“Just surprised you remember who I am is all.”

   She sighed, dropping her shoulders, and stared at the ground. “I was at your game,” she said, as though it was going to make up for years of neglect.

   “I didn’t see you.”

   “I went in disguise.”

   I rolled my eyes. “Of course you did.”

   She pushed off the door frame and looked like she wanted to come to me. Maybe say something more than the few words we occasionally exchanged. “I tried” is all she said, before walking backwards into the guesthouse and shutting the door.

   Guesthouse—I should probably stop calling it that, considering she’d been living there for the past five years.

   “She tried,” a deep voice boomed from behind me. Great.

   I turned toward the voice, arms still crossed. “Colonel.”

   He eyed me up and down and raised his eyebrows. My body went rigid. I balled my hands into fists behind my crossed arms. I knew what his expression meant. It meant that my crossed arms and casual posture were no way to greet a colonel, regardless of whether he was my dad or not.

   “You didn’t come home last night.”

   No hello. No how are you, son? Nothing.

   I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off. He always did. “Midnight curfew,” he said. Then he paused for a beat, his jaw clenched. “I don’t know why you’re still messing around with that shit. Shooting a ball through a hoop won’t help you when the enemy’s pulling the trigger on an AK aimed at your damn head.”

   He spun on his heels and walked away.

   “Fuck you,” I said under my breath but then quickly raised my eyes. His back was still turned. He hadn’t heard. Thank God. I didn’t feel like an ass beating today.

   After such amazingly heartwarming conversations with both my parents, I decided I needed to get out of the house. So I did what I always did. I ran.

   Somehow, I ended up in the bushes where we’d found Abby’s things the night before. I wanted to make sure that she hadn’t left anything behind. It wasn’t like I went out of my way. I was there to run anyway. And it wasn’t like I was hoping to find something just so it gave me a reason to go to her house and give it to her. I was just . . . fuck it. Who was I kidding? I wanted to see her.

   Unfortunately for me, there was nothing around. But that didn’t stop me from stalking her, waiting for a glimpse of her outside her house. There were a bunch of kids playing in the front yard. Mary was there, too, sitting in the same spot that Abby and I had occupied only hours earlier.

   Forty-five minutes, I waited.

   I never saw her.

   I drove out to the half-court I’d been going to since I was a kid and shot baskets until the sun went down. I picked up food on the way home and ate in my room, where I stayed. I didn’t see either of my parents for the rest of the night.

   I went to bed early, hoping to get a full night’s sleep so I could actually focus the next day, but thoughts of Abby infiltrated my mind. I tossed and turned all night until my alarm finally went off. School was the last thing I wanted to deal with.

   You know what the problem with high school is? There is way too much of it. I figured everything I needed to learn could have been compressed into two hours a day. I’d have enjoyed it a lot more if I had to devote only a couple of hours of my life each day to educating myself on the subjects I actually gave a shit about. Two hours. That was all it would take.

   There was absolutely no need for lunch breaks and cafeterias, which were nothing more than a source of social awkwardness and opportunities for people like Hannah to develop and show off her hard-earned social status.

   I started to pick up the apple off my tray, but she took my arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. She was speaking to Sophie, her best friend. Something about a sale on bags. Tuning her out, I decided that leaving the apple would be better than having to deal with the future conversation of how it was important that we show a level of togetherness in public settings. Hannah—on the outside—was every guy’s wet dream. Perfectly straight brown hair, perfect blue eyes, perfect legs, perfect skin, perfect cheerleader body. She may have even been the perfect girlfriend, she just wasn’t perfect for me.

   I looked around the cafeteria and settled my gaze on a girl sitting alone at a table in the corner of the room. Our eyes locked, and I smiled at her.

   She blushed and looked away.

   This was my life. Everyone either had me on a pedestal or was afraid of me. Why? My hot girlfriend and the ability to shoot a ball through a metal hoop? Granted, I worked hard for the second one. The first, not so much.

   The loner girl stood up and made her way to the exit. As I watched her leave, my gaze caught on a figure through the windows, sitting underneath a tree. I squinted, trying to get a better look.

   It couldn’t be.

   She sat cross-legged, with her hair up. Her head was lowered, and it appeared that she was looking down at something in her hand. A scraping sound snapped me out of my daze. I didn’t realize it was my chair being pushed back until I was almost standing.

   “So you’ll come with us tonight, right?” Hannah’s voice sounded far away.

   My eyes focused on the blonde girl sitting outside. Her head started bopping up and down. She must’ve been listening to music. I found myself smiling as I watched her.

   “Babe!” Hannah tried to get my attention.

   I blinked, trying to switch focus. Turning to her, I asked, “What?” It came out harsher than I’d intended.

   Her eyes widened, and I knew I was going to pay for that later. “Will you drive us to the mall after school?”

   I squared my shoulders and took a step back. The chair behind me fell and hit the floor with a loud clank. “What, Hannah? No. I’m working!”

   “Babe,” she pleaded. All eyes were on us. I must’ve been louder than I thought.

   “Hannah, I can’t.”

   I chanced a glimpse out the window. She was standing now, lifting her backpack onto her shoulders. Her head was still lowered.

   I needed to see if it was her.

   A hand on my wrist pulled me back to my surroundings.

   “Babe,” Hannah said again.

   I looked out the window. She was leaving.

   I shook my hand out of Hannah’s grasp and gathered my shit. “Fuck.”

   And then I walked out of the room and chased after her.

   Abby.

   By the time I got out to the tree, she was nowhere to be seen. I searched the parking lot, the hallways, and the library. Nothing.