THEN »

I walked sluggishly across the school hallway and towards my locker, and my eyes begged for some time off. I wanted to sleep so badly. Every single moment of last night had gone with Mum's words repeating in my head, again and again, not letting me get any sleep

"Grace!" I looked up abruptly at Natalie's shrill voice as she came running towards me from the end of the hallway. In her heels, may I add.

"What's up?" I asked, pulling out my geometry book and stuffing the physics one back inside.

"The cheerleading tryouts are tomorrow." She flipped her dyed blonde hair over her shoulder, showing off her bare tan skin. I think she was aware she could get any guy by doing just that.

"Oh. Tomorrow?" I questioned, tying my hair up in a loose ponytail. I needed a haircut. Perhaps what I needed was to ask Mum.

Ask Mum.

"Yeah. You wanted to audition, right?" She asked, seeming a little impatient now.

I stopped momentarily to think about it. I wouldn't really call myself the cheerleading type. I would, however, have preferred if there was a fighting club in our high school. But no, shit like that never happens.

"I'll think about it." I gave her a small smile. "Thanks for reminding me, though." She nodded and walked off to her cheerleader girlfriends.

I shut my locker almost a little too harshly, again by accident, and I wasn't expecting to hear a small wince from right beside me. But when I did, I nearly had a whiplash when I turned around to look over at Luca.

Always creeping up on me.

"Less harshness, Rose." He gave me a pointed look. It should have been a stern one but all his brown eyes showed were gentleness.

"Less creeping up, Luca." I gave him a pointed look in return. He just grinned in response, his eyes sparkling up in a way that always left me a little stunned to speak right away.

So I turned away and we both started making our way towards Geometry class.

"I told you to keep your hair down," Luca said. "Why don't you keep your hair down?"

"I'm going to cut them up first thing when I go back home," I told him. I wouldn't ask Mum's help, I decided. At least not after our talk last night.

Something twisted inside my stomach as I remembered Mum's words from last night. Everything inside me was dreading even thinking about it.

I saw Luca passing me a somewhat horrified look. "Don't do that."

"My hair, not yours."

"Don't do that, Rose." He repeated. I didn't really appreciate it if someone called me by my middle name. But with Luca, well, it was normal. And even if I tell him not to, which I had spent half of my life doing, he'd still call me by my middle name. The guy was stubborn when he wanted to be. "You know how much I adore your hair."

A small smile involuntarily crept on my lips at the way he pronounced adore. Luca always had a slight accent to his words whenever he came back from visiting his grandma. He had it in him, but whenever I pointed it out, he just denied it. Like I said, stubborn.

"Well, I told you to stop growing taller, but did you listen to me?" I arched up one of my brows at him. "No. You still had to grow three inches over me."

When we were younger, we fought about our heights a lot. I still did.

Luca casually draped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me a little closer. Best friends usually did that, I reminded myself when my heart skipped a tiny beat. Almost everyone in our high school knew we'd been best friends from way back. Even the seniors knew that since Luca was in the soccer team and dragged me along anywhere he went.

"Hey, there's a party at Parker's house today. Will you be going?" He asked me.

"I thought you were done with parties?"

"Emily's gonna be there." His words came out in a rush, to my surprise, and I spared him a glance. He was looking straight ahead. Perhaps I shouldn't have felt like an idiot when he said that. Emily was someone Luca had been having a crush on since we started high school--this year. And it was a pretty...big crush, I must admit. I would know. Since I was his best friend.

Then why did it always make me feel a little awful whenever he brought Emily up? The kind of awful when you eat something bad and your insides want to curl up in agony.

"I don't know. Maybe." I replied softly. I didn't exactly know what would be happening once I headed back home. I still didn't know what Mum had meant by those words last night. Part of me knew something was bound to change.

"Okay." Was all he said before turning his face towards me and placing a quick kiss on the top of my head. My eyes closed shut on instinct like every single time. As if that mere kiss meant so much.

As if that only kiss was rooting me to this world.

•••••

"Wasn't I pretty clear last night when I came up into your room?" Mum asked, placing a dish of salad beside the homemade pasta.

I saw Jack coming downstairs and sliding into the chair beside mine. His blond hair, darker than mine, was almost in his eyes. I pushed them back affectionately and he scrunched up his nose at me.

