Eclipsed: A High School Bully Romance (Del Sol High Book 3)

by McKayla Box

  “I'm not sure if you saw it or not, Nola, but I left a piece of mail on your bed,” my grandmother says. “From USD.”

  University of San Diego. The one bit of good news after the ball was that I finally got my acceptance notices from school. I got in everywhere I applied, so I was able to choose. And I chose USD. It's not far from my grandparents, I really liked the campus, they gave me some scholarship money, and no one I know is going there. It feels like the right choice.

  “I didn't see it, but I'll look at it when I’m done eating,” I tell her. “Thanks.”

  “I will miss having you here at these dinners,” my grandfather says. “It has become something I very much look forward to, having you here at dinner every night. And all of the time.”

  I smile. “Thanks. I'll miss that, too. But I won't be too far, and I can always come over and visit.”

  “You better,” my grandmother says. She tucks a loose strand of her stylish bob behind her ear. “This is your home, and you will always be welcome and wanted here. So we will expect to see you on a semi-regular basis, even if it's just to come home and do a little laundry and eat some Chinese food with us.”

  I laugh and nod. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “I mean it,” she says, smiling at me. “And you absolutely will not have to call to see if it's okay if you come over. This is your home. You do not have to check with us to see if you can come home. Ever.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “I won't be a stranger. I promise.”

  She nods emphatically, and I can see her eyes are a little wet.

  “We'll be happy to see you when we see you,” my grandfather says. “We want you to have a good time and enjoy yourself. That's what college should be, and we want you to have that experience. We're happy you're going to have it.” He glances at my grandmother, then back to me. “We wanted the same thing for your mother, but it didn't work out that way. So now we want it for you.”

  “I know,” I say. “And I can't thank you enough. Really.”

  “We're your grandparents and you're our only granddaughter,” he says, his voice a little gruff. “There are no thanks needed. We want to do this, Nola. We're thrilled that we can.”

  My grandmother nods in agreement.

  “And maybe tonight would be a good night for us to actually celebrate your acceptance at USD,” he says. “We've been talking about that ever since you were accepted, but we haven't done it.” He pats his stomach. “A little ice cream sounds good to me.”

  “We don't have to celebrate,” I say. “It's fine.”

  “Nonsense,” he says, frowning. “I said we would celebrate and we are going to celebrate. And now we can celebrate your scholarship, too.”

  “It's not the worst idea you've ever had,” my grandmother says. “Nola, maybe you could run to the store while I do the dishes. And then we could make sundaes for dessert.”

  I really don't feel like celebrating, but they have been so incredibly kind to me, and this is just one more example of how they do so much to make sure I'm okay. If for no other reason that I don't want to disappoint them, I will make sure I keep my life together.

  “Okay,” I say. “I can do that.”

  My grandfather pumps his fist. “Excellent. Pick up a couple of flavors. There's cash in my wallet.” He reaches over and pats my arm. “I'm excited for ice cream, but I'm more excited for what's ahead for you at school next year, Nola.”

  I smile, but I haven't found the excitement they have for me going to college in the fall. I don't think I'm able to look that far ahead yet because the school year has been dragging so heavily for me. I just want it to be over and then maybe I'll be able to get excited about going to USD, about living in a dorm, and about starting my life over.

  Again.

  Chapter 4

  After we finish eating, my grandfather gives me some money and I head to the small market in a strip mall down by the beach. I pick up several different flavors and a jar of hot fudge. I pay and head outside. As I'm fumbling for my keys outside the market, I hear some laughing and look up.

  There's a liquor store next to the market and I immediately recognize several girls from school standing outside of it. They are hanging around the bench just in front of it, laughing and whispering. The laughing stops when the door to the liquor store opens and Archer walks out with a case of beer. Nick is behind him with another case.

  A girl with long blonde hair and shorts that barely cover her ass slithers up to Archer and says something to him. Archer just nods, then looks in my direction.

  I'm frozen in place.

  He looks away.

  Then he looks back, like he's doing a double take.

  He hands the case of beer to the girl, who seems surprised, then walks in my direction.

  Shit.

  He's wearing a black T-shirt, black shorts, and sandals. His hair is windblown and his skin looks darker against the black clothing. He lifts his chin. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  “Not buying beer for a bunch of surf groupies,” I say.

  He chuckles. “You sound jealous.”

  “I'm not.”

  “Right.” He nods at my hand. “What's in the bag?”

  “Ice cream.”

  “Wow. Wild night with the grandparents, I guess.”

  “Better them than girls who need their parents to come pick them up,” I say.

  He laughs again. “Relax. The one chick is Nick's cousin. She asked him if we could get them some beer. That's it.”

  “Don't tell me to relax,” I say. “And I don't even care.”

  “Sounds like you do.”

  Of course I care. Seeing him out at night with a bunch of girls pisses me off. But I'm not going to tell him that.

  “I don't,” I say. “And I gotta go.”

  “Before the ice cream melts,” he says. “Right.”

  “You better run back to your Barbie dolls,” I say. “They probably have an early curfew.”

