NAYELI'S FINGERS TREMBLE against Caden's no matter how tightly she grips his hand.

          She feels the stares on them—her especially—as he pulls her body towards him once they've reached the end of the hall. Her eyes close when his lips meet hers and she feels his smile. When his lips part slightly, she touches his arm, causing him to immediately back up.

          "People are staring," she whispers in the space between them as her eyes skim the hallway. Her eyes catch Jeremiah's, who looks away instantly and permits himself to get consumed by traffic.

          "Fine, fine." Caden grins, beckoning her towards the door next to them. "Go. I don't want you to be late for your meeting."

          She watches him take a seat on the bench right outside the door. "Aren't you going to class?" She frowns slightly as he pulls out his phone and throws a sheepish smile her way.

          "There's an English project due today," he says, sliding one leg over the other and settling into the bench, "and I didn't do it."

          There are dark circles surrounding his eyes, matching the intensity of his irises, and exhaustion lining the contours of his features. She watches him pull up a game on his phone, his fingers immediately circulating the screen as he begins a new level.

          "I'll meet you after" is all she says before slipping into the college advisor's office, five minutes late to the meeting.

          Ms. Davis is sitting on her desk, fingernails tapping against the keyboard in front of her computer screen, and her gaze flutters to Nayeli briefly when the door clicks behind her. Her lips tip upwards when she settles in, kindness flowing in her eyes, as she gestures to the empty seat across her.

          "Nayeli," she says, sounds of typing and clicking merging with her voice as she pulls up her records. "How are your applications going?" she asks after a handful of seconds.

          "They're going," she murmurs, tracing her legs against the wooden chair, sneaking in a soft laugh after her sentence.

          "Good, good," the college advisor replies absentmindedly, scrolling through a screen Nayeli doesn't have a view of. "And you wanted to talk about financial aid and scholarships today, right?"

          "Yes," she responds instantly, hooking her thumbs underneath her legs to terminate their trembling, "I'd like to know how to apply."

          "Okay." Her eyes finally land on Nayeli. "There's the FAFSA application for federal aid that I'm encouraging all students to fill out." She drops her gaze to reach into the side drawer. "I'll give you a sheet that highlights that information and then you can go online and fill that out right now with my assistance." She points to the spare computer table in the corner of the office without looking up.

           She nods right away, feelings of assurance sporadically spreading across her like intermittent drops of rain.

           She watches the computer start up, thoughts drifting to the boy on the other side of the door. Her heart rate immediately gains momentum, palms sweaty against the computer table. They've been waltzing dangerously close to the breakup line.

          Sometimes things dust themselves under the rug, fabricating a facade that there really isn't anything wrong. Sometimes she forgets her reserved nature and concealing behavior drive him to the brink of insanity. Sometimes he forgets his tendency to dive right into everything doesn't frustrate her.

          She follows the instructions on the sheet to create an account for the online FAFSA website, breezing through the first few questions that ask for her name and home address. She comes to a stop at the eighth question.

         Your social security number.

          A quick breeze through the remainder of the questions induces her fingers to tremble how they were earlier. She rubs her sweaty palms down the front of her pants as her gaze runs down the list of unanswered questions.

          Are you a U.S. citizen?

          Her lips are chapped and dry as her tongue flicks across them in an effort to separate them. Her fingers won't stop shaking in her lap as she glances at Ms. Davis leaning back in her office chair.

          "This question—"

          Her throat is dry when the words are finally thrown into the air, but she's glad she managed to get them out. They prompt her advisor to slide a chair over to where Nayeli is.

          "Which one are you having trouble with?"

          She wordlessly points at the question with her cursor, incapable of configuring a coherent sentence. Her fingers are quivering on the mouse as she attempts to steady the cursor's rampant movements on the screen.

          Ms. Davis turns to her, concern inscribed in her face, as she lowers her voice. "Are you not a citizen?"

         The room is scorching, the heat searing through her body like she's on fire. Her fingers are crumbling into ashes like leaves in a wildfire. The walls of the room are caving in against her will, quenching her movements.

          "No."

          The entire keyboard is a mess of letters spilling onto each other, undecipherable. The woman next to her is hunched over the edge of the table, arms crossed.

          "Well," she begins, seemingly selecting her words with deliberation, "you wouldn't be eligible to apply for this." Her voice is low even though there isn't anyone else but them in the confines of her office.

          She refuses to make eye contact, focusing on the indiscernible letters of the keyboard.

          "What about scholarships?" Desperation clouds her voice, tinting the edges of her syllables. "Nothing I can apply for?" It's a question, but the detachment of hope from her words renders it a statement instead.

          "The scholarships that I know of require applicants to be citizens of the U.S.," Ms. Davis utters, compressing her hand into a fist, mouth tightened in contemplation. "I'll definitely keep my eyes open for more."

