1. Relic

Chapter one

Relic

I doubted anyone in this godforsaken therapy group ever truthfully answered a question.

Around the room we went, the five of us in a circle, exchanging pleasantries as deep as a puddle on a broken sidewalk. How are you today? Fine. How has your week been? Fine. Anyone have anything they want to share? Silence.

We weren't a talkative group, which was good with me. Sharing and feelings were a double-edged switchblade.

Sucked to be me, though. Thanks to a court order, I was stuck doing this therapy group that met at my high school until I graduated, even in the summer. With it being June now, that meant I'd had one full year of this torture.

After our pathetic say-hi-to-your-neighbor moment, our therapist gave us a writing assignment and some decided to do it. Others, like me, decided to do nothing. We sat crammed in the closet-of-a-room that served as our mental health counselor's office. The school's thermostat had to have been be set to the temperature of the surface of the sun, and the two floor fans didn't help the sweltering conditions of the boxed-in, no-window room. Even the school's therapy dog, a golden Labrador named Zeus, had no love to give as he lay stretched out in the middle of the circle, twitching with his happy puppy dreams.

In my back jeans' pocket, my cell buzzed, and, annoyed, I rolled my neck. My older sister, Lyra, had been sending me a stream of texts, and I wasn't in the mood. Most adults sent texts to remind the teenager to take out the garbage, do homework, feed the dog. Nope, not me. Lyra's main concern? I wasn't "being seventeen enough."

The text that kicked off her tirade: Marsh said there's a party at Brayden Gentry's house tomorrow night. You need to go.

Not like she had any idea who Brayden Gentry was or how much of a dick he was to the human race. As for Marsh, I was going to kick my best friend's ass the next time I saw him for conspiring against me with my sister.

Me: No.

Lyra: If you don't go to that party, I will change the locks on the door. Stop being so responsible and wasting your youth. It's exhausting.

Wasting my youth? What a load of shit. I was born old.

I slouched in the chair, crossed my arms, and kicked out my long legs, avoiding Zeus's tail. I scanned our ranks, uncertain which of us in our group were here by choice and which of us, like me, had been forced.

Me? My plea deal had landed me here. Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor and had movies made about his life. I took a five-dollar bill out of an unlocked BMW and everyone bent themselves out of shape. The judge asked if the five dollars was worth it. Yes? No? Heroes were all about perspective.

"Two more minutes," called our therapist, Zuri, from her desk in the corner of the room. She glanced up from her laptop where she'd been furiously typing, no doubt informing her superiors how fucked-up we were, and our eyes met. She frowned at me. I didn't care.

The four other people continued listing their "feelings" or "challenges" for the week. Actually, the guy next to me finished coloring in a rather impressive cartoon goldfish with a body-builder chest and a sharp-fanged smirk. The fish wore a T-shirt that stated: Not Today, Bro.

Kudos for the proper use of the comma.

He caught me looking and waggled his bushy eyebrows behind his unruly, spiraled black hair that had fallen into his face. The kid had a strung-out vibe to him, like he'd spent one too many twenty-four-hour binges on shrooms. Tall like me, as pale as a vampire, and he couldn't weigh more than one-ten even with rocks in his pockets. He constantly said shit that caused strain to appear on Zuri's face. Each time he spoke, it was as though her bones wanted to pop through her skin. My current favorites: "We should take a moment to contact our alien ancestors on a spiritual level, as we have a special bond with them," and "Has anyone else ever lost sleep over how a kiwi feels? The fruit not the bird."

Nope, can't say I'd ever lost a single night's sleep over that.

"Sexy, huh?" he said to me, eyes flicking to his paper and back up again. This kid definitely wasn't here by choice. Group therapy was probably the second stop after his police-involved forty-eight-hour hold.

As I said, we were a fucked-up group.

"Relic," Zuri called to me. Five foot four if she wore heels, she had smooth, deep brownish-umber skin and long box braids she tucked behind her ears when agitated, which happened often when I was around. She was one of two mental health counselors at our school, and it was obvious with how the other counselor, a fiftyish-year-old woman, would either pop in every few minutes or sit in on sessions, that Zuri was the new girl learning the ropes. This group session probably completed some requirement she needed for some license or degree. Also, she insisted we use her first name—rookie mistake.

"Are you finished with your list?" she pushed me.

We both knew I hadn't completed a thing. "Yep. I got all my feelings out. Felt great. I'm transformed. Like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. I'm fixed now, so can I go?"

Only thing the judge demanded, besides restitution and to pay the poor-house-inducing court fees, was that I stay out of trouble and attend group therapy until I graduated next spring. No one said I had to participate. Survival was in the details.

I gave Zuri credit for cutting her gaze away before the death lasers within her eyes could fully activate. Still, her mouth flattened as she closed her laptop.

