Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
This could be it. The Jaeger family creed. The Tryst Six warning, however you want to look at it.
Our parents’ passing came at so great a shock that we make it a point to remind ourselves not to fight with each other now.
Not to waste time.
Not to leave anything unsaid.
This could be it. The last time we see each other.
“Be careful,” I murmur in his ear, dropping my eyes to the tattoo on his neck. It’s the same symbol that hangs on our wall at home in the garage and that adorns the leather bracelet all the Jaegers wear. A snake wrapped around an hourglass.
He holds me tight for another moment and then releases me. “You, too.”
A look, a smile, and then he’s off without a helmet on his head and his scab-marked elbows hanging out of his black T-shirt from the last time he rolled his motorcycle. I watch him until he pulls out of the driveway, turns right, and disappears down the street.
“Hi, Liv,” someone calls.
I glance to see Maria Hoff walking past as I fit my earbuds into my ears.
I grunt and fall in line with the few other students making their way into the school. She’s only being nice to me, because there was a suicide with a public school student a couple days ago. Allison Carpenter—Alli for short. Everyone here seems to think every gay person knows each other, so she probably thinks I lost a friend.
I knew of Alli—small town and all—but I didn’t know her. It was still awful what happened, though. And it happens too often.
But not to me. I’m almost done surviving them. Just a few more months.
I enter through the front doors, heading down the hallway. “¿Qué te gusta hacer?” I repeat with my Rosetta Stone app. “¿Qué te gusta hacer?” I push my tongue behind my teeth, trying to form the syllables with a pronunciation to match the voice on my phone. “Te…gusta…?”
Damn Aracely. The next time some ex of my brothers’ calls me shit in Spanish, I want to know what they’re saying. I guess I should be speaking it already. I’m one-fourth Cuban.
Or maybe an eighth, I’m not sure. The only thing my family prides themselves on is the other fourth—or eighth—of Seminole blood that keeps us on our land.
Blood that also came in handy when I applied to Marymount four years ago. A little diversity looks good on the school’s yearly accountability reports, and even shaved a little tuition cost off for me when I won their scholarship.
I mean, I guess I didn’t win it. I was the only one who applied for it, but still.
I breeze past my locker, around the corner, and push through the door to the women’s locker room.
“¿Cual es son tu pasatiempos?” I repeat, opening my gym locker and hanging my backpack inside. I pull out my school skirt and black Polo, shaking out the wrinkles and hang them on the hook inside, feeling the girls around me turn to quickly pull on their workout gear and cover themselves.
I’d learned a long time ago, even before Clay’s mother and the rest of the school board forked over fifty grand for a complete remodel of the locker room showers to give us all private stalls “in the best interest of everyone”, that it was best to just come up with a routine that put me in these situations as little as possible. I come to school in my leggings and tank top on workout days. I change in a stall after school before practices. I go home in my dirty gear afterward and shower there.
“¿Cual es son tu pasatiempos?” I say again, trying to act oblivious to the eyes on me ready and waiting to report to Father McNealty if I ogle their bodies like some hypersexual pervert.
I slip off my jacket and slide my phone into the leggings pocket on the side of my thigh before closing my locker.
“Tu pasa…” I enunciate my vowels to myself and make my way to the weight room.
School starts in an hour, but lacrosse has workouts on Mondays and Wednesdays. The football team is done for the year, the basketball team and baseball teams have the room on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the swim team does most of their workouts in the pool.
Someone pops up to my side as I move past the showers. “Thin Mint?” she asks and shoves a silver roll of cookies into my face.
I scowl, barely looking up to see Becks next to me. “That’s not breakfast.”
Of course, I hadn’t had any yet, but I was pretty sure eating nothing was better than eating shit when I was about to work out.
“Come on. It can’t be any worse than donuts. I mean, who decided what breakfast food should be breakfast food anyway?” Becks grabs two towels from the stand and tosses me one. “I mean, maybe ham doesn’t go with eggs. Maybe eight Thin Mints is the same amount of carbs you’d find in a glass of orange juice. Maybe cereal was invented as a nighttime treat, but they cleverly decided, ‘hey, this is perfect for breakfast when people are in a hurry.’”