A group of friends tries to piece itself back together after losing its glue.
*****
It's a quiet October morning in Palo Alto, California, when the news break out--June Beaumont was...
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LEON
For the first time in my life, I was stuck in after school detention.
There were plenty of things in the world that I had done and that I was proud of, but this certainly wasn't one of them. I knew I should have been careful. I knew I should be getting proper sleep at home instead of falling asleep during a US History class. However, that knowledge didn't stop me from screwing things up.
I had no idea how to explain the situation to my parents. I'd had enough of their constant disapproving glances, no matter what I did or how hard I tried to make things right, and this was yet another splotch in my reputation—their reputation. They were firm believers in how my actions, my inactions, and my attitude reflected on them, which meant I had to maintain a spotless school record and not get in trouble anywhere.
Considering I had already been questioned by the police since they once thought of me as the prime suspect of June's death, had been beaten up by her brother once he found out she was pregnant when she died, and was stuck in an almost empty classroom during detention, I was going to risk it and say my reputation had never been worse. Naturally, seeing how concerned they were with their appearance in the outside world, I was constantly ruining it for them.
There had been a point in my life when I agreed with them. The way people saw you reflected itself in the way they treated you and, if you couldn't get them to like you, you had to get them to fear and respect you. At one point, that was all that mattered to me; after all, it had left my parents incredibly rich and incredibly successful, and who was I to say that life shouldn't be that way?
The last few months had changed my perspective and the way I viewed the world. Between June's death and falling asleep during US History, something had clicked inside my brain—something that told me I wasn't supposed to be doing what my parents had spent their entire lives doing.
I was also really goddamn bored off my mind. Perhaps detention was the best opportunity to reflect on my life and my past decisions.
The teacher in charge of detention was one of those who just wanted to go home, but couldn't, in good conscience, let us leave before our time ended. So, the three of us sat there in that classroom, all of us scrolling through our phones because there was virtually nothing else to do even though it was technically not allowed. There wasn't even an assignment to complete or an essay to write, as students rarely ever got detention, so I was breaking yet another record.
At least I knew what I was doing there and why there was a pink note on my desk. I had no idea why Grace was there as well.
I wanted to know, obviously, and curiosity ate away at me with every minute that went by, but I didn't dare to break the silence in the classroom. Her pack of cigarettes lay on her desk, beside her bright-pink lighter, but she never lit a cigarette. There were many things Grace did knowing she would get away with it and plenty of other ones she did out of pure spite, but smoking during detention with a teacher in the room would be stupid. Part of me wondered if that was what had landed her there, as we didn't have many classes in common.
