It's amazing how someone can break your heart, and you can still love them with all the little pieces. 
— Ella Harper 

Obloquy 
(n.) verbal abuse directed against a person or thing; detraction, calumny, slander 

Chance 

Thursday — September 7, 2023 

Last night, I was losing my mind over the memory of Callista on her knees and working absolute magic with her tongue and throat and lips. Which isn't all that surprising, because that girl aces everything she does: the good, and the bad. 

Now, as I walk out of my room in my uniform to endure another painstaking day of school, all I can think of is if my parents are alright. 

They didn't make an appearance this morning, and as Adella makes me breakfast, she tells me that they're fine, unhurt, just a little drained, and need rest. She shoots me a pointed look that says I should leave them alone for now. 

I snatch a green apple from the fruit basket and bite down on it. 

My alter ego, on the other hand, tells me to damn what she says to hell and barge into their room and see for myself if they're fine, and then ask them what happened. 

Adella walks me to the front door like I'm a dog on a leash, tells me to go to school, no detours, don't fuck around with Callista Willow/Huxley, tosses my car keys to me, then slams the door shut on my face. 

I grit my teeth at the discourtesy, but then again — I was being an insufferable parasite by leeching onto her and bleeding her dry for answers, so I suppose it makes sense that she'd want to throw me out. 

Besides, if something's really wrong, she'll tell me, even if my parents ask her not to. I decide to trust her on this. 

My body is still aching from my fight with Drake last night, so I take my time driving to school with the windows rolled down, the morning air teasing me with chills. 

I see a brunette girl on her phone walking down the pavement, earphones plugged into her ears, and that organ in my chest does something strange. I drive past her and realize she's not the girl I thought she was and I sag in my seat. 

I'm already done with the day. 

I park my Corvette and walk toward the school building, but fate is weaving other plans for me without my consent. I'm looking down at my phone while walking, and three seconds later, I crash into someone. 

"Fucking—" My iPhone slips from my fingers and falls to the ground. 

An apology to whoever I walked into is at the tip of my tongue until I right myself when I realize Callista is the one I walked into. The one who walked into me. 

Her green eyes blink in puzzlement before she swallows as she looks up at me. 

And the day hasn't even officially begun. 

"Hey, trouble." 

I'm surprised by how blasé my voice sounds, and I remind myself of who I'm talking to. 

Marcus manifests abruptly from the lord knows where looking like he pressed the wrong button and landed in an alternate universe. Then the shit-eating smugness is back on his face. 

"Sorry," Callista mumbles, drawing my attention back to her, and then she attempts to walk around me, but this girl gives me a rush that I wouldn't be able to describe at knifepoint, so my hand darts out in a trice and grabs her arm before she can leave. 

It's the worry for my parents in the back of my head that, all of a sudden, makes me hate her so much more and yet want her back as an honest person I could love. 

My eyes lock with hers. 

There was a time when I was a slave to the emotions in those wondrous eyes, but now, I'm lost in a place I don't know how to return from. 

Right now, the emotions I can ascertain are uneasiness and a trace of despairing longing. The latter is one I find in mine every single day. But it's a mask it's a mask it's a mask it's all a mask. 

Her exterior is flawless, the way she projects herself, too. I never thought of myself as a naïve bastard until she was done playing me and abandoned the game (AKA me). Every realization about her was in retrospect — too late.  

I realize that the distant buzz of brown noise is in fact her talking, and I pull myself out of the sea in her eyes before her tide pulls me under. 

Hatred and lust united could raze empires, and Callista's reign over my sanity is one I'm desperate to bring an end to. 

"Are you even listening?" is the only thing I hear her snap, the rest of her speech lost to a quietly roaring breeze around my eardrums (otherwise known as irrationality and confliction). 

"Not really," I say, wrangling the vulnerability under wraps where it's supposed to the fuck be. "I'm just thinking about how badly I want to pin you under me again, but it's eight in the morning, so you'll have to hold onto your panties until lunch break or after school for me to rip them apart." 

Physical touch unnerves her and releases a rush of the fight-or-flight hormone in her bloodstream, so I reach out to caress her face, an intimate gesture that affects her threefold. 

Only a few years ago, sex was the most hush-hush topic ever. Now, it's the only shield I hide behind. The easiest one to pop into place that no one will look past. 

As arousing as my statement is, there are questions I want to ask her, questions I need answered. 

She bristles, her pupils flaring and unblinkingly trained on mine. Undivided attention. It makes something crawl up my spine, and my hand that's locked around her arm feels the skittering of rebellious goosebumps across her skin. 

