Chapter 8 Ella

Chapter 8

Ella

I wake up extra early on Monday morning and plop down at my desk for a bookbinding session before school. It's been a few weeks since I've enjoyed my favorite hobby, thanks to stress, job hunting, homework, and period cramps. I've always loved reading, so I took up bookbinding when I was a preteen after taking a lesson on it in a junior high art class. It was a way to immerse myself deeper in the world of literature. The feel of the paper, the rhythm of the stitch, the intricacy of the folds…it's meditative.

My workstation is a little universe of its own: a trove of tools, threads, crafts, and papers. Sometimes I create my own books, using cream-colored sheets that stack together neatly, their edges aligned, and then fold them in half to create what will become the book's signatures. And then I start stitching, which is my favorite part. It's like therapy, in addition to my real therapy in the form of monthly in-person sessions with the school counselor.

When I'm not creating a whole new book for scrapbooking or journaling purposes, I'm designing covers for my favorite novels. It's my personal take on the world the author brought to life. I always purchase two copies of my favorite books—one to honor the original cover design, and the second to piece together my own cover concept using leather, cardstock, and textured cloths. My favorite work to date is my rendition of the Winnie the Pooh collection that Jonah helped me create a few years ago. It's always been our favorite story. I'm his Piglet and he's my Pooh Bear.

Well… was .

As I reach for my awl, my cell phone vibrates from atop the desk and a familiar name pops up.

Brynn!: Good morning! McKay and I are ditching school today to go tubing at Big Bear! Want to come?

I consider it.

The sun is extra bright today, the sky clear and cloudless. It's going to be a perfect seventy-degree day and I'm confident my classes will be bleak and stormy. On the other hand, my mother doesn't need the added anxiety of her daughter ditching school. She's barely holding it together. Another casserole meltdown sounds as enticing as a root canal performed by a blindfolded dentist using a rusty spoon.

I text her back.

Me: Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass. Maybe next weekend.

Brynn!: No worries! See you tomorrow!

The message is followed up by eleven emojis of happy suns, pink hearts, and a bento box filled with sushi. A finger slip, I'm assuming. After I spend another half hour on a little scrapbook, I take a quick shower, blow-dry my hair, and apply a coat of mascara before slipping into a pair of jeans and a faded sweatshirt.

When I hear the guttural roar of a truck revving to life outside my window, I traipse across the bedroom and push back my peach drapes. Max is smoking beside his truck. He's leaning against the bed with a ball cap concealing his eyes and his feet are crossed at the ankles, his muscly arms bronzed with a post-summer glow.

Stupid arms.

It's his fault I'm always noticing them, considering he's prone to wearing sleeveless tops. Winter can't come soon enough. Out of sight, out of mind.

I crack my window halfway and lean out over the ledge, inhaling the early-morning breeze filled with dew-kissed grass and earthy soil. I've been trying to avoid Max since the bonfire, which is kind of a dick move, I realize. I also realize it was me who broached the friendship topic in the first place, so I can't blame him for making an effort.

But then he called me pretty.

He… flirted .

And my anti-romance instincts flared like a well-shaken can of Dr Pepper on a hot day. Unpredictable and abrupt, leaving a messy aftermath that no one really wants to clean up. Dramatic, I suppose. But my defenses are nothing if not stubborn and thorough.

Max pops his head up then, spotting me dangling out my half-open window. He pulls the cap off his head and runs his fingers through his hair, taming the coffee-brown locks. I don't move away when our eyes meet across both yards. I don't smile or wave either, but I don't want to be too much of an asshole.

Max stares at me for a few beats before glancing down and kicking at the loose gravel in his driveway.

And when he lifts his eyes one more time, a small smile shines back at me.

At first, I want to slam the window shut and run away. I want to glare at him for no reason just because it's easier that way.

But then the bonfire flashes through my mind. The Dr Pepper he brought for me. The way he defended my honor when Andy acted like a cretin. The way his blue eyes shimmered with fire and moonlight as he looked at me with something other than disgust. It was nice to feel like my existence mattered to him in some way. I wasn't a burden or a waste of space. I wasn't an outsider.

He saw that same little girl on a playground from long ago.

Most of all, he saw me as something other than Jonah Sunbury's sister.

So I smile back, hesitantly, softly. It's not a full-fledged grin, but it's a real smile. It's effort.

It counts.

Then I inch away from the window and finish getting ready for school, doing my best to ignore the tickle in my chest.

***

I'm midchew when I hear it.

The grating, awful sound of my own voice. Sobbing. Begging. Choking through a waterfall of love-drenched tears.

"H-he's not a b-bad person, I swear. He's good. It was a misunderstanding. Please, please. Believe him. He's my big brother… You have to believe he's innocent."

The corn bread turns to rocks in my mouth. Dry, hard, bitter lumps. Crumbs flutter from my parted lips as my stomach drops out of me like a boulder.

