Well, they’d still label her crazy too.
And Carmen would rather have someone think she’s insane out of misunderstanding than out from the knowledge that her mind was truly broken.
06.
Art Journal
Asa had a spring in his steps as he walked out of his last class for the day.
Time to meet Carmen.
The name sounded so foreign even when he said it in his head. Like it didn’t belong there, not with him. It was just so out-of-sorts.
Carmen. Carmen.
Asa was driving himself crazy, that was for sure.
“Asa,” Hunter greeted with that usual disdain in his voice as Asa walked past him.
“Asshole,” Asa greeted back, not even sparing him a glance.
“You know…” Hunter’s voice was right behind him, falling into step beside Asa deliberately. “You seem pretty chipper today,” he remarked, that typical sneer ever-present in his tone. “What? Mum said she’d make you tacos once you got home?”
Oh, lovely. The stereotypical Mexican jokes now. Hunter’s ability to sink lower and lower never ceased to amaze Asa.
“I don’t even like tacos, you prick.” Asa threw him a dirty look.
His reply seemed to only earn a smirk from Hunter. “Right,” he drawled with the same old vicious glint in his eyes. “I forgot. You need to feel like one of us, to pretend you belong.”
Asa froze, his back going rigid as the words found their way into his skin and crawled up his bones, leaving their imprint on his insides. Just like those words always did. Like a seal had stamped across his heart, his head and on everything that made him Asa.
And he hated it—absolutely hated it—that Hunter knew his way around him, that he knew which buttons to push, which bandage to rip open, and which wound to pour more salt on.
What Asa hated even more, however, was that he always let the poison in. And it sat there inside him, brewing in the pits of his stomach until it slipped into his bloodstream and flowed throughout his entire being.
He just wanted to stop letting Hunter win. To stop letting the part of this world that Hunter represented win.
Asa felt Hunter step closer, put a hand on his shoulder and dig his nails into the flesh. It had no effect on Asa, the pain just fading away and giving into the simmering of his blood in his veins.
And then he heard Hunter’s voice next, quietly saying into his ear with so much loathing and disgust, “You’ll never belong here, Asa. Not with us.”
The hand on his shoulder tightened for a split second, trying to hurt him further—as if physical pain was still necessary after the cruel utterance of those words—and then it fell away and Hunter walked past him, knocking into his shoulder on purpose.
Asa could feel the blood pounding in his ears, his breath faltering, as he let the words build a home inside his head. As he let the words poison him yet again.
Because Asa knew, despite all his efforts and tears and pain, he was still an outsider.
And as long as he was an outsider, there was no finish line for him. There was no end in his efforts to prove himself to others.
He would always be under at least one scrutinising eye, and he’d have to prove their mindset regarding him wrong, or he might rather not be there at all.
•••
With the wheels in his head spinning endlessly, Asa walked out the school doors.
“What, no hi this time?”
Asa paused in his tracks at the sound of the familiar voice, shocked that she was the one initiating the conversation this time. He smirked as he turned to face her, the sag in his shoulders dissipating as he straightened himself into that confident and devil-may-care posture, remembering that he couldn’t let his exhaustion show. Not here. Not anywhere that wasn’t home. And especially not around somebody else who thought he didn’t belong and to whom he needed to prove otherwise.
“Did I hurt your feelings, Carmen?” He cocked his head to the side, narrowing his eyes at her. “Thought I hadn’t noticed you?”
At the mention of her name, the girl’s eyes widened with surprise and she scoffed. “Wow.” She shook her head in incredulity. “And here I thought you only mixed up the names of the girls you rolled around in the sheets with.”
She stormed away, looking like he’d wounded her pride somehow, and there was nothing he could do but stare at her fading figure as she put more distance between them.
Confused as hell, he pulled out the journal from his backpack and flipped to the front page.
No, Asa hadn’t misread anything. It still had the name Carmen West printed on the smooth off-white paper.
Had she been playing him, then? Maybe she was just caught off guard at the fact that he discovered her name—
“Oh, there it is!” a serene and steady female voice called out behind him. The vaguely familiar voice held such immense relief that Asa would’ve thought the girl had stumbled across her long-lost child or something along those lines. “My journal, hello! Asa!”
Asa whipped around, a bewildered expression on his face as his eyes landed on the girl that had been sitting next to hazel-eyed one during AP Lit, the one that had looked startled when she was dragged into their argument. “What?” he asked, blinking like an idiot.
She reached for the book in his hands, and he reflexively took a few steps back. What the hell was she doing?
The girl frowned. “That’s my journal,” she said slowly as if talking to a person mentally incapable of understanding her words. “Please hand it over. Now.”
“No, it isn’t,” he blurted out.
Her frown deepened.