  He laughs again. “Sure. Okay. You know, we really were just getting them beer.” He pauses. “But maybe I'll pick one now. Make her night.” He looks at them. “Which one you think I should do?”

  “Do all of them,” I say. “I don't give a shit.”

  “There's an idea,” he says. “I could probably pull that off.”

  “Fuck you,” I say.

  “Oh,” he says. “You want me to consider you, too?” He nods and walks closer to me, looking down at me. “I can put you on the list.”

  “Listen very closely,” I say. “Are you listening?”

  He nods.

  “Not. Ever. Again,” I tell him. “Not ever. So go stick your dick in one of those little skanks and enjoy yourself. Shouldn't take more than thirty seconds or so. At least, that's how I remember it.”

  His smile slowly fades.

  And I walk away before he can say anything else.

  Chapter 5

  We have ice cream after I get home and I pretend that everything is fine.

  But it's not.

  Seeing Archer at the store just puts me in a foul mood and I can't stop thinking about him and those girls. I hate that it bothers me so much, but it does.

  After we eat, I head back into my room. I find the envelope from USD that my grandmother mentioned and open it. It's a confirmation of my scholarship money, along with a reminder to look for some forms in my email that I will need to fill out in order to confirm I'm taking the money. I quickly scroll through my email and look for it, but it hasn't shown up yet, so I make a mental note to check again in the next couple of days.

  I spend about an hour doing the little bit of homework I have, then put all of my stuff back in my backpack for tomorrow. There’s nothing else pressing to do, so I stretch out on my bed and scroll mindlessly through my phone for a bit, but that’s mostly a pointless exercise. After the ball, I blocked nearly everyone on Snapchat and Instagram because I was getting too many shitty messages.
It was easier just to disengage from everyone.

  I toss my phone to the side and stare at the ceiling for a minute. I try to imagine what college will be like, but it seems so far away that it's hard for me to even create a picture. I wonder if my mom even applied to schools when she was my age and before she got pregnant with me. We never talked about it.

  I wonder what she's doing right now. I know very little about what her life is like inside of prison because I've never asked. It seemed easier not to know, and she's volunteered very little.

  I slide off the bed, reach underneath it, and pull out a small shoebox. With my back to the bed, I put the box in my lap. I pull of the lid and stare at the contents for a moment. It's the dozen or so letters my mother has written me since she went to prison and I moved to Del Sol. I've opened each one, but done little more than skim them. I didn't want to read them closely because it seemed far easier to just disconnect from her and everything else I left behind in Florida.

  But I'm feeling this need to connect with someone, even if it’s the person whose choices set my life on its current path. So I spend the next hour reading them, poring over every word, and when I'm done, I actually have a better idea of what her days are like. She reads. She exercises. She works in the library. She's going to AA meetings. She's taken a couple of classes. The food isn’t very good. Her cellmate's name is Wanda.

  With all of the letters out of the box, I see the other things I put inside. They are the small handful of mementos I brought with me from Florida. A sticker from my school. A receipt from a book I bought before I got on the plane with my grandmother. A picture of a cat we had when I was eight or nine. His name was Ralph and he lived with us for about a year before he got out through an open door and never came back.

  I pick up the photo. He was gray and black striped, with green eyes that looked like emeralds. He wasn't terribly affectionate, but I remember being happy that we had a pet because it seemed as if all of the other kids I knew had pets and I'd always wanted one. Having a pet felt normal, when so much of my life did not. My mother named him Ralph, which I thought was a weird name. I distinctly remember her answer when I asked her why she picked that name. She was finishing off a bottle of wine and she slurred her words when she answered.

  “Because it's a normal name,” she said.

  “What do you mean normal?” I asked.

  She leaned back on the couch, the bottle between her legs and a plastic tumbler in her left hand. She’d wisely switched to plastic cups after one too many glass ones had ended up in pieces on the floor. “I just mean I never knew a Ralph I didn't like.”

  It was an odd answer that I didn't understand at the time, and she then proceeded to run off a list of names that she didn't like. All of them male. When she was done, I asked something I'd wanted to ask for a long time.

  I scratched Ralph behind his ears. “What was my dad's name?”

  My mother glared at me, then poured more wine into her cup. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “I don't know. Because I've never asked you before, I guess.”

  She swirled the wine in her cup, staring into it. “I don't know why you would care.”

  Ralph rolled to his back in my lap, then shook his head, and stood up. “I was just asking.”

  She took a long drink from her cup, then emptied the bottle into it. “David. His name was David. Happy now?”

  I didn't respond because there was nothing for me to say. But it was the first time I heard his name and I never forgot it.

  Funny how looking at a picture of a cat I had for just a year could bring all of that back with crystal clarity.

  I put everything back in the box, but put the picture of Ralph on top of the letters.

  I remember I cried like crazy when he didn't come home. The loss was so raw, so real.

