Kendall

Destiny pulls her red truck in to the student parking lot outside of our high school on Monday morning. I hop out of the passenger seat, dragging my school bag out with me. Rachel slips out of the backseat and joins Destiny and I as we walk in to the locker room, shoving our lacrosse bags in the lockers.

"What do you think Amanda's going to make us do at practice today?" Rachel asks, tucking a strand of honey blond hair behind her ear.

"I don't know but it's not going to be good," Destiny replies, sighing loudly. "We sucked majorly."

"We needed you Kendall," Rachel whines. "It's a shame you got sick and couldn't play."

"Yeah," I say half heartedly. "It was a shame."

Destiny looks at me, checking to make sure that her twin's comment has not upset me. I didn't tell Rachel the truth. She isn't as reserved as Destiny is and has a problem with blurting things out when she isn't supposed to. You can never be sure if a secret will truly be safe with Rachel, but Destiny can keep a secret to her grave.

"I'm going to go find Andrew!" Rachel squeals before skipping through the doors that lead to the Junior school lockers.

"How is she always so happy?" I ask. "Like, come on. It's seven o'clock in the morning." Destiny laughs at my question, shrugging her shoulders.

We walk towards the heavy metal door that leads directly to the hallway that contains the Junior school lockers, heaving them open with a screech of the old hinges moving.

As soon as we enter the overly air conditioned hall, I bump into a tall dirty blond haired boy wearing a blue hooded long sleeve shirt and khaki cargo shorts.

"Sorry," I mumble, finally looking up to see who it is. My breath catches in my chest as I realize that it is Josh. I knew that I'd be seeing him today because I always do, but I wasn't ready for it to be so soon. I don't know what to say. I don't know what I want to say.

"I'll see you at lunch Kendall," Destiny says, walking in the direction of her locker, still marked with a red X.

"Hey," Josh says.

"Hi."

"So, um, your parents are coming back today, right?" he asks, clearly trying to make small talk. This isn't like us. We've never made small talk, not even when we first met. It always felt so natural to talk to one another, but now it's just awkward.

"Mhm." I shift the position of my feet awkardly.

"That's good."

"How's your face feeling?" I ask, looking at the cut on his lip and the bruises concealing his eye and cheek. "I mean, the cut and black eye."

"Oh, yeah, it's fine. The swelling's gone down and the cut's scabbed over."

"That's good." We stand there in silence, both trying to avoid bringing up what we both really want, and at the same time don't want, to talk about.

Josh finally breaks the silence. "Are we going to talk about what we need to talk about or are we going to start discussing the weather like strangers do?"

"I see you've finally figured out what it is that happened," I mutter, the words coming out more harshly than I expected.

"Maybe we should just stick to talking about the weather," he mumbles. I roll my eyes and turn to leave, not wanting to have a conversation with him right now. "Wait, I didn't mean that."

"Yes you did."

"Fine I did but we need to talk about this Kend."

The bell rings, interrupting the moment. Saved by the bell is all I can manage to think as I start on my way to my locker to gather my notebook and textbook for first period AP statistics. What a great way to start off every school day...

As I grab the heavy hardcover book out of my locker, a small piece of folded up paper drops out of the front cover, onto the linoleum floor. I bend over and snatch it up, opening the note as I walk to class.

Meet me for lunch at the bleachers? I want to show you something.
-J

I inspect the typed letters of the words on the small slip of computer paper, wondering what it is that Josh needs to show me at the bleachers.