by Ali Merci
Copyright © 2019 by Ali Merci
All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in, or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known, hereinafter invented, without express written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
Typewriter Pub, an imprint of Blvnp Incorporated
A Nevada Corporation
1887 Whitney Mesa DR #2002
Henderson, NV 89014
www.typewriterpub.com/[email protected]
ISBN: 978-1-64434-066-0
DISCLAIMER
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. While references might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
THROUGH YOUR EYES
ALI MERCI
Table of Contents
01.
Asa
02.
Carmen
03.
Judgment
04.
The Hazel-Eyed Girl
05.
A Broken Mind
06.
Art Journal
07.
Blackmail
08.
The War Inside His Head
09.
Take The Ugliness Away
10.
Muse To Her Artist
11.
A Frozen Sun & A Broken Moon
12.
Queen Bee
13.
The Storm Inside
14.
Petty Best Friends
15.
Blondes & Brunettes
16.
An Act of Kindness
17.
A Touch of Galaxies in Her Veins
18.
Everything She Touched
19.
Beneath Skin & Bones
20.
Only Human
21.
Black Rose
22.
Willa Bonham
23.
A Crack in The Glass
24.
Everything Beautiful About You
25.
Bruised Knuckles & Bleeding Hearts
26.
Boys Don’t Break
27.
The Road to Self-Love
28.
Just A Boy With Awestruck Eyes
29.
Home Is Two Hands & A Beating Heart
30.
The Definition of Beautiful
31.
Clipped Wings
32.
What Falling In Love Feels Like
33.
Beacon of Light
34.
Take My Hand
35.
Broken Things
36.
Fighting Hate With Hate
37.
Isla Martin
38.
Letting Go
39.
Hook, Line, and Sinker
40.
Because I Love You
41.
Don’t Let Me Walk Away
42.
Brother Dearest
43.
How to Love With a Fractured Soul
44.
I’ll Say It Back
45.
Sexy Is An Attitude
46.
Kiss Me Right
47.
Binary Pairs
48.
Mi Amor, Mi Cielo, Mi Sol
49.
I’ll Stand by You
50.
All Those Broken Hearts
51.
Achilles’ Heel
52.
Crash and Burn
53.
The Pain Death Leaves Behind
54.
Because It Was Real
55.
The Unforgiving Truth
56.
Breaking Free
57.
Ghosts From The Past
58.
The Thing About Redemption
59.
Find My Way Back To You
60.
A Piece of Me
61.
I Want You To Stay
62.
Just One Night
63.
Through Your Eyes
64
Three Words
Epilogue:
An Art Journal
To all those who had it in them to love me
during the moments I looked like war, smelt like heartache, and tasted like poison;
Thank you.
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01.
Asa
Asa’s grandpa had once told him that his rash nature and tendency to act on impulse would get him in trouble one day.
It got Asa in trouble, all right. More than just once.
And it seemed like today was just another one of those days.
It wasn’t Asa’s fault. Not really. He just didn’t like it when Hunter Donoghue spoke. Or moved. Or breathed for that matter.
“Take that, pinche pendejo!” Asa’s fist landed on Hunter’s jaw with a sickening crack, and the linebacker stumbled several feet backwards, thrown off-balance. He was still standing and not sprawled out on the ground, though. Not what Asa would’ve preferred.
Hunter’s eyes flashed dangerously and, within the short space of two breaths, he lunged forward in a half-bent posture, ramming his head into Asa’s stomach.
Asa groaned, all air knocked out of his lungs for what felt like an eternity. Both of them stumbled to the ground, Asa’s back hitting the tiled hallway floors of Reichenbach High with Hunter’s heavy body pinning him down.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Asa shoved Hunter’s body off of him, muttering a string of colourful words in the process.
“You absolute piece of garbage.” Asa wheezed, his breaths coming in gasps. He clutched his abdomen where Hunter’s head had collided.
“Oh, grow the hell up,” Hunter sneered, his lips curling back over his teeth in a nasty snarl. “Trying to be the hero isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
“But bullying will?”
In answer, Hunter lunged at him again, but this time Asa had prepared himself. He used one of his feet to hook itself behind Hunter’s shins, sending him to the ground.
Hunter hit the ground with a strangled yell but it was soon cut off when Asa pounced on him, driving a fist into his gut in retaliation for head-butting him earlier.
“Dude, what’s your problem?!” Hunter grabbed a fistful of Asa’s collar and struck him with a closed fist across his face.
Asa’s head whipped to the side, but he only laughed in response to the question. “You,” he spat. “People like you are my problem. What the hell is it to you how much someone eats?”
Hunter struggled, but he eventually managed to throw an aggressive Asa off him, quickly moving back a few steps as the latter did the same.
Both of the boys kept their eyes fixed on each other, their well-muscled frames tensed in anticipation of another round of punches, kicks and blows.
