Guilty Party [REWRITING]

II | SEPTEMBER 9 2019

  CHAPTER II:
SEPTEMBER 9 2019

         KARA AKIYAMA IS GOOD AT PRETENDING. She knows to act fine when everything around her falls apart. She can feel brave when she isn't and she can act happy when she's so far from it. It comes along with being the perfect poster child of the Akiyama family. With her eldest sister studying law at Harvard and her brother all the way in Oxford doing premed, Kara wasn't going to be any different. 

        Greatness is the only thing she ever knows. And a fall from grace is out of the question. 

       But once the curtain falls and the stage grows dark, Kara starts to see the appeal in breaking herself apart so she wouldn't feel every weight that's been sitting on her shoulders. She's used to getting everything she has ever wanted; the clothes, the jewellery, the car she got when she was 16 and the beautiful boy who only has eyes for her. The only thing she doesn't have is her own life. 

       Kara sits in her car that's parked in the school's parking lot. After last night, she didn't manage to get a decent sleep. She checks her makeup in the rearview mirror. Her face looks nothing short of timeless and classic beauty that so many others are envious of, thanks to the thousands and thousands of dollars she has spent on skincare alone every year. 

       A knock on her car window makes her jump in her seat. When she turns, she sees Mateo's smiling face on the other side. 

     He's truly a vision. A tale of a beautiful prince whose skin is moulded from the warmest sands and eyes as rich as chocolate and caramel. In so many ways, Mateo Sanchez is a beautiful boy and he could hardly go unnoticed. There's something so effortless in the way he looks -- like that easy smile that would always make his eyes crinkle and his hair that refuses to behave and magnificently unkempt in all its glory.

      When she steps out, she immediately gets pulled into his arms and a kiss as a greeting. It's more than a peck but it doesn't last too long to the point some passerby might find it uncomfortable but it's enough to make Kara's tense muscles relax. He's a good kisser, not in the way it makes her stomach tumble, which it does, but in the way that every time he kisses her, she breathes and for a moment, even for a little while, the world isn't so bad after all. 

      Her hand falls to the planes of his chest, feeling his gentle heartbeat against her fingertips. She smiles against his mouth, feeling how firm his hands hold her waist. Kara savours this moment because it is the most normal thing to happen before they have to face the thread that's threatening to loosen around them. It's a moment when she's just a teenage girl, kissing her boyfriend in the school's parking lot. 

      "Do we have to go to school today?" She asks, pouting slightly, once they pull away from each other. She traces random shapes across the cotton material of the compulsory white button-up that he's wearing, "We can play hooky and get sushi?"