Asa had once heard someone say that time heals all wounds, but his cuts seemed to only grow wider and deeper as each hour passed, with his wandering mind taking pleasure in inflicting more self-torture by allowing salt to be poured on all his reopened wounds.
He’d honestly thought he was getting better—that maybe he was actually starting to be okay with himself, with where he came from, with who he was. He’d thought he was learning the art of loving oneself he’d so often hear people preach about. Asa could’ve sworn he was getting there.
But right now, he felt like he was back at square one. Like all his efforts, all his coaxing to himself and all the sweet nothings he’d whispered into his own skin was no longer significant. It no longer mattered because he’d been torn down to his very core. All those stitches and Band-Aids keeping his old wounds together had been ripped off his skin without warning. He now needed to stitch himself whole all over again.
Was this how it was like? Self-love?
Was it building up yourself brick by brick despite the cracks and the crevices and planting seeds in those dark places so that every time you cried, your tears will make flowers bloom and bring to life the parts you deemed ugly?
Was it watching someone who has stood by your side for so long take a sledgehammer and break down your walls of self-worth like it was just a house of cards built? Was it watching that same person violently pull your flowers out of those corners until there was no life there, and everything just remained dead?
Dead, dead, dead.
Asa didn’t think he had anything left in him to give away to bring those flowers back to life. He no longer knew how else to light up those ugly parts, to fill up those cracks and crevices. To think that he had honestly believed that he’d reached that light at the end of the tunnel.
But he was a guy, and guys don’t have cracks and crevices. No, they had abs and a killer smile and the ability to brush everything off.
At least, that’s what they’re supposed to be—what he was supposed to be.
•••
Asa didn’t see Isla for the rest of the day, but then again, he wasn’t looking for her either. He considered himself lucky that he didn’t have history that day. It was the one class he shared with her.
And as for Carmen, he avoided her rather successfully.
“Hey, Asa, wait up!” Willa called from behind as she picked up her pace to fall into step beside him.
“Hey,” he muttered, throwing her a quick glance over his shoulder just as she reached him, wanting to just get home now that school was done.
“You all right?” she asked, pulling her brows together.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because you were just on the receiving end of the Ice Queen’s wrath earlier. I doubt anyone would be okay after that.”
Asa clenched his jaw and stopped walking abruptly, causing Willa to stop as well. She looked up at him in surprise.
“Is this another attempt of yours to take a dig at her?” he asked with a stony face, feeling the last few threads of his patience come undone and dangle around aimlessly in the air.
“I’m just saying I’ve dealt with the likes of her before,” she replied cautiously, apparently taking into account Asa’s emotional state.
“Isla’s done nothing to you so far,” he snapped impatiently. “In fact, I don’t get why the two of you are always at each other’s throats.”
“I didn’t say it was Isla,” Willa said through gritted teeth, growing more agitated by the second. “I’ve just had the misfortune of having someone like her in my life, and I know how badly the words that leave their mouths can sting.” She narrowed her eyes at him and stepped forward. “Go on. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me there wasn’t some poor, unsuspecting, vulnerable girl that used to walk down these halls whom Isla had never done something horrible to.”
Asa swallowed, averting his eyes because of the guilt he felt clawing at the walls of his mind. An itch he could never get rid of.
“The girl’s name was Valerie,” he found himself saying, recalling a certain sophomore who was at the receiving end of Isla’s wrath one too many times. “She had to move away because she couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Yeah, I heard about that.” Willa snorted and looked away into the distance, her eyes hardening and her mouth twisting into a scowl. “And that’s exactly why I will always look at Isla like she’s trash because in my eyes she can be nothing else, Asa.”
Asa sighed, knowing this fight was a lost cause. “You don’t think she can redeem herself, I get that. But I do see the good in her, Willa. That’s where you and I don’t see eye to eye.”
Willa let out a low, hollow chuckle. “There’s no good in her,” she said, turning around to meet Asa’s eyes again. “There can’t be.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I was a Valerie once,” she whispered, her eyes fixated on the ground. “Back in my old school. The girl with braces and baby fat. I was that. And we had an ice queen there too.” Willa ran a hand under her eyes angrily, looking back up at Asa with fire in her hazel eyes. “And I had to move away to this town. To this school. Just like how—I’m sure—that girl Valerie must have done as well, packing up her life and moving somewhere else too. But I will never be that girl again. So if that means condemning Isla before she’s had a chance to have a go at me, or any other girl for that matter, then so be it. I don’t
