“It says Carmen on the first page.”
“Yeah.”
“Carmen isn’t your name.”
She raised her eyebrows at his, looking truly surprised and worried for Asa’s mental state. “I think I’d know what my name is,” she said even slower, eyeing him wearily. “Pretty positive it’s Carmen West. So, my journal. Give it to me, please.”
Asa’s mind was a goddamn jumbled mess.
“But—but she—that girl you were with—her name—”
“Is Willa Bonham,” the girl who claimed to be Carmen said. “New student, joined only yesterday, I think.” He thought of her wavy chestnut hair and hazel eyes. Yes, Willa seemed like a more appropriate fit. It sort of made sense, the way he had first thought the name “Carmen” didn’t suit her.
Asa’s eyes took in the girl standing in front of him. This one, on the other hand, he decided, definitely looked like a Carmen.
Pretty wasn’t the first word that entered his mind—not the way it did when he had run into Willa.
Carmen had long, flowing black hair—or was it the darkest shade of indigo?—almost like the endless night sky. Definitely not his type; she was someone he would not call pretty without batting an eye.
Her eyes reminded him of the sky just before it was about to rain, grey clouds bleeding into the white ones. That stretch of calm before the sky poured down in torrents. Also not his type; not what he’d call pretty.
And then there was her name.
Carmen, Carmen, Carmen.
Definitely not his kind of name either.
“My journal,” her voice floated to him and he bit the inside of his cheek. Even her voice wasn’t his type; like the autumn breeze that played with his hair before letting it fall back, or the gust that brushed past his ears in a whisper and then faded away, it starts off claiming his attention before lingering in the air and vanishing into nothing.
Carmen was out-of-sorts, a mismatch of everything that fitted together. If that even made sense.
“Asa?” His name tumbled out her mouth in exasperation. “Asa, my journal. I want it.”
“No,” he said, acting on impulse. Like he always did.
“What do you mean no?”
“I—she’s your friend, yes?” He tucked the journal into his backpack, watching her as her eyes followed his movements. “Willa? You’re friends with her?” he urged.
“Yes.” Her tone was cautious, as if preparing herself.
Something inside Asa coiled in discomfort but he disregarded it; he wanted this. “Help me,” he found himself saying, his mouth working and forming the words before his mind could catch up to them. “Help me with—with Willa. I just, I need…”
What did he need? But Hunter’s words were there, pumping in his veins along with his blood, blending with the oxygen in his lungs and fuelling the fire that was burning in the pits of his stomach.
Asa could belong. He will belong.
And so he steeled his resolve, fortifying it and leaving no room for empathy for this Carmen.
“Just help me out,” he looked her in the eye, knowing she was his last way to get through to Willa, “and you’ll have your journal. So what’d ya say, Carmen?” Asa cocked his head to the side. “Do we have a deal?”
07.
Blackmail
Carmen should say no, she really should. She knew that what Asa was doing was uncalled for, that he had no right whatsoever to be bargaining with her, using something so intimately personal as leverage.
But Carmen’s sense of self-preservation far outweighed any sense of logic or reason in her.
He did not realize that he was holding her everything—her lifeline—in that backpack of his. He was dangling her chance to reclaim the very thing that held souvenirs of her soul in front of her face, and Carmen would sooner die than let the chance slip away.
“Fine,” she bit out, her voice trembling with restrained fury. She wanted to say more, say something that would send a dagger through his heart, but there was that hint of desperation in his eyes she’d seen in others before.
Seen before on Asa himself. On the overweight girls, on the queer boys. The kind she’d seen in her own eyes a few times when she stared into the mirror. The desperation of someone struggling to just coexist with everybody else. The plea for them to just be. To fit in.
But why the hell would Asa want to fit in? The question nestled into the corner of Carmen’s mind and stayed there, undoubtedly plotting to nag at her sometime later.
She decided Asa was a paradox; someone with sad eyes filled with the need to belong yet also someone with a happy face that sat on top of the school’s food chain.
“Fine?” he repeated, sounding genuinely surprised. As if he honestly expected her to put up a fight. Carmen mentally scoffed at the thought; there was nothing she wouldn’t do to keep herself sewn tightly at every single edge, and that art journal had all the means to undo her.
And that was too great a power she’d let anyone have over her. If Asa wanted her help with Willa, as he put it, then so be it.
Carmen, though quiet, was no means ignorant. She’d observed Willa as she interacted with Asa. And it didn’t take her long to realise that the new girl actually enjoyed the banter. Willa seemed to like the attention Asa was giving her.
That fact alone helped curb whatever guilt Carmen felt, knowing that she wasn’t shoving into Willa’s face something the girl wanted absolutely nothing to do with.
“You’ll actually do it?” Asa asked for clarification. “You’re okay with—”
“No,” she cut him off vehemently, her eyes piercing into his, making her feelings very clear. “I am far from okay with this. You do best to remember
