She wrapped her arm around me and gave me an encouraging smile. “C’mon, there’s someone I want you to talk to.”

She led me over to the refreshments table, where Tommy Dennings and Derek Austin were engulfed in what seemed like a heated conversation with Desiree O’Brien. The curiosity of who Delilah wanted me to meet was killing me, but I guessed she was just trying to drag out the highly anticipated encounter for the sake of being dramatic.

“Hi, guys,” she greeted the group cheerily.

The three of them immediately stopped talking and said hello to us. Tommy suddenly got this wide, goofy smile on his face. I could tell from the glassiness in his eyes that he was already drunk, and I couldn’t deny that I was pretty envious. He reminded me of a song my dad had often played, the lyrics chanting, Sometimes, I think it’s a shame when I get feeling better when I’m feeling no pain. At least he was happy, and that was a lot more than I could say.

“Tommy, won’t you keep Amanda company tonight?” Delilah said, batting her eyelashes at him.

He nodded, offering me a toothy grin. “Sure thing.”

The surprise that Tommy Dennings was the one that Delilah wanted me to talk was almost enough to make me miss the light blush that had crept across his cheeks. This was the boy she’d manipulated into vandalizing my home and spray-painting whore on my living room walls—I hadn’t forgotten about it, and I definitely hadn’t left my resentment at home.

He grabbed a green Heineken bottle from the silver bin on the refreshments table before sidling up next to me. He handed the glass to me with a sweet smile on his face.

Maybe it was my heartbreak that had made me lose my mind, but Tommy actually seemed sort of cute with his sudden shyness. The pink button-up with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the form-fitting, black jeans suited him very nicely. His ear-length, blonde hair even seemed attractive to me then.

I mentally screamed at myself as I popped the cap off from the beer bottle and brought the top to my lips for a long sip. Memories of visiting Alex Ward at the University Of Washington flooded my brain at the taste of the bitter beer, and I actually had to consciously stifle a groan at the thought that I wouldn’t have minded Tommy Dennings switching places with him.

I glanced up at his deep, brown eyes to find him already gazing at me, a smirk painted on his lips. “Hey, Amanda,” he said shyly.

“Hi, Tommy,” I replied, smiling back. I almost hated Delilah for trying to set me up with him, but I hated myself more for not running in the opposite direction the second she’d asked him to keep me company for the night.

“How are you feeling?”

The embarrassment burned my cheeks. Was everyone so acutely aware of my misery? “I’m okay. How are you?”

He grinned, lightly laughing. “I’m pretty drunk, to be honest.”

“I can tell.” I took a sip from my beer, offhandedly wondering how many of them it would take for me to catch up to him. “You’re usually the first one to get pissed at parties.” I smirked back at him so he knew I wasn’t criticizing.

He chuckled and finished off the last third of his own drink. He replied as he grabbed a red Solo cup and filled it with some spiked fruit punch; “Yeah, I know. It’s just like, who doesn’t wanna be drunk, though, you know?”

I shrugged, pursing my lips. “Yeah, I do.”

Just as I was about to continue on speaking, the DJ changed the song to one that I had always thoroughly enjoyed hearing on the radio. “I love this song,” I exclaimed and realized I heard myself echo from Tommy. We both laughed.

He began swaying his hips in a goofy manner. I didn’t think he could dance well if his life had depended on it, but how he was so oblivious to it was pretty endearing, I had to say.

“I know that we were made to break; so what? I don’t mind,” he sang—and very horribly. I could only giggle as I polished off my beer and began bobbing my head to the beat.

“You kill the lights; I’ll draw the blinds,” he continued. “Don’t dull the sparkle in your eyes. I know that we were made to break; so what? I don’t mind.”

I finally felt my own hips move with his as the electronic sounds shook from the speakers. “Are you gonna stay the night?” I hummed with him. “Doesn’t mean we’re bound for life, so are you gonna stay the night?”

He handed me a cup, filled with Roy Radke’s infamous fruit punch concoction—one-fourth Hawaiian Punch, one-fourth Sprite, one-fourth mango-flavored Pinnacle, and one-fourth Jack Daniel’s whiskey—before going on. “I am a fire; you’re gasoline. Come pour yourself all over me. We’ll let this place go down in flames only one more time.”

He grinned, laughing wildly, and only faded, bittersweet memories of Oliver singing No Doubt to me on a Seattle rooftop came to mind. I was pretty sure I suffered from a form of hyperthymesia, myself, with the way memories of Oliver always seemed to drown me, but about half of the fruit punch Tommy had given me washed it mostly away. Finishing the cup in a second swig made me feel like it was completely gone.

