The request to go to the front office immediately following the bell had come during my fifth period AP Lit class. Usually, it was never a good thing when I got one of these requests, because in the past, that usually meant a referral or a suspension for fighting.

When I saw who this request was from, I knew the meeting definitely wasn't going to be all that stellar.

"Ah, Archer! It's good to see you. Thanks for stopping at the last minute."

I couldn't tell if Mrs. Lambert, my school appointed guidance counselor, actually meant this or not. Obviously I had nothing better to do than be late to lunch so we could have a meeting in her cramped little office.

"Sure," I said.

"Please, have a seat," Mrs. Lambert said, gesturing to the lone chair in front of her desk.

Trying to sit in the chair without banging my knees on her desk made me feel even more uncomfortable than I already was.

Mrs. Lambert spent a good minute cleaning her red, square-rimmed glasses, leaving me to wonder what I was doing here. Outside of one required meeting per semester to arrange my class schedule, Mrs. Lambert and I didn't have a lot to do with each other. As far as I was aware, that meeting wasn't until after Thanksgiving.

"So." I gave an awkward cough. "You wanted to see me, Mrs. Lambert."

"I certainly did." Mrs. Lambert finally seemed pleased with her cleaning job and slipped her glasses back on before fixing me with an unexpectedly intense stare. "To be frank, Archer, I'm concerned about you."

I opened my mouth to reply, but no sound came out. She was what now?

"I have a four-point-oh GPA," was what I eventually managed to say.

Were good grades something to be concerned about now too?

"I know you do," Mrs. Lambert said, tapping a finger on a piece of paper sitting on her desk. "I have your most recent report card right here."

"Then why --"

"I'm not concerned about your grades, Archer."

Even stranger about this whole thing was that Mrs. Lambert sounded completely serious.

"Have I given you any reason to be concerned about me?" I asked carefully.

Personally, I thought I'd been doing a pretty decent job of maintaining my mask of indifference. Where had I screwed up?

"Maybe not in so many words," Mrs. Lambert said. "But out of all your peers in the merit scholars' class, you're the only one who didn't submit a completed secondary education portfolio."

Crap.

That had been a stupid assignment anyway, full of fluff scholarship essays and family income questionnaires for financial aid or whatever. Not only was it pointless when I wasn't planning on going to college, it was also depressing as hell. As if I hadn't already been very aware of the fact that while my family may have owned a decently successful coffee house, we weren't raking in millions.

So, I couldn't fathom why I would expect my mother to take out numerous parent plus loans or whatever to finance a potentially useless degree that cost six figures.

"That's not like you, Archer," Mrs. Lambert continued. 

You have no idea what I'm like, I thought, digging my fingernails into the skin of my palms.

"Not everyone goes to college," I said to Mrs. Lambert, trying to sound at least somewhat respectful.

"True," she agreed. "But this was still an assignment you should've submitted for a grade."

"So, what, I should've made up the portfolio instead?"

"Well, it's not like Mr. Baker would've known the difference," Mrs. Lambert said. "Anyone else would've thrown down the names of a few colleges and called it good."

It took a lot of effort to bite back a retort of, "Then why don't you go read their portfolios instead?"

"You're not even the least bit interested in college? Maybe a trade school? An apprenticeship, perhaps?" Mrs. Lambert pressed, raising her eyebrows. "I would hope you have at least one or two post high school goals, Archer."

"Maybe I want to work at my family's coffee house for the rest of my life," I snapped.

"Great!" Mrs. Lambert slid my portfolio across the desk toward me. "Look into business management or marketing. Research where you can find ethically sourced coffee beans. The possibilities are endless, Archer."

I had no answer for this. What was I supposed to say?

Well, Mrs. Lambert, I've never really been sold on the idea of making it to my eighteenth birthday, so all this planning for the future is pointless.

"You're selling yourself short here," Mrs. Lambert said, her voice a touch softer. "I can tell you haven't given yourself the chance to think about your future because you feel like your first responsibility is to your family. You've mentioned them quite a few times over the years. That's admirable, of course, but don't you owe it to them to see how you can better yourself with an education?"

"Sure," I said, standing abruptly, snatching my stupid portfolio off her desk. "I'll get this to you before the end of the semester."

I left without waiting for a response. 

The hallways were mostly empty, everyone either at lunch or in class, so I didn't see the point in trying to hide the pissed off fury that must've been plastered all over my face. 

Of course I knew that, realistically, it was stupid to have let an otherwise bland assignment get under my skin. And yet it still had, and I didn't know — I wasn't — I couldn't think that far into the future, even if it was less than two years away.

Why that was, I had no idea. It was something I was still terrified to touch with a ten-foot pole, and I never dug any deeper than that.

  When I reached my locker, I threw the portfolio inside and slammed the door shut, barely pausing to make sure the thing closed properly. I was now late for lunch thanks to that little detour, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to stomach any of the pitiful sandwich and apple slices I'd packed.

Hiding out in the library until I managed to get it together seemed like the better alternative to pretending to do homework sitting in the cafeteria, but I knew Hadley was already waiting for me at the table I usually occupied, probably wondering where I was. 

The thought of that disappointed frown of hers had me heading to the cafeteria anyway. At some point, the desire to stand Hadley up had disappeared. I didn't feel the need to start doing it again either. And now, for some unfathomable reason, I was actively seeking out her company.

If I asked, she'd probably join me in the library too.

I was still debating whether I was going to ask when I rounded the corner to the cafeteria and came up short when my gaze at once landed on Hadley. She was somehow managing to look both nauseated and horrified at the same time, and it didn't take much guess work to figure out why.