She's aroused too. 

But then her mouth sets in a hard line and she says, "Hands. Off. Ambrose." 

Ambrose. 

Not Chance. 

She's learning, a singsong voice in my head chuckles, and yet there's an uncomfortable twinge in my thoracic cavity. 

"No." My pronouncement is premeditated — the only answer I'd give to anything she'd ask of or deplorably command me. 

Movement from the corner of my eyes reminds me that Marcus is still present in the scene, and when I step closer to Callista to rile her even further, she takes a step backward to keep her body away from mine, only for her back to end up pressed against Marcus' front. 

Her eyes flick up in startled surprise, and her muscles go rigid at the discovery of his presence. 

Cute. 

I wrap a hand around her waist and pull her in so that she's pressed up against me not against Marcus. 

"Is this what's going to happen every day now?" A note of contempt enters her borderline cracking voice. "You'll fuck around with me every day until the year's over?" 

"Maybe." I shrug. "Unless you decide to crawl back into the hole you slithered out of." 

Out of Blackwood Creek equals out of my life, and out of my life equals I won't have to face a person who stars as the lead role in a tape recorder that keeps me up all night screaming into the sheets and at the sky. 

The conflict drives a wedge somewhere inside me. 

Why? I don't know. 

I just know that right now, there isn't as much animosity inside me when I look at her. I don't think there ever was. I think all I ever did was channel the heartbreak into rage because that hit less in the heat of the moment. 

In hindsight, I haven't even once had a normal conversation with her. Every interaction ended in me fucking shit up by descending into something sexual or physical. 

The reminder of 'But She Deserves It' has turned into an irritating thorn in my side. 

"'Kay, I don't know what y'all've been getting up to..." Marcus trails off, then says, "But babe, Callista, you look as fresh as a feather and I'm asking you, respectfully, please give me one fuck, just one, and I'll be off your back. Forty-five percent promise. I'll make sure you love every second of it." 

I think Marcus' hand grazes her backside because her foot darts out, and by the sudden sucking in of air, I assume that she got him right in the shin bone. 

Deservedly. 

I send Marcus a look, telling him to fuck off and not meddle in my bullshit or my girl. 

He lets out a hiss of air, glancing at the spot where she kicked him — there's a faint line of dust there now — and then pats my shoulder, whispering, "Yeah, you deal with this hellion." And then he leaves, subtly shaking his leg. 

I think Callista's landed more abuse on him than I have on her in the past few days. 

Some part of me wonders why she tolerates my touch and my degradation of her over Marcus', but then there's the theory of relativity and that dealing with the devil you know is better than the one you don't and all that philosophical shit. 

Except for one thing: she doesn't know me anymore. 

Besides that, there's a sovereign male satisfaction in knowing she prefers me over Marcus, so the inflated pride dampens the rational side of all things Callista. 

She glances at her watch. My eyes follow her line of sight. 

First Period will start any time now. 

Either I let her go and we can both be on our separate ways and head to class, or I can stall, make her immensely late and land her ass in trouble, but land myself in tiny difficulty too. 

When logic isn't a word that makes much sense, self-sabotage doesn't seem like that much of a sacrifice when it'll pull my nemesis under the current as well. 

"Are you going to stand here and stare at me all day or is there a specific reason you're holding me like I'm your favorite girlfriend?" 

Despite myself, a whimsical snort escapes me as I look down at her narrowed eyes and flushed cheeks, and then I'm scrambling to fortify the cracks in my wall again because what the fuck. 

"Willow," I murmur into the shell of her ear just as the bell rings, "If you're entertaining fantasies about that, tell me. Personally, I'd love to brand you as my whore and have you walking around the campus with your thighs slick with my—" 

An aggressive jerk. But I've got better muscle strength, so I don't let her weasel away so easily. 

I pull back and smile narcissistically at her.  

"Lovely, isn't it? The perks of a girlfriend?" Her eyes flicker and for a spell, I wonder if she's enjoying the degradation. 

"Only in your fucked up fantasies," she retorts, and that has me fantasizing about a visual image of dirtying Callista and parading her as mine. It is enticing. Very much. 

Very. 

I swipe my hand over my face, belatedly realizing that she's done it again. This fucking CBT-er. 

"I think you need a reminder of how much you like being used. Maybe a facial this time?" 

Her throat bobs as she swallows, and I decide that I've shredded any lust that might have been vignetting behind her eyelids. 