“Easy, killer,” Tommy chided lightheartedly before taking my cup back and refilling it.

“Says you,” I mumbled, smirking as I took about a third of the new serving in a single sip.

He shrugged, simpering back, and swallowed the last of his own cup. “I guess we’ll just be drunk together, then.”

“I guess so;” and I actually didn’t mind that thought so much.

“I didn’t even know you drank, actually,” he commented, seeming more to himself than me. “All this time, I thought you were a good kid.”

I finished off the rest of my second cup without replying. My head felt kind of warm by then, so I was pretty sure I was tipsy; but I still felt my heart race a little at the thought of Oliver showing up, so I definitely wasn’t nearly drunk enough.

“I mean, it’s actually kind of hot,” he went on, casually shrugging to himself. “Who would’ve thought Amanda Tate had a bit of a dark side?”

I refilled my cup for a third time, smirking and shaking my head at him. “Everyone has a dark side;” and despite how the truth in that statement should’ve pained me, a few more sips of Roy Radke’s fruit punch numbed any type of reaction to it.

Tommy nodded quietly, seeming to be thinking over my statement. “Even you.” It almost sounded like he might’ve been asking me, but it was more declaratory than anything.

I couldn’t even argue, truthfully. I had contemplated being an accomplice to a heist; I had used two boys just to make myself feel better; I had injected heroin; I had spent almost my entire life secretly hating my best friend. There was no way I didn’t have a dark side; and upon really thinking about it, I actually started to feel a little guilty for it all.

“Even me,” I finally murmured.

He grinned at me and raised his cup in a salute. “Me, too, if I’m being honest.”

I know, I wanted to say.

Without another word, he went back to dancing horribly, and I couldn’t help but follow suit. Who wanted to think about their dark side anyway—and who didn’t want to be drunk?


I somehow found myself laying on my side in Roy Radke’s little sister’s bed, my head held up in the palm of my hand, Tommy laying next to me on his back, and a half-finished, large bottle of mango-flavored Pinnacle between us. My head spun with affection, and all I could think about was how I wanted to unbutton Tommy’s shirt and see more of his pale chest. I knew from lunchtime conversations that he had a tattoo on his left pec, saying, This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive, and will prosper. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, written within a large, red rose. I just wanted to see it, that was all.

At some point, Tommy had taken off his all-black, low-top Converse and mismatched socks—endearingly enough, one was black with yellow Batman logos and the other black- and blue-striped—to show me why he was convinced that his left big toe was longer than his right. Truthfully, they were exactly the same size, but I let him continue anyway because the passion in his rant was exceptionally amusing.

“It’s like really weird, though, right?” He turned his head to look at me. “Like, who has different-sized toes? I think the only thing worse is having like six toes on one foot and four on the other—that’s literally the only thing that makes me feel better about my situation.

“You wanna know who has that?” He suddenly rolled over onto his side to face me. “Derek. Derek has six toes on his left foot and four on his right. He showed me once in the locker room when we were like freshmen or something, maybe sophomores. I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone, though, so you can’t tell anyone, okay?” He peered at me earnestly, like he was really worried I would spill.

I merely nodded, the smile fading from my face at the thought of Derek Austin. Despite how much I’d been enjoying myself over the course of the night with Tommy, he and Derek had still destroyed my home—and I still hadn’t left that resentment at home.

Tommy sighed and rolled onto his back once more, folding his arms over his stomach. “You don’t get mad at much, huh?” He glanced over at me to gauge my reaction, but I didn’t really have one.

I wasn’t an outwardly angry person, but I certainly harbored many resentments. I didn’t really know how to respond because I didn’t really know if he was right or not.

“Can I tell you something because I’m pretty drunk, and I feel bad about something I did, and I know I won’t tell you about it any other time?” he suddenly asked, growing very serious.

I nodded hesitantly. Even my mostly drunk mind had a good idea of what he was going to confess. Something about his honesty made butterflies roam throughout my stomach—or maybe it was just honesty in general and had nothing to do with coming from him.

“So you know how somebody had like trashed your house back around Thanksgiving?”

“Of course,” I mumbled. Everybody in Menlo knew about it—and it was my own damn house, in the first place.

“Well that was me.” I saw him peer at me through the corner of my eye, pausing for a reaction.