          Her statement exudes finality, so Nayeli knows the meeting is over. After she returns to her desk and begins typing on her loud keyboard, nails clicking once again, Nayeli stands. Her chair scrapes against the linoleum after she swiftly logs off the computer.

           "I encourage you to apply for public schools," her voice fills the room when she's reaching for her bookbag. "Tuition is much more affordable."

          Nayeli drowns out the remainder of her monologue, offering mere nods and finally a thank-you after she concludes her advice.

          The door clicks softly behind her and she finds herself wishing it would've slammed harder, reverberating across the whole floor and grasping everyone's attention. She's screaming internally as she traipses to the bench a few feet away.

           "I downloaded this app that let me hack into the game," Jeremiah's voice cuts through the empty hallway, "and now I have unlimited keys."

          If her mind wasn't preoccupied, her first thought would've been in regards to hearing him speak. He's always quiet, overpowered by his friends, preferring to sink into a corner instead of making his presence known.

          Her eyes glaze over him taking his phone out to show Caden, right before his head tips upward and his relaxed posture immediately stiffens.

          "Li," Caden says, taking his friend's abrupt silence as an indication that someone has approached them. As soon as he sees the worry lines on her face, the smile from his vanishes. "What's wrong?"

          He slides off the bench, his hand on her wrist before she can even formulate a sentence. She catches Jeremiah from her periphery sliding his phone in his pocket and amplifying the distance between them.

          "I'll catch you later," he says to Caden, his voice barely audible over the sound of her thought epidemic.

          Jeremiah's eyes meet hers over her boyfriend's shoulder and she doesn't miss the way they soften around the edges, screaming soliloquies through his silence. He usually takes his glasses off after classes, but he still has them on, and they're resting on the bridge of his nose before he pushes them up. There's concern carved in his features, his body movements, his entire physical appearance. And it reminds her too much of how Ms. Davis' aura was around her, so she looks away.

           Caden absentmindedly waves at his friend, before bringing both of his hands to cup her face, fingertips raw and scorched, further sharpening the pain that sears to her head. She wants to fling his hands away, to step out of his heated touch, to detach her body from his.

          "Do you want to sit down?" He's scanning her face, the pads of his thumbs brushing her skin with a burning intensity that makes her cower. Her heart is racing fast and she knows her boyfriend can sense it in the space between them.

          He's gesturing to the bench behind him when she finally makes eye contact. Her movements are limp enough for him to guide her over and compel her to sit down.

          "I'm okay."

          "Li." Persistence drips in that single syllable, his tone implying he doesn't believe her. She's not surprised, though; she can hardly believe herself either. Her tongue is coarse against the roof of her mouth and her so-called affirmation was submerged in dejection and trepidation. "What happened during the meeting? What'd she say?"

           She shakes her head after a few beats, but it's enough for Caden to sigh and say, "We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

          They stay there for a while, silence drawing itself between their outlines and shadows, silhouetted against the curves of her body and the veins in his forearms. The flickering light bulb above them draws streaks of brown shades in his blond hair, which is curving around the nape of his neck and resting at the tips of his ears. 

          Her thoughts are running amok, analogous to the manner in which a couple of freshmen are frolicking down the hall, shooting glances down empty corridors on the lookout for school security officers.

          Hopelessness writhes in her mind and tangles around her body to the point of suffocation. She can't speak. She can't properly think. She doesn't know how to explain to another person what she can't decipher on her own.

          Her hand is in his and she's brought back to the moment.

          "Let's just skip last period," he says, reminding her that classes are still going on, that she's still at school. "How about we go somewhere together before we head to mine later?"

          She nods gradually, bringing her legs up to her chest.

          "Can we go to yours?" His voice is soft, right about her ear, slipping and traveling through her veins, soft blades against bruised surfaces. And she feels her soul slithering out of her body, rage consuming her figure.

          She hates herself for everything her mind signals her to do, every single thought that treads the waters of her system, every action of hers taken without circumspect.

          "No," she says, scrambling off the bench and out of his embrace, extracting herself from his touch. It comes out with much more force than she had intended, catching the attention of the pair sitting at the end of the hall. "I need a break—we need a break."

          Caden's eyebrows are furrowed. Her sentence and rapid betrayal of his touch are capricious to him.

          "Break from what?" he finally asks, stringing the three words together gradually. It takes a couple more moments for the meaning behind her sentence to register and when it does, his eyes are glassy crystalline specks. He sucks in a deep breath while scratching the back of his neck, right where his hair ends.

           They speak at the same time, him asking where he went wrong and her profusely apologizing, giving the pair down the hall a good view of the storm brewing.

          You didn't do anything wrong, she wants to say, but all that comes out is another apology soaked in anguish followed by, "I can't do this right now. Neither can you." It's a lie; he's been wrapping up the loose threads of their relationship for the past couple of months. If anyone can keep it alive, it's him. "Caden, I..."

          There's more to say, so much more. But, she doesn't know how to say it. She's cut off by the security officer patrolling the halls, ordering the two kids a couple of feet away from them to head to class. When he reaches them, Caden's eyes are still on her and her heart is in between them.