I wouldn't do that to her, or anyone, really. That was beyond degrading. Still, I liked frightening her. Liked threatening her dignity. Toying with her — touching her — gave me a rush that brought a flood of sadistic emotions. Along with masochistic ones. 

Sadistic, because taunting and unsettling her gives me a sense of control over her; masochistic, because I'm not dealing with the matter at hand. The matter of her Judas kiss. 

The Judas kiss should be renamed Callista's kiss.

"STOP CANOODLING AND GET TO CLASS!" 

Callista flinches in my arms when the booming, Karen-like voice of our Creative Writing teacher sounds from a window above us. 

I look up, and the fifty-year-old face is morphed into a scowl that's worse than the ones Callista sends me. 

Callista rips out of my arms, walking backward with her wide eyes trained on me like I'll attack any moment. The wind that rushes at me when she breaks contact doesn't feel all that right. 

And I'm left standing there and wondering just how things descended into a limerent exchange again when I was so intent on confrontation. 

Callista 

Friday — September 8, 2023 

In hindsight, maybe there is a grain of reason for my father's reactions every day I return home looking like I got manhandled to the point of exhaustion. 

My state did appear worrying. 

I acted out because I was so mad over the fact that it wasn't my fault, and the dawning realization that all this is, in fact, a repercussion of my actions all those years back is hard to wrap around my head. Wrap my head around? 

Gods, my head is so muddled. 

I wring my hair with my towel and step out of the shower. As I look at the girl reflected in the vanity mirror, I think of all that happened in the course of my and Chance's separation. 

The closest of friends, then we parted ways with the tacit belief that our paths weren't ever going to cross again. Then the hare-brained, cliché love letter. 

The letter reminds me — I've got to ask Destiny to make the cover page for the IT assignment I was given yesterday. Her chirography can give the Edwardian Script ITC font a run for its money, and all my things to be written aesthetically pleasingly are always dumped on her. I won't apologize for it because hell, her handwriting is gorgeous. 

If my penmanship was that good, maybe the side of me that said do-fucking-not-do-this would have won my inner conflict halfway through while I was writing my questionable correspondence to Chance on my own. 

Then I would have tossed the paper into the trash can and I never would have fucked up anything. 

But I'm not particularly adept at traveling through time, so the one thing I can do is clear the air between us now that I know what the cause behind his hatred is. Tell him that he really was and still is worth the world to me, despite the horrid few days. Set the record straight, and not back off until he accepts my word. 

I squeeze out a dollop of aloe vera on my finger, and as I even it out across my face, I swallow hard as I recall every social intercourse we've had recently. 

My first task: do not get sucked into his vortex and let him steal your voice and have the event end in baffling knots in your lower abdomen again. 

It's easier said than done. 

I don't know why my father tells me "goodbye" and "have a nice day" while I'm leaving for school, but I don't really realize it at the moment, because I'm preoccupied with solidifying myself for a confrontation I hope makes things right again, and say the same thing back to him before hopping into the passenger seat of Destiny's Lexus. 

Chance can be a dense ostrich sometimes, but he has a reasonable and humane, benevolent side that he likes to think does not exist. But I know that he's a good person underneath all that. 

I think I haven't had the time to be mad at him for what he's done to me because I've been so busy wondering what I've done to have gotten him mad at me. 

I don't want to be mad at him right now, not when I'm planning on placating his character toward me, so I'll unpack that baggage when the occasion calls for it. 

"Girl, who broke your heart?" Destiny looks sideways at me with a raised eyebrow and playful smile, shifting the gear as the red light stops us at an intersection. "You're emo as fuck today." 

That cracks a smile on my lips. I shake my head and stare out of the window. I spot a Versace store beside a Theobroma Bakery that's just opening up, then there's a brewery next to it. 

"Well, as long as you don't start building mini-mechanic airplanes again," she mumbles at the lack of any response from my end. 

"That was one time and back in twenty-nineteen." 

She sends me a look as the light turns green. "I've seen people get emo and write poetry, make depressing sketches or abstract paintings, or release tracks that make it to Billboard's number 1 spot, but I've never seen anyone whip out a half-decade-old box of Mechanical Aircrafts for Kids until you." 

I mean, when put like that... 

We pull up outside school and I breathe out. It's been five days, and every morning before facing school, I've had to steel myself to get through the day, and when I think about it on a surface level, I almost find it silly. 

I chipped my ring fingernail last night on a strip of sandpaper I was using to soften the edge of a wooden keychain. So I had to trim all the nails on my right hand, and now I feel empty. 