I feel sick. I might actually puke.

"Look at this loser defending a monster," a voice sneers from the adjacent table, belonging to some no-name girl. Students swarm to watch the video and the cafeteria morphs into a prison cell.

Bars close me in. Guards pace back and forth, eyeing me with revulsion.

Guilty.

For a few seconds, I pretend to ignore the commotion going on beside me. Pretend I'm blissfully unaware of my pain being laid out on display and mocked by my senior class. Sitting alone like I always do, I attempt to chew the corn-bread gravel in my mouth and swallow it, hoping it doesn't sever anything vital as it slogs down my throat.

"Hey! Sunbury."

I pull my beanie down over my ears. Maybe everyone will think I have earbuds in and they'll give up. There's no fun in tormenting someone if the victim is oblivious.

The act is up sooner than I'd like.

My beanie is yanked off my head and tossed to the dirty linoleum.

"Hey!" I jump up from the bench. "Don't touch me, you pig."

One of Andy's football buddies—Heath—stares back at me. Under the brassy cafeteria lights, his hair looks like the sickly shade of a jaundiced sun on a smoggy day and his eyes are one shade darker than vile. He shoves his cell phone in my face, flaunting the media footage of my desperate appeal.

I realize sticking up for a murderer on national television was a grave error on my part, but it's hard to apologize for grief. Grief does what it wants when it wants to. I was hardly sixteen years old; a devastated, confused child whose life was just blown apart by a semiautomatic shotgun.

I shove Heath's arm out of my face and storm past him and the gaggle of sniveling girls beside him.

He grabs me by the back of the shirt.

My eyes bulge with shock that he had the nerve to put his hands on me. "What the hell? I said, ‘Don't touch me.'"

Heath sniffs, letting me go. "You don't belong in our school. I'm surprised they even enrolled you here, considering how you've sided yourself with the devil himself."

"He's my brother," I spit out through clenched teeth. "I was scared and grieving. Leave me alone."

"Look at you in your fancy clothes, crying tears of sympathy for that murderer." The no-name girl points at the video.

Heath rewinds the footage.

With my jaw clenched tight and more tears burning, I glance at the phone screen. I'm all dressed up in a nine-hundred-dollar pantsuit, my hair teased and curled, my lips slicked in bright-pink gloss. My eyes are bloodshot, lips quivering with loss. Mom stands beside me, holding on to me with one arm, her face buried in my shoulder as she breaks apart on camera.

Nausea coils in my gut. Bile crawls up my throat.

I won't cry. I won't cry.

"I've suffered enough," I croak out, looking around at the assortment of hateful eyes on me. At the cliques and snickering groups of classmates. My judges and jurors. "My brother is serving his sentence and so am I."

"What about that girl he slaughtered? And the guy she was fucking?" someone from the crowd blares. "They're in the ground and you're walking free."

"I didn't do anything."

"You're breathing my air and I don't fucking like it." Heath steps toward the table behind us and snatches my backpack from the bench. Shoving at me, he taunts, "Don't forget your doodle bag."

My cheeks are burning with the fire of a trillion suns and my oxygen is compromised with an edging panic attack. Everyone around me snickers and points. Heath smirks before flitting his hand in the air as if to shoo me away.

I spin around and book it from the cafeteria. From the school. From everything.

My legs carry me through the main doors and out into the balmy air. Sunshine beats down on me, doing little to brighten my spirits. I should have gone tubing.

I've hardly made it across the field when I hear footsteps coming up behind me. It's probably Heath or Andy or No-Name Girl here to put me out of my misery.

And a hopeless, jaded part of me might just let them. I wonder if I'd even fight back.

"Ella! Wait up."

My stomach pitches.

It's Max.

For some reason, the sound of his voice angers me. He's chasing after me instead of running me out, and that doesn't make any sense. I whip around to face him, tears streaking down my cheeks despite my valiant effort to keep them contained. " What ," I seethe at him.

I sound furious, rageful, unhinged. He doesn't deserve my wrath, but I didn't deserve to lose everything days before my sixteenth birthday. Nothing is fair because there is no "fair" in this world. It's an illusion. We're sold the belief that there's an order, a balance, but life has shown me time and time again that it doesn't work that way.

Max stops just short of me, looking wounded. "Whoa. What happened?"

I narrow my eyes. "I didn't think there was room for interpretation."

"I was coming out of the library and saw you running down the hallway."

"Well, sorry to hear you missed the entertainment. I'm sure you'll get the recap soon. In fact, I'm confident someone documented it and you'll get to see it firsthand. Probably on a billboard somewhere."

He shakes his head. "Did someone hurt you?"

I swallow then turn around to stalk away. "Doesn't matter. I gotta go."

"Ella."