“Well it was actually me and someone else,” he corrected; “but I can’t speak for him. I’m just really sorry. I actually really like you, to be honest, so that was the only reason why I did it. Someone had told me that if you thought going out with Oliver was causing enough problems, you’d break up with him; and I really wanted to take you out to dinner one day.”

I pursed my lips. “I know,” was all I could say. “I overheard you and Derek talking about it in the locker room one day.”

He nodded silently.

It was weird to think that someone other than Oliver Sykes actually wanted me, and it was even weirder to think that someone without a single possible ulterior motive wanted me. Tommy Dennings didn’t get anything from taking me out to dinner, except the actual gratification of taking me out to dinner. He had no beef with Delilah, and other than being used to get to her, I certainly had nothing else to offer anyone.

“So then you’re not mad?” He took another sip from the Pinnacle bottle and held it out to me.

I obliged. “No, not really. I was more offended than anything else;” and that was the truth, actually.

He grinned. “Good—not that you were offended but that you’re not mad. Where do you wanna go for dinner, anyway?”

I chuckled quietly. Tommy Dennings was just endearing when given the opportunity—there was no other word for him. I felt myself take a breath to speak just before the bedroom door was thrown open, and a fit of laughter filled the air.

There was no description to express the pain that seeing Oliver Sykes’ lips locked to Delilah Weston’s had caused me. My stomach almost literally dropped, so much that a searing heat actually, physically stung my spine. My mouth went dry, and a bitter-tasting mucous, like bile mixed with tropical fruits, clogged my throat. All within one second, I felt like my world had come crashing down.

It was the most horrifying feeling I’d ever experienced—worse than the depression I’d felt when I’d realized I didn’t care if Dane Hawthorne had had any diseases; worse than the disappointment I’d felt when I’d realized Oliver Sykes was just using me; worse than the anger I’d felt when I’d realized Tommy Dennings and Derek Austin vandalized my home; worse than all of it put together.

Tommy and I sat up simultaneously, and just as I shrieked, “Oliver?” he gasped, “Delilah?”

Oliver pulled away from Delilah at the sound of our voices. “Shit,” he muttered, wiping red lipstick from his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I murmured, more to myself than anyone else. I was almost praying that Roy Radke had just pulled another one of his pranks and spiked the fruit punch with some LSD, like he’d done at his St. Patrick’s Day party in our sophomore year.

Tommy just rubbed his eyes, peered at me for a second, and then gazed back at the couple disbelievingly in the doorway. “This is like the worst day ever,” he whined, throwing his head back.

I couldn’t stop myself from gaping at him. What the fuck did he know about the worst day ever? It wasn’t his best friend making out with the love of his life.

“For you, that is,” he finally finished, matching my glower.

Within a second, my temper just flared. I had never before felt such physical rage—a rage so strong that my hands actually shook from the insatiable urge to collide my fists with a person’s face. I had never before known what “seeing red” meant until my vision literally clouded over with a crimson haze. I had never before wanted to physically hurt someone so much that my chest actually tightened up over the realization that I couldn’t without bearing serious consequences.

Oliver had this dumb smirk on his face as he watched me, and Delilah simply adjusted her dress and cleared her throat. I wanted to slap him so hard that I’d paralyze a part of his zygomaticus major, but I had a legitimate fear that if I hit him once, I’d end up snatching one of Leila Radke’s soccer trophies from the shelf above her doorway and try to kill him with it. I had never before thought I had an anger problem until I literally, actually, truly wanted to kill Oliver Sykes for breaking my heart.

The only action I could take to stop myself from trying to strangle him was grabbing the Pinnacle bottle from the full size bed and making the conscious resolution that I would leave the room without handcuffs. I skirted around Oliver and Delilah and almost made it without retaliating in some way, but I couldn’t stop myself from rounding up a large wad of saliva and expending it straight into his face before actually stepping out into the hall. There was absolutely nothing ladylike about my excessive drool squaring him in the center of his eye, and while my grandmother had to have been rolling over in her grave for such bad mannerisms, I absolutely did not care. In fact, I was actually quite proud of my accuracy.

As I made my way down the stairs, through the living room, and out into the cold, February snow, I couldn’t bring myself to cry. I just wasn’t sure if it was because I was simply that angry or simply that drunk. I could only swallow more of the disgustingly sweet, mango-flavored vodka that I had grown to hate. What was the point in even drinking vodka if the taste didn’t make you want to puke your guts out, anyway?


About an hour had passed before I found myself curled up inside the jungle gym at Maplewood Park, with my knees pulled up to my chest and my back against the wooden frame of the raised platform. Tommy Dennings came into my view from across the frozen soccer field with a gray Charity bag in one hand and what looked like the fluffy, pink quilt from Leila Radke’s room in the other.

