“Ugh, I hate her.” I shake my head.
“I can’t believe I have the same guidance counselor,” Salem laments.
I totally feel her pain.
Poe and Salem share the same guidance counselor and I swear Miller is Satan. My guidance counselor is pretty mellow on the other hand — another thing that I can admit that I like.
Poe bangs her fist on the table. “See? That’s why I hate him.”
None of us need her to elaborate whoheis. Her guardian.
“This is why,” she continues. “All of this is happening because of him. Everything wrong in my life is because of him.Everything.That stupid, tweed-coat-with-elbow-patches-wearing, unfashionable, old…man.”
Wyn, Salem and me, we look at each other and press our lips to stop from laughing out loud.
“Old man.” I nod.
“Unfashionable too,” Wyn says.
“Yeah, let’s not forget unfashionable,” Salem instructs us. “And elbow patches.”
I nod for emphasis before saying, “How dare he? Tweed coats, oh my God! The man should die.”
Poe narrows her eyes before throwing her empty water bottle at me. “You guys are the worst.”
And we burst out laughing.
Which somehow turns into the highlight of my day so far.
Sitting on these hard benches, under the gray sky, laughing with the friends I’ve made at this reform school, I forget why I’m here in the first place.
I forget that I don’t have any freedom now.
That I’m caged inside these brick fences and iron gates.
That I’ve been caged here for two years now.
Because one night when I was sixteen, my heart broke.
It broke so badly that I died.
I died from the pain, and when I came back to life, I went from being good girl Callie to a heartbroken girl.
A girl who, in the throes of her pain and her hurt, did something that she never could’ve imagined doing.
A girl who did it all in the name of love.
I became a girl who was supposed to land in jail for it — for the thing I did, the crime I committed — but somehow was sent here.
As a mercy.
Away from everything that I’ve ever known: my town, my home, my four older and overprotective brothers.
I forget all of that and just laugh.
Which makes Poe growl. “Fine, whatever. Laugh it up. The only choice I have now is to live my best life. Tomorrow night.” She lowers her voice then. “When we sneak out.”
Tomorrow.
