Thursday

After yesterday, I found myself drawing more often, and I found myself drawn to the basketball gym again. It was likely to see me with music in my ears anyway, but now I found myself craving it.

I had to remind myself that it had only been last night that Connor and I had sat and talked. We’d stayed at the park until after dark, but my father never called back.

No doubt he’d been immersed into his character’s newest drama, all worries of his teenage daughter gone, and thoughts only for what his characters would do next. I had found him sitting in his studio, eyes wide and bloodshot when I finally got home.

When my eyes focused on the picture, the picture in my mind stared back out at me from my sketchpad. Lunch was fast fading as my pencils skimmed and dented the paper.

Today, we were playing basketball in the gym, so I patiently waited for the bell to ring and the kids to file in. I pulled out my colored pencils and started filling in the blacks and whites of my dad.

Sixth period P.E. was the smallest class with only ten people, and as I sat on the sidelines, waiting to be picked for a team, my thoughts drifted to Connor. Not for the first time, I wondered why he wouldn’t want to make a basket- why he’d miss intentionally.

“Ashton,” I heard my name called out irritably, and I looked up into the coach’s hard eyes. She pointed at a group of four, and I realized that I’d been picked.

The bell killed our spirit not too long later and sent us skittering in all different directions. I could find Kayleigh or just head to the Newsroom. The paper was an “essential part” of our school spirit, so Kayleigh and I had decided to help take some of the load off the other four kids running it.

All I did was hand out assignments, one of those, do-nothing jobs. It fit me just perfectly. I decided suddenly to go find Kayleigh, breaking off my thoughts completely, and spinning to a new train of thought.

“Ashton,” Kayleigh called from across the Newsroom five minutes later. I was almost late for class only making it into the room seconds before the bell trilled over our heads.

“Where were you?!” I asked irritated. “I was looking everywhere for you.”

“Oh,” she deflated, “you were? Chris walked me to class. I told him you’d probably already be here.” At the mention of Chris, though, she pepped right back up.

“So, y’all are official now, good for you.” I heard the slight bitterness in my voice, but sighed when Kayleigh failed to.

Painfully, I made it through seventh hour and then eighth. The bus ride choked me with B.O. and hairspray reapplications.

Today was the day I had to clean up for Mom’s weekly inspection, so I waded through the beer and pill bottles. Silently, I tackled it.

Three hours later, I was running away. The house was clean, and mom was sober. Still, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I needed to get away from Dad’s pretending and Mom’s emptiness, needed to escape the agent’s questioning eye searching for answers she didn’t really want to know.

This time, though, I wasn’t headed for the park. In truth, I hadn’t a single clue where I was going. In the cold, through the cold, I ran with the hope of never needing to stop. Even when I bowled someone over, I stood and tried to begin running again. Well, until the person grabbed my wrist firmly, but still somehow soft.

“Ash, stop.”

“Connor?” I asked, and stopped fighting. My eyes focused. “What are you doing?”

After the hours of talking to him, I was comfortable. He’d taken to calling me Ash not long after we’d started to talk, explaining that Ashton was simply too long.

“Seems that I have more of a right to ask that since you just knocked me over.” He smiled crookedly.

“Just going for a run,” I lied, but he let me, sensing my tension most likely.

“You run like a guy,” he told me. “I think from now on, I’ll call you A.J.”

Last night, he’d found out my middle name was Jade. “I do not run like a guy!” I denied indignantly. He smiled and we began to walk.

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