"To my house to get stuff."

"What stuff?"

"Clothes, money, book bag." We’re walking through the short cut.

"Are you ok?"

"No"

"Wanna talk about it?"

"No"

"Want a hug?"

"Spencer, please!" We get to her house and no cars are in the carport. We go to the door and it’s unlocked. She goes upstairs and I follow her. She opens her sister’s bedroom door.

"Ky, why are you up? Where’s mom and mimi?" her sister is sitting on her bed holding a bear.

"Mimi took mom to the hospital a few hours ago. She said the wouldn’t be long." Kyla looks up with tears in her eyes.

"It’s ok. You can come with me to Spencer’s. Right?" she looks at me and I nod. Kyla gets up and hugs her but she just stands there stiff. We go to her room while Kyla gets clothes for school. Ash goes into her closet and fills a book bag with clothes and stuff. We go back to my house and Kyla falls asleep on my pull out bed. Ash watches her sleep and I watch her watching Kyla. My alarm rings and we get ready for school. We get Kyla to her bus and when our bus comes we sit together. Ash looks blankly out the window. When we get to school we go our seperate ways. I don’t see Aiden or any of his goons. At lunch I find Ash in the corner of the court yard.

"Are you ready to talk now?" she nods.

"Spence, do you love me? Am I a bad person?"

"Yes I love you. You’re a very good person."

"How Spence, how can I be a good person? My own mother is repulsed by me. I punched her! I punched my own mom in the jaw. What kind of person does that?"

"A person who was standing up for herself and the girl she loves. If you were a bad person you would have just stood there and taken all that shit from your mom and not done anything about it."

"Something’s not right though. Something happened. I know it."

"Maybe you’re just paranoid." I say but I can feel it too.

"I’m really scard of that side of me. I blew up at you and tried to push you away. I don’t want to loose you."

"I’m not going anywhere. No matter what." we hug and go to our last 2 classes together. When we get back we still haven’t heard anything about her parents so Ash gets one of Kyla’s friends parents to let her stay there for a few days. She’s really on edge and my house is full of food. She made a turkey roast, corn bread, cheese cake and mac and cheese. Now she’s working on something with melted chocolate. I have to put a stop to this, my fridge is going to explode.

"Stop. Ash put the bowl down. You have to stop cooking. I love you but my fridge can’t hold any more. You just need to sleep." She’s ignoring me. She puts the chocolate from the bowl on a tray with wax paper and then shoves it into the fridge. She looks at me, her eyes dark, and I see her lip quiver a little. I hold out my arms and she falls into them crying.

"I think I made something happen to them."

"Shhh, it’s not your fault. If anything happened to them they deserved it for how they treated you." I help her up the stairs and into my room. We get in the bed and she stiffens. She turns to the wall shutting me out. I think she’s trying to make up for her "moment of weakness". We fall asleep on different sides of the bed. Tuesday goes by and there’s no notice about her parents. She’s pulling deep inside herself. I can feel the tension she’s holding in and there’s only one way to release it.