One sixteenth of me felt bad for her. I imagined that six years ago, when she chose psychology as her major for college, she had all sorts of fantasies about swooping in and saving us lost and damaged misfits on the island of fucked-up toys. Reality, though, sucked.

Who knows? Maybe that meant she fit right in.

Either way, I didn't have the energy to play along. I was too busy mentally calculating how to rob Peter to pay Paul. Electric bill and daycare fees for my younger sister were both due at the end of the week. The electric bill had the words Final Notice printed in red on top, which felt serious, but it didn't have a shut off notice attached. On the other hand, the front office bouncer at the daycare gave me a look like she might cut off my balls with a rusty knife the next time I picked up my younger sister, Camila, without giving her payment. At the moment, daycare bouncer was the horse pulling ahead in the race called broke.

My car refused to start after my ten-hour shift summer job of hanging drywall. I had to run to catch a bus to get here, and I had no idea how I was going to return home, as I'd used the last of my cash for the fare. Walking was an option, but I was exhausted, and five in the morning seemed to come earlier with each new day. So here I sat, covered in a thick layer of drywall dust, contemplating if it would be worth using the meager minutes on my phone to text friends who didn't have reliable transportation themselves to bum a ride.

"Okay." Zuri took her seat in our circle and gave that sincere smile. It was lost on me, but it was definitely sincere. "Who wants to share first? And I want everyone to participate. You can either share a feeling you had for the week or a challenge. I'm not going to push for explanations. I just want participation."

As it had been for the past three weeks since this group formed, silence. Had to admit, I felt proud. Like we were a solid front, a Teamster Union flashing the middle finger to the establishment.

"Anyone?" Zuri pressed with forced gentleness, our silence slowly driving her toward uploading her resignation papers and opening a yoga studio that had goats. "Then I'll have to draw names, and we'll go from there." She shook the jar that contained slips of papers and selected one.

No whammy, no whammy, no whammy, stop.

"Lev," Zuri said with a defeated sigh and glanced up at cartoon-fish-boy. "What's your feeling or challenge for the week?"

"I'm concerned yeti's aren't being paid for the use of their name for the cups. It feels rather unfair. Also, Google has blurred the Russian island, Jeannette. I think it's because the yeti's live there."

"Yes, I can understand your concerns." Zuri nodded she understood, agreed or at least empathized, but her blinking eyes told me she was in over her head. Her attention bounced to the guy on the other side of Lev. "Demarius? What is your feeling or challenge for the week?"

Demarius gave Lev a look like his challenge for the week was figuring out how the hell he'd ended up next to Lev. He then glanced at me, and I gave a shrug.

I feel you, brother. Deep down where it might hurt if I allowed myself to feel, I definitely feel you.

Did I know Demarius? I knew him as well as the four other people here. We all went to school together. Lev, I'd seen in the hallways before. He was either going to be a sophomore or junior with the possibility that he was on round two of either of those grades. Demarius was going to be a junior in the fall. I had seen him wearing a jersey on game day for football, and on those days, he also had on a gold armband to show he had made honor roll. Our athletic department was big into pushing the students to make good grades. I had no idea if he was the star player or rode the bench, as I gave two fucks about school spirit.

Demarius had ebony skin and ear-length hair that lay in tight twists. He rubbed the back of his neck as if stressed. His khakis and button-down shirt implied he, too, just broke out of work. In fact, his name tag for a store at the mall still hung on his shirt.

"Football conditioning starts next week," Demarius said. "Work is giving me heat about taking time off."

Zuri leaned forward with enthusiasm. "We can definitely discuss ways to problem solve dealing with bosses, teachers, and people in authority. That'll be a beneficial conversation for everyone here."

Demarius gave off the vibe he was here by choice. Wasn't a damn thing I could think of that could land him here by force like me and Lev, but who knew? Regardless, group therapy was useless. Assumingly due to government regulation, Zuri couldn't label us with the reasons we were here, and she never asked any real questions like, "Why did you steal the money out of that car?" Not that she'd get a real answer if she did. Instead, we gave surface answers to surface questions, and we spent the rest of the time listening to Zuri give us surface solutions to barely real-world problems—like how to properly ask for time off work.

"Melanie?" Zuri turned to the freshman of the group. Or, rather, soon-to-be sophomore. But Melanie wore "freshman" like no one had worn freshman before. While she'd stay silent like the rest of us at the start, the moment Zuri gave her an opening, she'd gush out all her dramatic thoughts like the Niagara River surging over the rocky cliff.

