Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
❝ i think it's better if he hears it from hartley, ❞
IT WAS gone. The brief escape from reality that Jess and his antics provided had now disappeared from her life.
Since the town meeting a week prior, she'd been on lockdown. Taylor had practically forced her dad to input a curfew: for two weeks, anytime she wasn't at work or at school, she was supposed to be at home. It was an intervention of sorts. Mrs. Kaur had to enforce the same punishment for Kanan, the only difference being that his sentence only lasted a week and this was his last day in hell.
However, it was Hartley's first, as the second her eyes peeled open and she saw the first snow of the year billowing down outside her window, she felt it. The sinking feeling that had been scratching at the back of her mind for weeks, the disconnect; it had finally broke through. She was tired, despite the hours of sleep she had just received, and she, under no circumstances, with no amount of persuasion, would be moving from the bed.
She had known it was coming, just as her friends and her family had. She knew it would last a while, just as her friends and her family did. And she knew, most of all, that she would hate every second of it, just as her friends and her family would.
The soft knock on her bedroom door gave her just enough motivation to roll over, so she could face her father when he walked in.
"Mija?" He whispered, poking his head through the door. There was a carefree smile on his face, a smile that dropped the second he made eye contact with her. Now, even he knew it was over.
"Hi, dad," she rasped, sending him an apologetic look.
He sighed, running a hand down his face, "I'll call the school, tell them you're not coming in today."
There were a million different things she could say to that, one of them being 'thank you', but all she could manage was a small, "okay."
The door shut and with it her eyes did as well. the 'Dark Days'—as Kanan had named it oh-so long ago—were upon them. She was gone. Not to return until the snow melted from the ground, and the leaves sprouted from the trees. She had disappeared. Hartley Morales was missing in action.
✎
JESS MARIANO, for once in his sorry life, was working. He was taking orders and making coffee and being polite to the customers. He was washing dishes and wiping down tables and—believe it or not—actually enjoying himself.
