Apparently, given my history in the system as well as my low-income status, I qualified for several grants that would pay for me to take classes. As in I wouldn’t have to pay for it out of pocket. As in, I no longer had an excuse for not doing this.

I had taken the folder of paperwork from Mrs. Randolph with a promise I’d fill it out and return it to her before the fall semester’s July 30^th deadline. She had said she could expedite the financial aid process so that I would be able to start at the end of August when classes started.

She had been kind and helpful. And I hadn’t wanted to knock her teeth out. I was super proud of myself.

I clutched the red folder to my chest and walked out into the hot, summer sunshine. I knew better than to get my hopes up. I just knew something would come along and snatch this golden opportunity from my needy grasp.

Things like this just didn’t happen for Ellie McCallum.

And there he was again.

I saw the slouched shoulders and dark hair darting between the trees, skulking as though trying to go unnoticed.

Just like that, my tenuous good mood evaporated and I became angry again. As though Flynn Hendrick were a bad omen.

One that I needed to get rid of…quickly.

So I followed him.

I watched as he skirted around people as he hurried toward his destination. I also couldn’t help but notice the way girls looked at him.

Huh. That was new.

He had never been a guy to get the right type of attention when I had known him. He was a joke. A freak. Not the sort of boy that girls lusted after.

Apparently things had changed.

Because even though he kept his head down, girls were definitely checking him out.

They just didn’t realize what a weirdo he was.

An older man stopped Flynn and I ducked behind a tree to watch them, fascinated in spite of myself. Flynn fidgeted, his hands jammed into the pocket of his khakis. I snickered seeing them. He always wore the same thing. Khakis and a long sleeved button down shirt, no matter how hot it was. The guy really hadn’t done himself any favors by dressing like a dork. He was such an easy mark. As though he were begging to be picked on.

I took a sadistic joy in realizing he was still awkward and messed up.

Just like me.

But then he did something that surprised me. He lifted his head and smiled at the older man. Then he laughed. And I could hear it from my hiding spot behind the tree.

It had been a long time since I had seen Flynn Hendrick smile. In all the years I had known him, in all the time I had made it my mission to hurt and humiliate him, he hardly ever smiled and he very rarely laughed. I often made sure that he never had a reason to.

But he was laughing now and it completely transformed him.

My heart twisted painfully in my chest at the sight.

Because Flynn looked happy.

Freaky Flynn looked content and at ease.

My hatred and bitterness clawed inside of me, desperate to get out. Wanting to be free. To bring this guy back down to the depths of hell with me.

Why did he get to be happy? What rules of the universe deemed him worthy of joy while I was suffocating in my own despair?

Fuck Flynn Hendrick and his smile. Fuck him and his apparent wonderful life.

I was having a hard time breathing. I wanted to leave. But I couldn’t stop watching this man that I blamed for so much. This man I had tried so hard to bring down and who was clearly better off for it.

Flynn turned his head, as though feeling the weight of my stare. The sun shone down on him like a freaking halo. How fitting.

And then he found me. As though I had a neon sign pointing in my direction. He frowned and I knew he was trying to place me. And I knew the moment when he recognized me.

He began to rub obsessively at the back of his hands. Something I remembered him doing when he became upset.

The rubbing became more pronounced, as though he were trying to remove his skin.

The older man beside him said something but he didn’t respond. He continued to stand there, like a deer in headlights, staring at me as though he had seen a ghost, rubbing at his hands over and over again.

Then some cruel part inside me that had been left to fester all these years lifted its ugly head. I grinned at Flynn’s discomfort. It made me feel good.

I raised my hand and wiggled my fingers in his direction. Letting him know that I saw him too.

Flynn’s hands stopped rubbing, as though he were making a conscious effort to stop himself. He shoved his hands back in his pockets, his eyes never leaving mine. I was surprised to see a strength that had never been there before.

It left me feeling weak in comparison.

He turned to the man beside him, giving me his back. Letting me know that he didn’t care if I was standing there or not. That I didn’t bother him. Not anymore.

And Flynn stood on the steps of a brick building, pretending he had never seen me.

But I noticed that he had pulled his hands out of his pockets again and was once more rubbing them furiously.

-Flynn-

Many years ago…

I couldn’t get comfortable. My mother hadn’t changed my sheets this week and they are rough on my arms and legs. I hate them. They hurt. I don’t want to roll over because then I’ll feel the fabric.

So I lie there in my bed, rigid, staring up at my ceiling.

I don’t sleep.

I can’t. Not with the sheets touching me.

I was staring a new school tomorrow.

Everything would be new.

I didn’t like new.

I wanted to be back in Massachusetts where everything was the same. Especially my house.

The bathroom was two doors down on the left. The light switch was just inside on the right wall. My room was brown with a green border. My bed was beside the closet. The stairs had exactly twelve steps.

It was the house I had lived in my entire life. It was the last place I had been with Dad before he went to heaven.

I didn’t like West Virginia. I didn’t like the house we live in now that I don’t recognize.

Here the bathroom is beside mine and it confuses me. My room is blue not brown. And there are fourteen steps. I hate counting them. Because it isn’t right.

It makes me anxious.

My mom tells me to stop being silly. She says that this is a fresh start. I don’t understand what that means.

I start rubbing my hands back and forth. Back and forth. Down my hands and back up again. Running over the smooth skin. Over and over again.

I lie there until I can’t take the feel of the sheets anymore. I rip them off my bed and throw them out the window. That makes me feel better.

My mother comes in to see what the noise is. When she sees my window wide open and the sheets and blankets gone, she gets me some new ones and makes up the bed again.

These sheets feel much better.

But I still can’t sleep.

So I lie there rubbing my hands. Over and over.

Until the sun comes up.

Wellsburg High School is much bigger than my last one. There were people everywhere.

“Stop rubbing your hands, Flynn,” my mother said as she pulls into the parking lot of my new school.

Telling me to stop only makes me rub them harder.

Up and down. Over and over again.

My mother reaches out to take my hand but I pull away. I hate when she touches me. She usually didn’t. I don’t like it.

“Flynn, please try and make an effort to get along with the other kids. Let’s make this time different,” she said with a sound in her voice I didn’t understand.

Her eyes are wet and I frown. Why was she crying?