I grab the teal scrunchie Destiny bought that matches the uniform and slip it on my wrist. She's turning the ignition off and setting her hair, so I slip out before she notices my thievery. 

I hum a tune of One Direction. I don't remember which song it belongs to. 

I'm absent-mindedly trying to pinpoint the name of the track that's running through my head while keeping my eye on a rock that I kick along the path when I bump into someone. 

Yesterday morning's occurrence makes the red lights in my head blare CHANCE in a Chiller font that indicates bitch you've gotta fucking run, but when I catch my footing and look up at the person, it's not Chance. 

An apology slips past my lips with an exhale of half-relief. 

"Oh! You, good, I was planning on foraging for your ass anyway." 

Foraging for your ass. 

And I thought my clauses were strange. 

Sabrina links her arm through mine and veers away from the path to the school building, taking me with her, or at least I think that's what's happening until I realize that pursuing the rock had taken me off track straight toward a towering oak tree. 

I should stop staring at the ground while walking. 

"So," she begins, shifting a pretty cute tote bag off her shoulder to the crook of her elbow. Then her eyes roll up to stare at the sky and I'm pretty sure something's going through her head because then she starts grinning to herself. 

I feel like I'

"So?" I say when she doesn't complete her sentence and gets lost in her head. 

"Oh, right." She neutralizes the smile but the ghost of it is still on her lips. Okay, I guess. "Just last night's shenanigans. Sasha's taken the day off because she's hungover from a pool party at her house last night — god, it was wild out there — so I need someone cute to hang off my arm. You look like the sweetest candy in the bucket bag, and now we're here." 

"Is... that a compliment?" 

"Take it however you want," she says with a carefree shrug. 

As much as I like looking like the sweetest candy in a fictional bucket bag, I don't have hanging off Sabrina Lopez's arm as a shiny display toy on today's to-do list. So when we file past the reception and head toward the staircase, I tell her that I need to change my tampon and slip away. 

I walk up to my locker and swing open the door, hiding behind it and burying my face inside in search of a haven.  

My shoulders slump, and I realize that the cause of my anxiety is the knowledge of Chance's now-justified hatred toward me. 

I made up my mind about speaking to him today, but now that I'm here, the why-is-he-being-an-asshole question has been replaced by how-the-fuck-do-I-even-talk-to-him. 

It's not like I can just walk up to him and say Hey, can we talk? like I'm in a Netflix romance that has a guaranteed HEA. 

What if he sees me and just goes OFF WITH HER HEAD and then goes about his day without a care for my then-dead body? 

I grab my Mathematics textbook and slowly close my locker, and right on cue, I see Chance standing beside me, sorting his own locker. 

The what the fuck that leaves my lips isn't approved by my brain, and the words catch Chance's attention, whose head swivels in my direction, and he says, "What the fuck," too. 

How didn't I know our lockers were beside each other until the end of the week? 

Then he scoffs. "Give me one peaceful fucking day, Willow." 

I can't say that his refusal to even speak my name doesn't sting a little. Then I remember: this is my chance. And before I realize it, I'm saying, "Can we talk?" 

I cringe before the words even fully leave me. His forehead creases and he eyes me like I'm offering him a dead rodent with cupcake icing for eyes and genitalia. 

"It's important," I add, and that's when I realize my heart is hammering. Exquisitely so. My neurons are scrambling and flushing seven different hormones into my bloodstream, and my head feels heavy all of a sudden. 

Please hear me out. 

Chance looks toward me, and then, his jaw hardens, his throat bobs, and his electric eyes lower impenetrable ramparts that refuse to let me discern what's beyond inside them. Looks away from me and rubs a hand down his face. 

Then he drops his hand from his face and shuts his locker aggressively, and I suck in a breath at the sudden sound. He crosses his arms and leans sideways against the metal. "Fine. Talk." 

"Here?" I blink and cast a glance around. There are students milling around the hallways. Side eyes being cast toward us that they think are conspicuous. No phone lenses this time, though. 

Narrowed eyes that flicker with irritation stare at me, but then his brows furrow and a small smirk lightens the intensity of his glare. 

A taunting lilt. "Whatever would you need privacy for?" 

Heat rushes to my cheeks and I let out a puff of air, breaking eye contact with him. There's this horrible feeling that I'm incredibly exposed, and I'm not too fond of it. But dealing with the discomfort is the only way, so I push back the prying thoughts. 

I distractedly wrap my index around the wooden keychain that I'm holding. An ornate dagger.  

