Page 90 of Boys of Brayshaw High (Brayshaw High 1)

“Your turn.” He drops his head against the cart. “Tell me something. Something I wouldn’t be able to guess.”

“What, like I sleep with a nightlight?” I joke, but he doesn’t laugh, just stares.

After a quiet moment, he says, “Yeah, like that.”

“Um...” I pull my sleeves over my hands. “I hate milk by itself, but I love it in cereal.”

“I hate chocolate.”

“What?” I shout with a laugh. “Nobody hates chocolate.”

“I do.”

“Wow,” I explain with exaggerated awe. “Weird.”

His lips tip into a small grin. “Your turn.”

“I hate my mother.”

He doesn’t say anything, so I look his way again. “But that’s no surprise, right?”

His brows lower.

“She’s always been a piece of shit, my whole life, as far as I can remember anyway. But there was one time where everything sucked the teeniest bit less. Wanna know why?” A wry grin slips. “A client stuck.”

“Since he knew about her job of choice, she didn’t have to lie about who she was and what she did. Used and abused and all, he accepted her. Me too. He even claimed to have kids, but I never met them.” I focus on the sky.

“She got better with him, wasn’t clean, but functioned like a human instead of a toy with dying batteries – still turned tricks, but he never seemed to mind.

“For the first time ever, I had a dinnertime. Every night, when the sensor lights on the trailers started popping on – there were no street lamps in my neighborhood – I’d run back. Excited for stupid dinner that was never anything more than macaroni and cheese with hotdogs or rice and sauce. Dumb shit, but it was the first time she’s ever seemed to care if I ate since I was big enough to make my own cereal, so I thought it was cool. Lasted about a year.”

“What happened?”

“I ruined it.”

“How?”

With a deep inhale, I look to Maddoc. “Puberty.”

His features morph in an instant, flashing with incomprehensible anger. “Raven.”

“He started paying more attention to me, ‘neglecting her,’ she’d say. She beat my ass, told me I wasn’t allowed around him if I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.” I remember how angry she’d get. “Kinda hard when my room was the two feet between the table and the couch, that was also my bed.”

Silence stretches between us for several minutes before Maddoc speaks, his voice a deep raspy mumble.

“I like cheese on popcorn.”

My stare flies to Maddoc and I grin earning a dismal one in return.

“We should probably get off, we’ll need to catch one back before dark.”

Maddoc stands, eyes locked on mine as he holds his hand out.

I stare at it a moment before slipping mine into his and allowing him to pull me to the other side.

I move to grab the handle, but he spins, tucking me away into the safety of the car corner, his big ole body caging me in, shielding me from the wind and anything else that may come close. His green eyes bore into mine as waves of strength flow from him, fighting for a way inside me.

But my armor is strong, my mind and body built on defense alone, and self-preservation allows for no safe passage.

Salvation can be a bitch, taking away our own choices before we even decide what’s right versus smart.

I reach out planting my hands on his chest, to keep him back, I think, and he drops his gaze to the contact.

“If someone tries to hurt you, I need you to tell me.”

“I can’t do that.”

He pushes closer, his expression angrier. “Why not?”

“Because I’m not your problem.”

“Be my problem.”

My stomach about bottoms out at his words, but before I can even consider a response, the train jolts and the brakes screech.

“Time to jump.” I push him back and he lets me.

We wait another minute, letting the speed decrease a little more, then swing outside the doors and push off.

Maddoc, of course, lands on his feet, but I stumble a little, catching myself before both knees hit the ground.

I laugh lightly, taking a deep breath as I look around.

Instead of dead grass surrounding the tracks like where we hopped on, there’s rock. And not fifteen feet forward is a line of food trucks and what looks to be a bus station.

We walk over to an old electrical box to sit and wait, watching the sun go down as we do.

“Thanks for coming with me, big man.” I exhale deeply. “I needed today. This basic day-to-day, get up, go to school, go to bed, shit isn’t me.”

“Yeah, and what is ‘you,’ Raven?”

“Think of it like this - you guys like order. It’s like you need your normal so you don’t go crazy, but me? I need crazy to feel normal.”

“There’s no such thing as normal. Normal is an opinion.”

“So is drug free the way to be, but it’s still right, isn’t it?”