"Leave me alone, Max. I don't want to be your friend. I don't want you to rescue me. Just stay away from me before I taint your precious reputation."

He's blocking my escape before I make it three steps. "You think I give a shit about my reputation?"

I shrug. "Don't know, don't care. I don't want to know anything about you, to be honest. I just want to be left alone." My chest tightens. I'm not sure I actually mean that, but it's better this way. Max is a decent person and he doesn't need to be associated with the school's waste.

Max stiffens in front of me, shoving his hands in his pockets. He glances down at his shoes for a beat before lifting his eyes to mine. "You don't deserve whatever happened back there."

"That doesn't mean it didn't happen. And your pity isn't going to change anything."

"It's not pity," he says. "I'm just trying to be your friend again. Should I stop trying?"

I take a moment to study his face. His icy-blue eyes that somehow look warm. His tousle of brown hair that looks as soft as the expression he wears. I blink. Max sounds genuine and the concept is foreign to me. Brynn! wants to be my friend, too, but I wonder if she means it. I wonder if she could handle everything that comes along with being associated with me. I bet she'd cower under the pressure, the gossip, the sneers and side-eyes. I bet Max would, too.

I look away, sniffling as I swipe at the traitorous tearstains dampening my cheeks. "You know that brother I used to tell you about? The one who wrote me letters?" I ask him. "That's Jonah Sunbury. As in the convicted murderer sitting on death row."

"I know," Max replies. "I saw parts of the trial on TV."

Curling my fingers into fists, I meet his eyes again. "I'm sure you did. But let me tell you about it from my perspective. From his grieving little sister's point of view."

He goes quiet, licks his lips, and answers with a small nod.

"Jonah fell in love with a beautiful girl named Erin. She was outgoing and bubbly, always kind to me. Treated me like a sibling because she was an only child. She was the daughter of that famous actor, Peter Kingston. I'm sure you've seen his action movies. Erin was his prized possession. A budding actress herself, bound for stardom. Their family had fame, fortune, everything you could ever wish for." I swallow, catching my breath. "We had money, too. My mother owned an equestrian ranch on the outskirts of Nashville called Sunbury Farms. Erin took up horseback riding lessons and that's how she met Jonah. It was love at first sight, as they say." Bitterness drenches my words. I hate that phrase; it's utter bullshit. "Anyway, I'll spare you all the gooey details, but their whirlwind romance turned tragic one day when, supposedly, Jonah caught her cheating on him with one of her costars in some made-for-TV movie. Tyler Mack. Sounds like a movie all in itself, huh?"

His throat works as he stares at me, hanging on to every word. "Ella…"

"They say he killed them in cold blood, Max. According to the evidence, my sweet, loving brother fucking snapped . And it wasn't a spur-of-the-moment snap; it was a weeklong lethal breakage. Premediated, they called it. He took a shotgun from our mother's safe. Stalked her for a few days. And then he broke down the door of her high-rise condominium and shot her in the face. He shot Tyler in the back of the head as Tyler was trying to give CPR to what was left of her mouth. Then he shot them both again, just to be sure they were dead…"

Finally, I snap my mouth shut, not wanting to say anymore. He gets the picture. I've painted it well enough, and truthfully, there is no palette, no color spectrum, no tools or canvases that could ever fully depict the world I live in, day in and day out.

"Do you think he did it?" he asks softly.

More tears leak out as my stomach lurches with a new wave of nausea. "I didn't…at first. He was my big brother. My greatest protector. But I saw him covered in their blood. He said he was trying to help them, but…the evidence…" I fold both arms across my abdomen to keep myself from heaving on the spot and finish with, "Yes. I think he did it."

Max ducks his head and nods, letting out a long breath.

"And yes…I think you should stop trying to be my friend again."

When I try to move past him, still swiping at my treacherous wet eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, Max stops me one more time.

"I made you a list."

I freeze. My throat rolls as his words register and I slowly turn around to face him. "A list?"

"Yeah. You said you love lists, so I made one for you."

I'm staring blankly at him as he reaches into the back pocket of his tapered jeans and pulls out a folded-up piece of notebook paper.

He hands it to me.

I pluck it from between his fingers.

Then I watch his mouth flicker with the saddest smile before he turns and walks away.

More tears pool to the surface because I wasn't expecting the gesture. I'm never expecting anything from anybody, and Max continues to surprise me.

Swallowing hard, I unfold the white lined paper and read over his words, scribbled in black ink.

Why We Should Be Friends

1. I want to be.

2. I have a hunch you secretly want that, too.

—Max

P.S. Shouldn't everything in life be that simple?

Holding back some kind of cry-laugh sound caught in my throat, I sniff, rubbing away mascara streaks from my cheeks as Max saunters back into the school, never once looking back.

Then I tuck the note inside my front pocket.

Right beside the smooth white stone.