❝ I'm not scared of you .❞
❝ You should be.❞
Malaina Hill was done playing by the rules. Forced to behave like the perfect daughter by her upper class parents, she's sick and tired of being told what to do. Her mother's words haunt her, making her...
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Malaina
IT HAD BEEN OVER a month since Mateo's dad got arrested, and yet everywhere I went, I could see his face in the news. Mr. Alvarez had been proven guilty and charged for the murder of Justin's dad and would be serving his sentence in the NYC state prison.
His face was in the newspapers, on television, in magazines, anywhere they could publicly put shame on the Alvarez name. Details hadn't been given out on why Mr. Alvarez had murdered Justin's dad, but I wondered how Mateo's dad felt about what he had done. Did he regret it? Was he only giving in because he was defeated?
All over the school, I had heard the whispers about what had happened to Mateo's dad. Mateo seemed to be handling it well, almost as if he was at peace with what had happened. Even the teachers offered him looks of sympathy as if they understood what he was going through. They didn't.
Instead of pulling away from me or everyone else like he usually did when things got bad for him, Mateo instead seemed to want to spend more time with me. I didn't mind this at all. I was happy that he was starting to open up to me. He even sometimes joined Aisha, Devonte, Henry, and I at Candlewood Cafe, ordering his usual bitter black coffee.
After school, I would continue hanging out with him at his house or checking in on Ellie. Seeing her father get shot was a terrifying and traumatic experience, especially for a girl her age. I even baked her cookies which I had to make while Mother was away.
If she even caught me baking cookies, she'd just assume I was making them for myself and throw them away. Besides, even if she did believe that I was making them for someone else, how would I explain that they were for my boyfriend's sister, who was not Levi?
I looked up from the art assignment I was trying to complete and sighed. Unlike Mateo, who had an eye for good art and was a skilled artist himself, I lacked both attributes. I couldn't draw a straight line, I hated colouring, and my sketches looked like they had been done by a five-year-old.
Ellie could have easily drawn something better than me. My Finding Beauty in The Unknown assignment was due in less than a week, and I was making up for the lost time by cramming in hours of work time on a Friday night.
I had to decline Aisha's offer to go to Brian Henderson's party to work on my piece of crap drawing. Everyone knew Brian threw the best party's when his parents were away.
When I had first started the assignment, I was almost embarrassed to admit that I tried drawing Mateo. There was just something so enthralling about the mystery tangled around him, and I knew he would be the perfect subject for my drawing since I had started spending so much time with him.
It was both strange and frustrating knowing every detail on Mateo's face and not being able to replicate it on paper. I let out a groan of frustration, closing my sketchbook and deciding to take a much-needed break. My tired eyes felt dry as I moved to look towards my window where the sun was no longer shining, but the glowing moon had replaced it.