That idiot Ty Ritter was sitting across from her, accompanied by another one of his football cronies -- Hayden something? -- and some girl whose name I didn't know. 

And I'd arrived with just enough time to hear Ritter say, "You do know his dad killed someone, right?"

I chose to focus on watching Hadley's face as she processed what Ritter had just said rather than the way I immediately felt like I'd been punched in the gut at the mention of my biological father. That much hadn't changed over the years.

I could tell Hadley was shocked by the news, but she seemed surprisingly calm when she said, "I don't believe you. You're lying."

The girl sitting across from Hadley shook her head, making some sympathetic tsk-ing noise. "Oh, Hadley. How could you not have known?"

"Yeah, I mean, it was all over the papers and the news," Ritter continued. 

It took effort to stay put and not go slam my fist into Ritter's smug face as he offered Hadley more gritty details. I'd heard all this before, had that night recounted (incorrectly and always with malice) by my classmates over and over again, and yet it still hadn't gotten any easier hearing it. 

"That isn't true." Now Hadley looked angry. "You're lying and this isn't funny."

Unlike before, it didn't seem like she was trying to defend me. This time she seemed legitimately upset listening to what these idiots were throwing at her and that was another first for me. Usually everyone else would either join in the ribbing or outright ignore it.

"We're not lying, Hadley," the girl told her. "Look it up on the internet. Google never lies."

"He's bad business, babe," Ritter agreed. "So be careful."

"Do you know, I don't think I've ever heard that version of the story before." It was somewhat amusing seeing the way all three of them stiffened at the sound of my voice as I walked over to join them at the table. "I appreciate your creativity, but that's not actually how it happened."

"Morales!" Ritter was acting like I was some old buddy of his, waving at me, which made me want to punch him even more. "Nice of you to finally show up, man. We were afraid you were going to leave Hadley here all on her own."

"Oh, were you waiting for me? Sorry to disappoint."

 If they wanted to play some game, antagonizing Hadley on my behalf like this, I was going to give it right back tenfold.

 "Well, go on then," I said, giving the idiot next to Ritter a friendly clap on the shoulder. "Don't let me stop you from finishing the story. You were just getting to the good bits. Or would you rather I set the record straight and tell you what really happened that night?"

I wasn't expecting Hadley to be the one to answer, reaching for my hand across the table like she wasn't even thinking about it. That feeling of being on the receiving end of a gut punch suddenly returned and for an entirely different reason that I didn't want to acknowledge.

"Archer, you really don't have to --"

"It's alright, Hadley," I said, slipping my hand free from hers. I wasn't going to be able to focus if she kept touching me like that. "If they want to know, I'll tell them. I don't have a problem with it."

I grabbed an empty chair from the table and swung it around, taking a seat and propping my elbows up on the table. 

"So. What should we talk about first?" I didn't wait for an answer and dived right into it. "How nice it was to see my mom with a guy who actually treated her right? Nothing wrong with that. How she was happy, obviously, right up until my abusive POS father found out. Or do you want to know what it was like finding my murdered stepfather in the middle of our kitchen floor? How I had to testify at the trial next?"

The silence that followed my brutally honest statements was unsettling. I was half expecting some kind of rebuttal from Ritter at least, but a minute into it, I could tell he likely wasn't going to say a single word.

"Well?" I pressed. "It's not a boring story, I assure you. I don't think you're giving it the attention it deserves." 

The girl suddenly shoved back from the table and stood, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "Well, we should leave the happy couple alone now, you guys." 

"But we were just —"

The glare she fixed the two other boys with probably would've had me scampering off in another life. "Seriously. It's time to go."

It wasn't a stretch to say this girl had Ritter and the other guy by the neck as she led them away from the table. As soon as they were out of sight, it was as if they ceased to exist in my mind, and my attention immediately went to Hadley. 

I didn't want to put a name to the expression on her face as she stared back at me. It didn't seem like pity, but the way her eyes were suddenly a lot brighter than before had me desperately wishing she wasn't about to start crying. 

"Archer." Hadley's voice was so quiet when she said my name, I almost didn't hear her. "I don't — "

"Get up," I said abruptly, now on my feet. 

I wasn't about to let Hadley go with the assumption that whatever she'd been told about me was the truth. I needed to set the record straight, however painful it had the potential to be.

"Excuse me?" Hadley said, taken aback.

"Get up."

She jumped to her feet, snatching her bag, and I took her by the arm then and there, leaving a mess of food behind on the table as I steered her from the cafeteria. 

"Archer, what are you doing?" Hadley demanded, trying to free herself from my grasp. "The bell is going to ring in a few minutes, we're going to get caught!"

"So what?" I said, urging her to move faster. "Like that even matters."

"I'm sorry, but skipping class does matter," she insisted. "No matter how you feel about our fellow classmates."

Did it though?

Hadley managed to pull her arm free when we reached the library, but she kept close to my side, following me through the rows of bookcases until we reached the corner in the back where my favorite armchair was hidden.

"Look, if I had it my way, you never would have found out about my family's deep, dark secret," I told her brusquely. "I'm sure you can understand why this is something I don't usually broadcast. But if you think I'm just going to let you walk away under the assumption that what they told you is actually the truth, you're insane."

Hadley seemed like she didn't know what to make of what I'd just told her. I wondered if she was going to change her mind and leave, but all she said was a simple, "Okay."

"Okay," I repeated. I pointed to the armchair. "Sit."