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“Ariel?” Quinton murmured. “Something wrong?”

I hated it when people asked me that.

What’s wrong?

Well, gee, let me think about it for a second. The person sitting beside me accidently killed my mother after she beat me and tried to drown me in the bathtub. The man sitting in front of me had been my mother’s lover. He didn’t know she was dead and thought she’d bailed on the both of us. His brother died in a horrible car wreck and now he was moving out of state. I was moving next door to live with the neighbors who happened to be all boys and, oh yeah, they were witches. And we weren’t even going to get into the whole sharing thing yet. Yikes.

Now, ask me again, what’s wrong?

I stared down at my bare feet and wished I had worn socks. I didn’t like walking around barefoot unless I was in the privacy of my own bedroom, on a sandy beach, or standing on soft, green grass. I was weird that way.

“Babe.”

I sighed. There was no avoiding him.

“I don’t want to go back,” I whispered.

“Shit,” Quinton breathed out harshly as he sat back in his chair. “You’re gonna kill me if you drop out of school. If you don’t go, Ty and the twins won’t want to go either. They’ll give me so much shit. Ugh, Ariel, babe, this is no good for me.”

This wasn’t about him. It was about me and I didn’t need him turning it around and making it about him.

“Why don’t you want to go back to school?” Mr. Cole asked me calmly. Unlike Quinton, who hadn’t even bothered to ask me why I didn’t want to go back.

I thought about how to answer Mr. Cole’s question honestly and finally went with, “The kids are mean. They said awful things to me because I was new and because of my mother. Now with her gone…” I trialed off and shrugged my shoulders. The words I’d left unspoken, spoke volumes.

It would be worse for me at school

now. Much, much worse.

Mr. Cole placed his elbows on the top of his desk and dropped his head into his hands.

“Goddamn Vivian,” He mumbled. “Goddamn her straight to hell and back. Worst mother I ever met.”

I looked to Quinton with wide eyes. Goddamn her to hell was right.

Quinton bit his bottom lip and shook his head. I knew better than to say anything, he didn’t need to remind me.

Secrets could be a dangerous thing when leaked to the wrong person. I didn’t think we’d have anything to fear from Mr. Cole but it wasn’t worth finding out if I was right or not.

Quinton eyeballed me and I knew he wanted to know if I was okay. I desperately wanted to reach across the short distance between us and grab his hand. This man I barely knew yet was one of the strongest people I’d probably ever meet. He had a moral compass that frightened me and was often times a scary man. And I wanted to hold his hand. I knew if I reached across the short distance between us and grabbed ahold of his hand he wouldn’t hesitate to intertwine our fingers and he wouldn’t give a crap about what Mr. Cole thought about it.

“There’s an alternative school,” Mr. Cole said, cutting into my thoughts.

I did not like the way this conversation was going at all.

Alternative school? I wasn’t certain sure, but I thought that was supposed to be for the troubled kids and teen moms. Did I belong at a place like that? I didn’t think I did. Admittedly, I was a troubled kid but I still didn’t think I belonged in a special school and, if I had to go to school at all I would not be going to school where Ty and my salt and pepper twins weren’t. We were supposed to stick together.

“I don’t want her at the alternative school,” Quinton told Mr. Cole. “That’s a rough crowd and God only knows what kind of trouble she could get into there. It’s not safe for her.”

“I can take classes online,” I said in a last-ditch effort to not be forced to go back to school. And there was no way in hell I’d be going to some alternative school. No, thank you.

Quinton lifted his left leg and rested his ankle on his right knee. “That could actually work for me,” he told Mr. Cole.

I sat back in my chair and rolled my eyes. Quinton was taking his role as guardian a little too far, if you asked me. Not that either of them seemed interested in my opinion.

“She’d still be taking her classes just not in the actual school building and not around people who treat her poorly.”

Alright, Quinton got points for that one.