  But I remember thinking a few weeks later that maybe he was smart. That maybe he sensed he should get away. And then I started thinking of all of these stories where Ralph ran away, but he was making plans to come back and rescue me. I think I even drew a few cartoons where he wore a cape and had muscles.

  But Ralph never came back and it was hard to blame him.

  Chapter 6

  A knock at my door startles me. I just finished brushing my teeth and hair and was already in bed.

  “Nola,” my grandmother says. “Just me.”

  I sit up against the headboard. “Come in, Grandma.”

  She pushes the door open, then stops short of coming in. “Oh. I didn't realize you were in bed.”

  “Just got in.”

  “I don't want to keep you up.”

  I shake my head. “No, it's fine. What's up?”

  She closes the door behind her, comes over, and sits down on the edge of my bed. She’s wearing pajamas, a silky pair of navy blue pants and matching top that looks far too elegant to climb into bed wearing. “You seemed a little down at dinner and I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I'm okay,” I tell her.

  She narrows her eyes. “You sure?”

  I nod.

  She doesn’t look convinced. “Anyone giving you trouble at school?”

  “No one talks to me at school, so that's a big no.”

  “That's not funny,” she says with a frown.

  “I know it's not, but it's the truth,” I say. “And, honestly, it's the best thing for now. I just need to be left alone.”

  “Being alone isn't a good thing.”

  “I'm used to it,” I tell her. “It's how I grew up.”

  She looks down at her lap and I can tell she feels bad. It’s the last thing I want.

  “Grandma, I'm fine,” I tell her. “Really. It's not what it was in the fall, but there's nothing I can do about it. I just need to get to graduation and then I'll be fine. I keep to myself and no one bothers me. It's okay. I can handle it.”

  She looks at me. “I'm sorry, Nola.” Her voice is soft, filled with remorse.

  I shrug. I’m not sure I trust myself to speak in that moment.

  “You don't deserve a senior year like this,” she says.

  I try to keep my emotions in check. “But it's the one I'm getting,” I finally say. “I can't change it. I just have to deal with it.”

  She sighs. “You remind me of your grandfather when you say things like that. Just accepting and so pragmatic. Then just getting through it.” She smiles. “I tend to be a worrier and fixer.”

  I’m glad that’s what she sees. If I’m being honest, I’m probably a mix of the two of them; I’m just good at hiding my true emotions. “I just know that I can't take back what's happened and I can't take back what Mom did,” I say. “I tried to hide it and it backfired.” I shrug again. “There's nothing I can do.”

  “I suppose,” she says, a little reluctantly. “I just wish your friends...reacted differently.”

  “Me, too, but they didn't,” I say. “Oh well.”

  I'm trying to sound like it's all just rolling off my shoulders, but I'm sure she knows that it's not. I cried with her after it all went down, so she knows how much it hurt. I just don't want her to worry about me more than she already does.

  “Can I ask you a weird question?” I say.

  She pats my knee beneath the comforter. “Always.”

  I think back to Ralph the cat, and to the brief conversation I had with my mom that night so many years ago. “Did you know anything about my dad?”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Well, that is certainly not what I was expecting to hear.” She looks at me with concern. “Why are you asking that?”

  “I don't know,” I tell her. “I was just thinking about living in Florida before I got in bed and I was reading some of the letters my mom has sent, and I just got to thinking how I know almost nothing about him. Except that he wasn't around.”

  She nods slowly, thinking, then crosses her arms across her chest. “Well, I can't say I can offer you much more. When everything...happened...your mother was fairly secretive. She did
n't tell us she was pregnant, at first. She tried to hide it and did a fairly good job of it. She wore big sweatshirts, clothing that didn't fit her very well. Or maybe we just weren't paying attention in the way we should have. I'm not sure. But when we did find out, there was a lot of screaming and yelling.” She smiles at me. “From both your grandfather and I and from your mother yelling back at us.”

  I laugh. “I can't really imagine you or Grandpa yelling.”

  Her eyes widen. “Oh, you'd be surprised. I think after all that, I made a promise to myself that I'd do my best to not raise my voice to anyone again and, for the most part, I think I've been able to do that. Your grandfather, not so much.” She pauses, thinking. “But it was hard to get any information from her and then it became a game. Was she telling us the truth or was she just telling us something so we'd stop asking questions?” She shakes her head. “It was a daily exercise, in frustration more often than not, and it wore on all of us. And, to be fair, I'm sure it wore on your mother, too. In the moment, it was hard for me to think about it, but looking back now, I can imagine how scared she must've been. I'm sure we all could've handled things better than we did. We probably should've pushed harder to meet him.”

  I look at her for a long moment. “Wait. How could you have done that?”

  “Oh, I don't know,” she says. “Pressed her for more information. Maybe we could've spoken to his parents.”

  “But you didn't know him, right?” I ask. “He was some guy in New Orleans. She said she went there and that's where she met him and that's how I got my name.”

  My grandmother purses her lips, then lays a hand on my thigh. “Nola. Is that what she told you?”

  I nod.

  She sighs. “Well, I suppose that shouldn't come as a surprise. But it's not the truth.”