Everything was dramatic with Melanie: her over-hairsprayed blond hair that was hand-curled at the ends, her beige foundation that was a shade lighter than her neck, her purple eye make-up and bright red, please-kiss-me lipstick. Plus, she had a three-inch-thick cuff of friendship bracelets encircling her left wrist and three half-heart friendship necklaces round her neck. She had big pleading blue eyes, always clutched her hands together, and sat on the edge of her seat when talking as if she had so much inside her that, any second, she might break out into song.

If that were to happen, I'd already decided I was out and that the judge would have to be sympathetic to my plight.

Melanie, in my opinion, was here by choice.

"I think my best friend is mad at me," Melanie confessed.

"What makes you think that?" Zuri asked.

"Well, she didn't text me at all yesterday, and when I texted her, she didn't text back. So, then I texted our other best friend asking if my best friend was mad at me and she texted our best friend and she said that my best friend is confused as to why I think she was mad, so now I bet she's mad that I thought she was mad."

Clear as a volcanic-ash plume on a smog-ridden day.

Zuri soaked this in as if replaying it in her brain, then eventually said, "It'll be good for us to discuss expectations of others and how to minimize them."

Oh, my expectations for others were already fucking low, but I was more than happy to listen to tips on how to continue to lower them.

"Macie, how about you?" Zuri asked, and my eyes immediately went to her.

Macie Hutchins. The only other senior-to-be besides me in our group. She sat across from me, and like she had since my freshman year, caught my attention just by existing. She had an unassuming beauty to her that I liked: long dark chestnut hair, curves I appreciated in those hip-hugging jeans, and a flat stomach that peeked out from the hem of a white tank top. She had on a cropped, crocheted, summer sweater that kept her from breaking the school's insipid no-bare-shoulders policy. She had the face of an angel—high cheekbones, smooth skin with a summer tan, and freckles around the bridge of her nose as though the sun loved her so much it gave her a kiss.

She'd entranced me from the first time I saw her in Spanish I class our freshman year, but I never once approached her. We lived in two different worlds. While we inhabited that area of town where the line between rich and poor wavered and could change from one side of the street to the other, she stuck with her rich friends, and I stuck with the people I knew had my back on the streets. Life worked better that way.

Macie had the group's attention, though I doubted her current popularity had anything to do with her beauty or her well-known straight-A brains.

Even if mystery shrouded the other group members' reasons for being here, everyone knew why Macie was here. She'd been carjacked a few months back after leaving at the third quarter of a basketball game being held at our school. She took a bullet, and the thief left her for dead, bleeding out on the street. The story was all over the news for weeks, and the gossip around school still hadn't died down. If any of us needed therapy, it was Macie, and it sucked we were the ones she was stuck with.

Macie stared at the paper in her hands. She had written some things down and was possibly the only one in the group who'd completed the warm-up exercise because that's who she was—the girl who had perfect attendance, the girl who had the best grade-point average, the girl who belonged to clubs and ran for student government and won. Still, her delicate throat moved as if speaking was the last thing she wanted to do.

While this group would do silence at the beginning, Lev would eventually talk conspiracy theories, Demarius would be polite in answering prompts—sharing just enough to make Zuri believe she hadn't made all the wrong life choices—and Melanie would give a soliloquy on the woes of texting. But Macie was like me; she stayed silent.

"Macie," Zuri pressed. "We've been in session for three weeks. Even Relic has shared."

"Shared" was a very loose interpretation, but yes, I had spoken words in my quest to irritate Zuri, but Macie hadn't said much beyond "Hi," "Bye," and "Good." All proper and acceptable one-word answers in my opinion.

"I can tell you've written something," Zuri continued. "Why don't you share? It can be simple. For example, I like being up late during the summer, but I have to wake up early. That's a challenge. A simple one, but a challenge."

Zuri waited, making it clear she wasn't moving on until Macie answered, and Macie kept staring at the list in her hands. She shook her head, and when she glanced up, the hurt in her eyes resonated with something hidden deep within me. I understood that hurt, understood that pain. Understood not wanting to talk about any of it. Here was the thing—she shouldn't have to. No one should ever be pressured to say a damn thing if they didn't want to. Especially someone who took a bullet over a fucking car.

"I don't have a ride home," I announced, and every head in the room whipped toward me.

Zuri blinked so many times, I wondered if her contact had slipped. "I'm sorry, can you repeat that? I want to make sure I heard you correctly."

She heard me. She was stalling so she could revel in the fact that I'd shared more than a sarcastic quip. "My challenge for the week." Or one of the million in my life. "My car broke down, I used the last of my cash for a bus ride here, and I don't have a way home."

I raised my eyebrows as a challenge to Zuri because I could see it there in her eyes. The urge to automatically ask if I could call a parent or an adult for help. If she'd had any type of instruction in her college courses, she would have read my file prior to this meeting, so she'd know I didn't have an adult in my life who could do shit for me. "Have any instructional tips for how to not walk my ass home?"