“I’m sure,” he muttered sarcastically. “Not bad at all.”
She grinned at him cheekily. “Oh come on, it would be fun. Besides I’m always either holed up inside my room or walking around the neighbourhood alone. It’d be a nice change for me.”
He cocked a brow. “And your true intentions have been revealed, after all,” he declared dramatically. “You planned this entire thing so that you’d have an excuse to have fun, huh?”
Carmen let out a deep sigh, looking forlorn as she dropped her gaze to the floor. “Alas, you have discovered my diabolical scheme! Whatever shall I do?!”
“Oh, wow, you’re terrible at this.” Asa laughed unapologetically as Carmen just gaped at his blunt remark.
“Well, someone knows the art of flattery,” she muttered.
“Oh, shut—” Asa’s words died in his throat, as his eyes seemed to register something behind Carmen at the exact same time she heard someone tap on the passenger seat window she’d pressed her back against.
Despite knowing who it could be, she turned around anyway and found her father standing there with one palm lying flat against the glass as he looked at her with a curious expression.
Her hands fumbled against the surface of the door as she tried to find the handle, and swung it open after struggling with it.
“Hi, Dad.” She grinned, feeling the faintest bit awkward, which was only heightened when Asa didn’t say anything but just sat there in a dazed state.
“Hi,” her father responded with an uncertain smile. “I thought you’d be walking home as usual.”
“It was cold,” Asa spoke up then. “I didn’t want her to walk all the way in this weather. Despite telling her last week, she still won’t wear a sweater.”
“Thank you,” her father nodded courteously, “for looking after her.”
Asa shrugged awkwardly. “It was no problem.” There was an uncomfortable pause. “She’s actually quite entertaining.”
Carmen’s eyes snapped to Asa’s whose cheeks seemed to grow slightly pink when he realised what he’d just said.
“Yes,” her father replied dryly. “I figured as much considering you’ve been parked outside my house for a total of forty-five minutes now.”
“Dad.” Carmen chuckled uneasily. “Relax, we were just talking.”
“Of course.” He smiled, turning away his calculating eyes from Asa and looking at her with fondness. “Was just stating a fact, that’s all.”
“Of course, you were,” Carmen replied, shaking her head slightly as she gathered her things and got out of the truck. “Bye, Asa. See you tomorrow?”
Asa looked away from watching her father cautiously, and something in his expression instantly softened the second his eyes landed on Carmen. “Of course, wouldn’t want you to miss my first go at being a tour guide.”
“You’ll do great, wise one.” She grinned, slamming the door shut and waving as he rolled his eyes and drove off.
“Tour guide?” her father’s voice interrupted the almost giddy bubble that had begun to envelope her. “So, he’s the one you’ll be hanging out with tomorrow? Along with the new kid?”
Carmen turned around to squint at her dad. “Yeah. That’s not a problem, is it?” she asked quietly, pulling in her bottom lip and chewing on the rightmost corner of it.
Her father sighed, placing a hand on the back of her shoulders and urging her forward as they walked back to their home. “No, it’s not a problem. I’m just worried, that’s all. It’s a dad thing, honey. Don’t think too much about it.”
“You’re sure, right?” she asked hesitantly.
“Pretty sure.” He smiled down at her, opening the door and leading her in before entering the house himself and letting the door shut close after them. “He just seems like one of those jock types. I don’t want you to end up hurt. Or worse.”
Carmen froze in her tracks on the way to her room.
“That’s not fair,” she whispered, her voice trembling and her eyes blinking back angry tears. “That is so not fair, Dad. You of all people should know not to jump to conclusions.”
“Keeping you safe is my priority,” he said, unfazed. “I don’t care about the rest.”
“I don’t want to be kept safe at the cost of putting someone else down,” she said slowly. “If we ourselves won’t adapt an understanding mind, how can we expect for anything to change with our world, Dad?”
“I owe this world nothing,” he told her, his sea-green eyes boring into her own with so much pain in them. Carmen never wanted to die more than she did in that moment. “All it has done is take. And take. And ta—” His voice cracked, and his eyes immediately fell to the floor.
It was one of those nights again, when everything was falling apart. When the ground beneath her feet was shaking so violently like it was going to spit back out all the horrifying secrets this house had to bury along with her mother’s coffin into the ground.
Her mother remained dead, but the terrible things that led to her demise didn’t. It was alive in the hibiscus bushes that her mother had planted along the edges of their front lawn. It was alive in the absence of her face in any of the family photographs that sat on the mantelpiece in the living room.
It was alive in the way the look in her father’s eyes held the remnants of a heart that was broken forever. It was alive in Carmen’s existence itself, in the way she was never born whole but with a fractured soul that she was always trying to fill up with something that would take the horrors away.
It never worked, though. Nothing ever filled her up.
It was just one of those times again, when she thought this world was indeed a cruel place. She wanted to just set it on fire and