"Planning on stabbing me in the flesh this time?" 

His gaze has dropped to the movement of my fingers, and I hide the dagger in my fist. Yesterday, I would have wondered what he was going on about. Today, the blow crashlands cruelly, wrapping around my heart and sinking metal hooks into the sensitive muscle. 

It hurts. 

"It's actually related to that," I say when I find my voice, though it's less solid than it was before. Then, in a sorry attempt at getting him to hear me out, I whisper, "Please." 

I look back at him, and his jaw tightens and his teeth grind, the intensity in his gaze back, but with a look in them that feels invasive, yet appears vulnerable. 

"You—" he begins but then clamps his mouth shut, closing his eyes like he's holding himself back. Controlling himself. The sight of him like this, so torn and conflicted, makes my eyes glaze. 

"Let me try to set things right, Chance." A voice in my head tells me to cut out the emotional act, cut out the gaslighting, and stop using a show of defenselessness to force him into having this conversation against his desire, but I don't know how else to do this. 

He balks when my voice cracks while saying his name, and he's shaking his head before I've taken a breath. 

"There's absolutely nothing you can do now, Willow. You made me dig my own grave and then shoved me into it, all while fucking laughing. If you could come up with such... mindblowing schemes back then, I don't want to know how much you've evolved now." 

Ouch. 

"Fuck you," he says through clenched teeth, and the venom it holds scalds my already battered heart. "You didn't deserve a shred of my affection."  

I blink back the tears when I see his eyes turn ever so slightly moist. 

It's all my fault. 

All my fault. 

"I don't know how to apologize." My voice is the barest of whispers. If I force my voice out any louder, the dam will break. The dam will break, and the deluge will shatter anything that hasn't already faced the current's wrath. His current's wrath.

"Do you think it matters?" 

It's a rhetorical question. Still, I say quietly, "I guess not." 

A beat of silence weighs down on me and warps the air with forefingers that point at me sinisterly in a manner that only I perceive. This is foolish. Apologies only get you so far, and the mortal wound I inflicted on him can't be magically healed with sugary words and salty tears. 

"But..." I can't walk away again. Or let him walk away. I don't want to be stuck in this endless loop of us hurting each other until there's nothing left to wear. "For what it's worth, I really am sorry. I didn't— I didn't think. I was selfish and didn't think how it would affect you. I shouldn't have told you all that." 

Didn't's and shouldn't's. None of which matter after their moment has passed. I'd do anything to rectify my wrongs if only I knew how. 

"I shouldn't have written you all that." I finish, and when I brace myself for the whip of words that's going to lash at me and finally look up at him, he's looking at me in confusion. 

Perplexity. 

And he flat-out snaps, "What the fuck are you blabbering?" 

"I— I'm sorry, about the letter. That's just what I wanted to tell you—" 

He doesn't let me finish talking and cuts right in between. "This. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Every single time, a new story, another random chainlink that you force into my manacles. Another fucking lie." 

What? 

I'm shaking my head, my eyes tearing up again as he steps forward in a ferine, savage movement that terrifies me. 

"I'm not—" 

"Yes, you are, Callista, you are. I'm not trusting another syllable that leaves your mouth ever again. Get that into that fucked up head of yours." 

What is he saying?  

My back presses into the lockers as he closes the space between us, his palms slamming into the metal on either side of my head; his palms slam into the metal on either side of my head, and his palms slam against the metal hard. I flinch. 

The solid surface behind my back doesn't let me sink any farther away from him. 

"I'm not letting you fuck up the lives of the people I love who actually care for me ever again, Willow. Never again." 

My shoulders bunch up and tense, my elbows press to my sides, and my feet are rooted to the spot. Shrinking. 

This was a bad idea. 

I should have run this plan through well enough before escalating it. I shouldn't have shouldn't have shouldn't have shouldn't have. 

"Is—" 

I trip on my words. My voice. I can't think straight, not with him staring down at me blazing eyes that promise to exact vengeance on me. With eyes that are menacing and petrifying. With an expression twisted with cruel mistrust and inexplicable sadism. 

I see the rapid rise and fall of his chest, and I realize my heart is not the only one that's racing to the end of time. 

I gather the fragments of my voice. 

I hate the way I can't face him without reducing to near-tears or a full-blown sobfest. I hate the way my voice cracks and I hate the way he refuses to believe me. I hate the way he's looking at me like I'm the worst person to exist when I know I'm not and I hate myself so fucking much. 

"Are feelings truly that reprehensible?" 