          "Excuse me," the officer speaks, breaking the trance that has developed, "where are you supposed to be right now?"

          Caden's the one to speak. "We'll leave. Sorry for causing you trouble." The colloquialism in his manner is alarming and as Nayeli meets his gaze, she can't help but wonder whether the words were meant for her as well.

          The three-month-old's consistent screaming has become second nature to Nayeli, regardless of the short time she's lived. Her crying echoes off paint-chipped walls in the dimly lit room. They need to change their light bulbs, get a fresh coat of paint, move into a bigger place.

          She steps out of her shoes, abandoning them on the dusty doormat, and frowning at the black snow boots caked in between others.

          Suppressing a sigh, she unlocks the door to the apartment, instantly met with clattering in the kitchen, faint dialogue spilling from the TV speakers, and, of course, her mother's newborn's insistent crying.

          She runs across the threshold, abandoning her bookbag at the front door, as soon as she sees the baby, draped in a measly-folded blanket teetering on the edge of the couch. Her crying declines slightly once she's in Nayeli's arms.

          Daniel's footsteps thump against the wooden floor when he enters the living room after abandoning whatever he was doing in the kitchen. There's so much she wants to say when his hand rests on her lower back and he whispers a greeting into her ear, but all she does is hand his daughter back to him, disgust lining the edges of her eyes.

          "Where are you going?" he asks, inserting a hefty laugh.

          She wordlessly heads towards the one and only bedroom in the apartment, rifling through her mother's side of the closet in search of the shimmery blouse she had planned to wear. The smell of her flowery perfume still clings to the fabric and whisks her to when she last wore it, when times were better, when the man who's a stranger more than her mom's future husband hadn't carved himself a home in their small living space.

          She bites her tongue after slipping into the shirt, reaching for the pre-wrapped gift encased in a gift bag for Su. She touches up her makeup before heading out the door. Her feet slip into the pair of heels discarded at the front door, shooting one last glance at the newborn in Daniel's arms before exiting.

          Her heart's beating fast like it always is when she encounters Daniel. Since he works during her school hours, they're home at the same time. She swipes through her phone, shooting her mom a text to ask of her whereabouts, before heading onto the packed streets.

          She responds that she's out grocery shopping, followed by an inquiry of how her day went, when Nayeli boards the train headed downtown. She types out a reply, which is incapable of being sent because she's underground.

          Her heart is thumping, faster than it is when she's around Daniel, faster than it was during the meeting with her college advisor earlier. It's an eerie sort of feeling, clawing against her ribcage, compressing the contents aligning it, coercing her to scream.

          But, she can't. She's numb. The words don't make sense no matter how many times Su repeats them. And it's not fair for her to continuously repeat them, Nayeli knows.

          Accident.

          "They called it a hit-and-run," Su whispers, fists capturing the fabric of the couch in her hands. There are shards of glass sprinkling the floor, entangled in the rug beneath them, shining like her blouse is in the darkness of the room.

          Grief is not a seven-step process; it's a fusion of guilt, anger, shock, and everything else all at once. All the steps are merging into one as she paces around the expansive living room.

          Nayeli doesn't know why the lights are off, why Su is permitting the city lights to irradiate the entirety of the living room. All she knows is that she can't bring herself to cry, to feel tears stain her cheeks again as they did outside Jeremiah's car earlier.

          "There has to be more to the story," Su is still speaking, blonde hair covering the expression lined on her face. "What was he even doing on fifty-eighth?"

          Nayeli stills, the heels of her shoes ramming into the rug. The memories wash over like a tsunami, drenching her from head to toe, hindering her ability to breathe. She's clawing against the current of the wave, consuming the water around her until she's reached her body's maximum capacity.

          "Fifty-eighth?" Her voice is shaking when she says it. She had once mindlessly told him she lived around there because it's exquisite with glassed skyscrapers, a bustling atmosphere, and bright lights. It's the opposite of the world she exists in: a small corner of Brooklyn's cheapest neighborhood.

          Su nods from her place on the couch, finally turning her head and providing a view of her puffy eyes and blemished cheeks. Nayeli averts her gaze, guilt consuming her. She says something about how news like this is usually delivered in person, but there was a catastrophic accident lining the streets for a couple of blocks past fifty-eighth, so there was nothing they could do.

          "Apparently," she says, her voice hitching throughout the entire explanation, "there were three or four guys driving from some party and they drove away after hitting him." She blinks furiously, her sobs wracking her frame. Nayeli takes a seat at last, sinking into the loveseat Caden was sitting on the edge of last time she saw him. "They said they contacted our parents and—"

          She stops speaking and Nayeli doesn't provoke her to continue. She reaches for her manicured hand wrapped around her bare arms, entangling their fingers.

          It hurts when she digs her nails into the palm of her skin, but it hurts even more to be the reason she's crying in the first place.