He blundered up the small ladder with only one or two groans before finally crawling over to me and making himself comfortable at my side. He silently unfolded the blanket—which was definitely Leila Radke’s upon closer examination—tossed it over both our legs, and pulled out a small baguette from the Charity bag.

“I was actually serious about dinner,” he declared after a long silence; “but I figured it wasn’t gonna happen tonight ’cause I’m too drunk, and it definitely has nothing to do with the fact that I’m actually broke until my paycheck next Friday, so I took the liberty of sifting through Roy’s kitchen and helping myself to a dinner of champions.” He held one end of the baguette out to me. “Care to enjoy? His parents actually have really good taste in food.”

I pursed my lips before pulling a piece of the baguette off for myself. I wanted to smile at his efforts, but my head was pounding so hard that I was legitimately worried about a possible aneurysm rupturing between my eyes—not to mention I was still seething from seeing Oliver.

“Thanks,” I finally murmured.

He grinned back to me in response.

We were quiet for a long while, just sharing the baguette he’d stolen, before he spoke again. “So like, can I ask you something?”

I nodded.

“Why aren’t you crying? ’Cause I’m not gonna lie—like, I wanted to cry for you. No joke, Roy even ended up kicking them both out for it.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Because crying’s not gonna make either of them any less shitty people—and neither is kicking them out. They’re probably just gonna go fuck in his truck now anyway, instead of just Leila’s bed.” I was actually kind of sorry on behalf of the whole grade for how many people had fornicated in Leila Radke’s bed—and Oliver had already been one of them.

He quirked his eyebrows. “I wish I could get that drunk—just so fucked that you don’t even give a fuck anymore.”

“I still give a fuck. There’s just nothing I can do about it.”

He just shrugged and stole a sip from the Pinnacle bottle next to my thigh.

“And besides,” I started, the curiosity getting the best of me, “what do you even have to give a fuck about, anyway, that just makes you wanna drink all the time? You drive around in a brand new Bentley that your dad bought for you with no strings attached. You’re the team captain of your high school’s baseball team, and you have a full scholarship to the country’s best college for it. Your grandparents left you an entire house in your own name right on Niagara Falls; and you’re a store manager at your job at eighteen years old. What more could you possibly want from life?”

He pursed his lips before taking another swig of the Pinnacle. “Well for starters, my dad is on the verge of declaring bankruptcy, which would make my car no more—and I actually, really fucking hate baseball. My house in Niagara Falls was sold last week to help my parents out with some bills. Sundance still pays me minimum wage to run the store, even after I’ve been there for two years. My brother became a dopehead after graduating high school and decided to go share a needle with some whore in Seattle that gave him AIDS, and my mom cheats on my dad everyday with our fucking gardener, out of all people; and my left toe is still longer than my right, regardless of whether or not you see it.” He was absolutely serious about his distress over the latter.

“It’s like, sometimes, I just really wanna fucking kill myself,” he concluded.

I had never known Tommy Dennings to be anything except happy-go-lucky, but meanwhile, he had all these tribulations in his life. It made me really rethink my opinion on the people of Menlo—because if Terrance Dennings was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy, Maria Dennings was cheating on her husband with the family gardener, and twenty-two-year-old Jack Dennings was dying from HIV / AIDS, then who else in our town had secrets that no one knew about?

“You hate baseball?” It was the absolute dumbest response I could’ve ever had for someone that had just finished spilling their guts out to me, but the curiosity got the better of my judgment. I really wanted to know how he excelled at it so well while hating it so vehemently. He had won an award for being the best catcher in the state of Washington, was voted Most Valuable Player for all three completed seasons in his high school career, and had an overall batting average of almost 0.400.

He laughed loudly, shaking some blonde strands of hair away from his chocolate brown eyes. “I’d rather slit my wrists than play another season, Amanda, but my dad won’t let me quit. He even got my uncle to threaten me with expulsion if I tried.”

“That really sucks, actually.”

“Well at least your life sucks pretty bad, too, so I’m not alone.” He smirked.

I shrugged and gazed up into the nighttime sky, watching the stars glitter brightly above us. “I guess misery really does love company—at least you do, anyway.” I simpered back to him, but I didn’t feel the expression entirely. He was trying hard, though, so I had to give him something.

“So what about you, Amanda?” he started after a long silence.

“What about me?”

