Ugly girl

“Yeah,” he groans. “Coach is too concerned with Slade being his star player.”

“Trust me, he’ll see your worth and besides, Slade is a senior. Soon enough, he’ll be out of here and the spotlight will be back on you,” I reach out and squeeze his arm. “Just don’t give up on this yet, okay? We just have to stick with it and we’ll be alright.”

“Yeah, that’s what I keep telling myself.”

I give him an encouraging smile and pull him along, hoping to God that Blake can find it within himself to appreciate and thrive in this new lifestyle.

We walk into the library and I instantly find the librarian who looks shocked to see students in here before the bell. “Oh, can I help you with something?” she asks, pleasantly surprised.

“Yeah,” Blake says. “Where do you keep all the old yearbooks?”

“Yearbooks?” she questions, taken back from the strange request. “They’re in the back with all the school memorabilia.”

“Thanks,” I smile as Blake nods and starts for the back of the small library. I take it all in as I walk through. I don’t think I’ve actually stepped foot in here before. It’s much smaller than I’d thought it would be. Back home the library in our house seemed bigger and the one at our old school was bigger than the public one. This here, this is almost comical.

Considering the size of the library, it actually takes us far longer to find what we’re looking for than it should, but the second we find them, the math starts as we try to work out which years mom would have attended. Again, it takes us way too long. Blake and I are sporty and creative. Math isn’t exactly something either of us excel at.

We grab a whole heap of yearbooks that we assume are the years mom would have been here and dump them at a table. Blake grabs one while I grab another and we instantly start flicking. “What exactly are we looking for? I don’t really know what she looked like.”

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Shay said she kind of looked like me, but maybe scan through all the names. We don’t want to miss anything.”

He nods and gets busy while I do the same.

I flick through the pages and it almost seems as though it’s a race between me and Blake. I want to be the first to lay eyes on my teenage mom, but from the intense way Blake is sca

“UH-HUH,” he yells, way too loudly for a library. “I found her. Look.”

The yearbook comes sliding over the table and I catch it as best I can while the book I had open goes flying to the side. I quickly scan the page and find her instantly, no need to search the names and figure out which one she is. It’s crystal clear. Shay was right. “I look just like her.”

“Yeah,” Blake laughs, clearly forgetting about the time limit he put on this little project. “You do. It’s insane actually. You guys look like you could be twins.”

“How old do you think she is here?”

“Judging by the year of the book, I’d say she was maybe fifteen or sixteen.”

“Wow,” I murmur, feeling a sense of completeness filling my black soul. I didn’t realize just how much I needed this.

Without thinking, I grab my notebook out of my bag and tear a corner from a page before slipping it in the yearbook as a bookmark. I put the notebook down on the table and start flicking again. “Bookmark all the pages with mom on it and I’ll get copies.”

Blake doesn’t respond, he just keeps flicking through the pages.

We get to the last yearbook and it’s well and truly after the bell has rung, but after explaining to the librarian what we’re doing, she was more than happy to let us stay. After going through the rest of the books, we realized that this last one was of her senior year.

We’ve found at least twelve photographs of mom so far and every time we come across another, excitement courses through me. I shout out and cheer and every time, the librarian looks up and asks if we found another then promptly cheers along with me when I beam up at her.

At some point, Blake moved around to my side of the table and as we looked through the last yearbook, a sadness sank into my stomach. I’m not ready for this to be over, but at the same time, I’m so over-the-moon, thrilled that we’ve been able to find a piece of our mother.

We’ve learned so much about her. She was a genius when it came to mathematics, so clearly Blake and I got those genes from our father, she was an artist like me, she was a part of the drama club and played Mulan in the school musical, she was loved, and she so very clearly enjoyed her years here.

Seeing how mom excelled here seems to brighten the darkness in Blake’s eyes. Who knows, maybe this is a good thing for him. Maybe it’s exactly what he needs to thrive.

We flick through the pages and excitement begins to thrill me. Each book has had a section dedicated to the seniors as a way of celebrating their school years and I’m hoping that mom might have a photo in that section.

We find one of mom on a school trip to the national museum, another where she’s mentoring a younger student, one with Shay, and then finally, we make it to the senior celebration.

The photos have been placed like some sort of collage and I start sca

She stands between two friends. A boy and a girl. The guy has his arm thrown carelessly over her shoulder while mom has her arm wrapped around the girl’s waist. They look so happy that my heart begins to smile.

“There’s something familiar about this guy,” Blake murmurs, his brows dropping in confusion.

I look over the picture. To be honest, I really wasn’t focusing on the guy, only the look on mom’s face. I take him in and as I look at his eyes, my blood runs cold.

“That’s Lucien,” I say on a gasp.

“No, it couldn’t be,” Blake says, leaning in as though getting closer to the page will help him see. “Look here,” he adds, pointing at the names below the pictures. “His name is Lucas Valery. He just looks similar is all.”

“Lucas Valery? Are you kidding me?” I question, my voice rising as I gawk at my brother, willing him to hurry up and catch on. “That’s definitely him. Lucien Valentine. How can you not see it? Those names are way too similar to be a coincidence and you know how I feel about those.”

My eyes fall back to the page. What the hell was he doing with my mom? How did he know her? But more importantly, how the hell did things fuck up so bad that Blake and I ended up at his home. That couldn’t have been a coincidence. Shit like this just doesn’t happen.

“What about the girl?” I ask, looking over her.

Blake scans the page. “I don’t know. It says her name is Daniella Peirce. I think she’s just a friend.”

I shake my head, having a bad feeling about this. “I don’t know. Something screams that there’s more to this picture.” I sit back in my chair as Blake continues sca

I pull out my phone and type in Lucas Valery and Danielle Peirce then start scrolling through the search results until something pulls at my attention.

I open the page and my brows fly up into my hairline. “Holy shit. Check this out,” I rush, throwing my hand out and shoving the phone in Blake’s face. “There’s a warrant out for his arrest. Rape, Blake. He raped her.”