Chance's face contorts distastefully. Tiredly. Like he doesn't have the strength to go on, yet still is.

"Stop changing the subject." 

"This is the fucking subject, you bastard." 

Fuck placating him. I've accepted that it's my fault, but I will not stand for him belittling me again and painting me as a vile criminal. 

I'm not a bad person. 

I'm not. 

Chance's lips are set in a firm line, pressing together like he's fighting the urge to snarl like a rabid animal. He leans in closer when he speaks, and it reminds me of Sunday night when he cornered me in the hallway and disparaged me for the first time. 

The light bends around his frame, defying its earthly propagation, reflecting off the surrounding surfaces, but not passing through his body. Shadows mar his face and everything between his body and mine. 

"No. No, this is not. You want a factual rundown of the events of June sixteenth, hm?" 

I don't know this side of Chance. This detached, primal version of him. 

"You snuck off when no one was looking, went upstairs to my parents' room, planted that fucking envelope there, and sat your ass on a plush plane seat and flew out of the States. I still don't understand how you fucking knew what happened all those years ago, though. I mean, fuck, I found out only after the episode of you showing your true colors, so just how you found out—" 

"Now you're the one that doesn't make sense." 

I don't understand a word he's saying. 

His eyebrows raise derisively, his chin tilting downward to stare down at me, a tightness in his eyes. 

"Wait—" Did he say... "Did you say your parents' room?" 

Holy fuck. Holy shit. 

"Are you dense?" 

Unholy shitting fuck.  

"Chance, I am so fucking sorry, I didn't know—" Gods. "That was for you— wait, so did you read it or not or what— I—" 

Crinkles in the corner of his eyes. Confusion. "Read what?" 

"The letter," I say as a matter-of-factly because that's what this whole thing's been about. Why is he still so demented? "Inside the envelope, where I confessed—" 

He's laughing like he's so done with all this, and I'm done with this too because I don't understand what he's saying and I can't deal with this anymore. This is fucking ridiculous. 

"I—" He tries speaking, but he's still laughing, dazzlingly so, except it's without feeling, a twisted laugh that precedes a spiral hellward. 

One hand retracts and frees an escape route from the cage he'd engulfed me in, and I jerk away from said hand, but he only swipes it down his own face, the ghost of a soulless smile still on his lips. 

Then he says, "Christ, Callista, will you ever stop spitting nonsense?" 

My eyebrows furrow, my eyes widen, and I'm shaking my head at him because I can't for the life of me figure him out anymore. "I'm not— I'm not—" 

"Not what?" Another taunt. A heartless lilt. 

He aims to downgrade me and fuck if it isn't working. I curl into myself. 

"I'm sorry." My voice is back to a mumble. Spineless. "It was..." My throat clogs. A rock stuck in it. I swallow the lump. 

"It was just a small crush. Not like I was in love with you or anything." Again, the barest of whispers. Almost inaudible. 

Chance's body stills. Goes rigid. As still as a statue, his eyes fly open and his jaw falls slack. Mouth hangs open. Confounded. In shock. 

Cautiously, he whispers, "What?" 

"It was just a small crush..." I repeat. "On you." 

Another wide-eyed blink. A hundred emotions all at once that are so brilliantly heartbroken and insensitive and vulnerable. 

Then his palms curl into a murderous fist, and he slams it into the locker, the spitting image of wrath and unyielding rage as he screams, "STOP LYING!" 

I flinch. So weak, so weak, so weak, can't even handle loud voices. A single teardrop trickles from the corner of my eyes. 

And then the dam breaks. 

A girl can take only so much callous degradation before the arrows find their mark. Can take only so much until she can't; and Chance brings down my walls effortlessly within moments, tipping me off the edge with an unfeeling shove. 

I know on a cellular, psychic, metaphysical level that I am not the one at fault, but the way he's coming at me with daggers for words — it's tearing me apart. Making me dissect my head and wondering: Am I really not at fault? 

He's making me question— he's making me question myself. 

I don't gauge his reaction, not when I'm being crushed by my own thoughts. Not when I'm mentally paralyzed and trembling and don't understand what's going on. 

The loudspeaker in the hallways blares an announcement from the principal. 

"CALLISTA AZALEA HUXLEY AND CHANCE DEXTER AMBROSE, PLEASE REPORT TO THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE AT ONCE. REPEAT: CALLISTA AZALEA HUXLEY AND CHANCE DEXTER AMBROSE PLEASE REPORT TO THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE AT ONCE." 

I should really publish Lorenzo shouldn't I