“Well you know all about my secrets. I gotta have some dirt on you now, this way I know you can’t tell anyone.” He handed me the Pinnacle bottle.

I obliged and took a quick sip. “I don’t have any secrets, really.” My only secret was knowing that Oliver Sykes had planned on stealing the Weston’s family fortune, but I wasn’t sure if that had been just a hoax at gaining my trust—and I wouldn’t have told even if it was a sincere idea.

He rolled his eyes. “Well someday you’ll grow to trust me.”

Don’t hold your breath, I wanted to say. Something bad always happened every time I trusted someone, and I had truly become jaded.


Sunday had come and passed with no word from Oliver or Delilah. Tommy had somehow gotten my number, though—I didn’t remember giving it to him—and filled the void entirely, but by the time the night came, I was more tired than I’d ever thought I could be with the fact that every time my phone vibrated, the name above the text message icon wasn’t Oliver’s. I liked Tommy—I truly did—but what did he want from me? I didn’t have anything left to offer anyone.

I woke up in the middle of the night to a loud clinking sound. I almost thought it was my alarm clock going off for school, but the blocky, red numbers reading 3:47 on it told me otherwise. Another clink shortly following after forced me to roll onto my back completely and look around for the source. Only after the third time, I realized it was something hitting my window.

I walked over to the glass pane and pulled my curtain back. A part of me had been expecting it to just be a tree branch, but seeing Oliver’s lanky frame standing at the curb of my front lawn, disheveled in the same red- and white-plaid flannel and black jeans he’d worn to Roy Radke’s party, I was quickly reminded that my mom and I didn’t even have any trees in our yard.

My heart sank at seeing him bend down to grab a fourth pebble from the asphalt and throw it towards me once again.

I quickly unlocked my window and slid it open. “What are you doing?” I hissed, sticking my head outside into the frigid air. I prayed my mom wouldn’t hear my voice in her bedroom next door.

“I still love you,” he slurred loudly, holding his arms up in defeat.

My astonishment that he could get so drunk and still stand on two feet, let alone drive his monster of a pickup truck, almost distracted me from the fact that Oliver had just said he still loved me.

“You’re a fucking bitch,” he went on, pulling my attention back; “and you broke my fucking heart. I was thinking about climbing up to your room and beating the shit out of you while you slept.

“So there, I said it—now I’m being completely honest. Isn’t this what you’ve wanted all along? Well here’s the whole fucking truth and nothing but the truth.” He stumbled as he walked up the sidewalk of my front lawn.

“I actually wanna fucking kill you.” Something told me he was going to tell me the whole truth whether I really wanted it or not. “I think you’re a fucking whore, actually. I think you fucked Dane Hawthorne and Alex Ward when you went to Seattle and Tommy Dennings last night, and I think you’re a fucking heartless cunt for doing that to me—”

“I’m heartless?” I suddenly shrieked, interrupting him. I couldn’t hold back the anger. “You were all over Rayne back in Bellingham, and then you made out with my best friend at a party right in front of me! Who does that?” I didn’t even care who I woke up by that point.

“We had an arrangement in Bellingham!” he yelled back, stopping just below my window. “We talked about it long before that ever happened—don’t even try pulling that shit.

“And I only hooked up with D because she told me you were hooking up with Tommy. Why Tommy, out of all people, anyway? Why any of them, out of all people? You could’ve fucked any guy in Menlo, Seattle, Olympia—whoever you wanted—and I would’ve felt better about it than those three. I literally would’ve been happier to see you fuck any one of my bandmates than those shitheads.”

“Amanda?” My mother’s voice interrupted the breath I took to scream back at him.

I spun around and quickly yanked myself back inside, bumping my head against part of the wooden frame.

“Yeah, just fucking go back to bed, cunt!” I heard Oliver shout.

My mom folded her arms over her chest and lowered her eyes at me. “Should I go let him inside, or is screaming out the window doing it for you?”

“I know you can hear me!” he yelled. “I wasn’t fucking done talking to you!”

She continued glowering at me. She was definitely serious about wanting me to decide on whether or not I’d continue to disgrace the Tate name with a drunken Oliver Sykes screaming profanities on our front lawn.

I quietly groaned before bounding down the stairs and unlocking the front door. He was just about to yell something else, but I pushed him before he got the chance. It was the only thing I could think of that would immediately grab his attention.

“Shut up!” I growled. “You’re embarrassing my mom and—” I didn’t get the chance to finish my thought because before anything else could leave my lips, Oliver roughly grabbed my face in his hands and silenced me with his own.