Jack was ten, while I was fifteen--almost sixteen next month.

"I think I was." Mum pulled out a chair and sat down as well. Just the three of us. No Papa.

"Clear about what?" Jack asked, looking up at Mum. I looked at her too, slowly realizing that she hadn't told him yet.

"We need to move to Manhattan." She didn't look up from her plate as she filled it up. "Tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow?" It was my voice that rose in surprise. In shock. In horror.

Jack looked at me in surprise.

"Yes, Grace." I could see her clenched jaw but her voice sounded calm. She was keeping it together for us all.

"But why?" Thankfully Jack asked the question I was yearning to ask. I couldn't have when words were suddenly stuck in my throat.

"Your dad needs us there." She looked at him with gentle eyes. "He needs us to be there."

"But we have everyone here." I heard my voice breaking a little. My insides stiffened up immediately. I hated this. I will not cry.

"We do, Gracie. And we wouldn't be staying there forever." Mum reassured me. "Just for a few months. Maybe a year. It's important."

"I'm...I'm not going anywhere." I slowly shook my head, determined. I had lived here in this house for as long as I could remember. How was I supposed to leave this place? How was I supposed to leave Luca?

"I would've left you here." Mum looked at me with sad eyes. "But I can't."

"You can."

"I can't, Grace. Stop it, please." She shook her head. "Your dad wants us there, okay? And we need to leave tomorrow morning."

"Dad can't force us to just move places for him! He's not even here most of the time. He's rarely here. Don't expect me to listen to him!"

Mum's eyes widened in response. "Just for a few months, Gracie. It'd be better if you just don't...disappoint us."

•••••

I left for the gym immediately after our conversation. It wasn't exactly a big gymnasium, but big enough, where I could do what I loved to do the most.

"No, no, no." Samantha placed her hands in front of me. "Not like this, Grace. You need to keep a firm footing on the ground."

Samantha had been my trainer for the past two months. We'd bonded pretty quickly, mostly over our love to spend most of the time in this gym. She trained me how to fight, or the basic exercises, and it made me feel in control like I knew what I was doing. It made me feel like everything was right there within my reach and not slipping out of my grasp.

I rooted one of my feet on the ground and swung the other one, right towards her. Taking her by surprise, my foot hit her right in the stomach and she fell with the hit.

"Jesus, Collins. What has gotten into you today?" Sam asked, panting heavily as she eyed me with a narrowed look.

I pushed my sweat-drenched hair away from my face and sat down on one of the narrow benches, trying to catch my breath. "Sorry, I didn't mean to hit you."

I did mean to hit her, and Sam knew that too. I think everyone around me was aware of that by now. This was how I've been ever since I was a baby. Apparently, I'd been born with angry fists. I got angry and then I hit people.

"How's your mom doing?" She asked, waving it off. "She always drops you here, doesn't she?"

"She had work." I kept it small. Mum was at home packing our stuff.

On top of all this sudden revelation of changing cities, Mum had urged me not to tell this to anyone. Not a single person. For the first time in my life, I didn't understand what was happening around me and that alone was irritating me to a whole new level.

So that's why I came here. To let it all out.

Papa never needed us to come over to the places that he visited. Not for weeks or months. Not so urgently. I didn't understand why he wanted us to move to Manhattan so suddenly.

"And you are all right." It wasn't a question, I realised as I noticed Sam giving me one of her warm looks, almost as if she could see right through me.

Samantha looked like a real tough woman with her tattooed arms and her broad, slightly muscled shoulders. But I knew she was a big softie at heart and one of the nicest people I knew in this town.

I diverted my gaze from hers. "Yeah. I was just thinking about what I should wear to a party tonight."

"You're going there with Luca?" She asked me with a small smile before opening up a bottle of water.

It wasn't ever Luca with anyone else other than me. Everyone either called him Lucius or Luc. Sam, on the other hand, just preferred copying me.

"Yeah."

"You two are so close, why don't you date or something?" She asked me with an eye roll. This wasn't the first time she was asking me that. I just smiled, like every other time, which must've come out a bit strained.

How was I supposed to tell Luca that I was leaving tomorrow?

"Because best friends don't date, Sam," I said. "They just don't."

•••

Crystal Xx