“She piles her plate every goddamn day with food enough to feed an army!” Hu
nter rolled his shoulders back, a gleam in his eyes as he watched Asa with a smirk. “I was only asking her to leave some for the rest of us.” He shrugged, oozing with nonchalance and arrogance. “She could do with shedding off the extra weight. I mean, look at her.”
Asa’s eyes tore away from cautiously watching Hunter and landed on the girl standing a few feet away from them, curled up by the corner of the wall and the lockers, scared and terrified. His gut clenched at the sight, only adding more fuel to his hatred for the boy standing in front of him.
It had been right after English period, just as the lunch bell rang, when Asa had heard Hunter’s mocking voice from the other end of the hallway He’d known in his bones by then that the prick was up to no good.
He’d arrived just in time to hear Hunter’s less than pleasant words to the girl, the kind that echoed in someone’s mind for days, corrupting it so that, later, it would shape the way they saw themselves.
The familiarity of it all had hit Asa somewhere deep in the chest.
And then came the blinding rage, and suddenly, fists were flown and profanities were spewed out from each other’s mouths. It was a wonder nobody heard them and a crowd didn’t congregate around the two boys yet.
Asa looked back at Hunter’s unapologetic eyes. “She looks fine to me,” he said. “More human than you, anyway.”
Hunter looked prepared to lunge at him again, but a shrill voice—that often reminded Asa of the whistle of the Hogwarts Express—cut through the tense air.
“What’s going on here?” asked the screeching voice.
He hated that voice.
The boys shook off their predatory stance, lowering their fists and unclenching their palms. Mrs. Cromwell, their disciplinary head, was someone on the list of school authorities one simply did not mess with.
“Still having trouble keeping your fists to yourself, San Román?” Cromwell’s beady, soulless eyes looked down from her nose at Asa as she took in the bruises and the cuts on him.
“Me? You’re blaming just me? You don’t even know what he did—” But Asa’s retort was cut short by that same nails-on-walls voice.
“Mr. San Román,” she curled her lips when she said his name, “I think it’s pretty well-known how you can be biased towards anything that involves Mr. Donoghue, so pardon me if I don’t take your account of what happened seriously.”
Asa snorted. “And what? You think the animosity is one-sided? How is his version of events going to be any more honest?”
“Well, I guess you’re just going to have to live with that, Mr. San—”
“Oh, for god’s sake!” He stood to his full height and scowled at Mrs. Cromwell. “It’s Asa. San Román is the family name. I get that you seem to like using that name, but would you mind?”
Mrs. Cromwell’s cheeks coloured, her hands shaking by her sides, as if she wanted to smack Asa’s head
“Watch it, young man. I do not appreciate being told what to do by the apes that come to this school.”
Asa raised a brow. “Does that include you too, Ma’am? I mean, you do attend this school, too.” From his peripheral view, Asa could see Hunter’s shoulders shake with silent laughter as he tried to suppress it.
“Detention!” she boomed, her voice echoing throughout the deserted hallway. “For the rest of the week.”
Asa’s scowl deepened. He opened his mouth, ready to tell the stupid disciplinarian what had happened, when his eye caught the girl’s movements. She shook her head, the gesture quick and short, but he knew what it meant. Most of the bullied didn’t want to be dragged into the spotlight. Not ‘till they were ready to tell someone.
“You’re going to stick us together?” He scoffed, changing the course of what his words was going to say in a breath. “It’s probably just going to lead to him opening his stupid mouth and saying something that pisses me off.”
“You seem to be under the ridiculous idea that Mr. Donoghue is also receiving detention, Mr. San Román.”
Asa’s eyes narrowed into slits. “I wasn’t fighting with air, Cromwell! He was in it as much as I was. In fact, he initiated it—”
“Enough!” she snapped. “You’re not in detention for the fight, Mr. San Román. You’re in detention because you were mouthing off at the disciplinary head and implying that she is an ape.”
Asa knew—he really did—that he needed to shut his mouth. But when did he ever stop himself?
“Honestly, Cromwell. If I knew your feelings got hurt so easily,” he said, grinning at the woman, “I can assure you I think you’re prettier than an ape, if that is any consolation.”
And Asa earned himself an extra week of detention.
02.
Carmen
Carmen woke up with a start, her breaths coming in harsh gasps, her heart a wild, restless beast within her chest.
“Just a dream,” she mumbled, her hand coming to rest on the hollow of her neck. “Just a dream, Carmen.” She soothed herself, just like she always had to do the past years.
But she knew there was no falling back to sleep now. Not after seeing the horrid images flash through her mind.
It was the dead of night, and it was so quiet out here in her bedroom. But in her head, it was so loud up there, where the sun never rises.
Carmen wanted to know what it felt like to have light inside.
Her hands twitched and her fingers throbbed, her body looking for a way to scream. But she’d always been a quiet person, finding her sanctuary in art, like her very own art journal.
With that thought, a smile graced her face. The instant her eyes landed on the spiral hardcover book sitting on the floor of her room, along with the pens, markers and sketching pencils strewn about, she slid her legs off the edge of the bed and headed towards her haven.
Art, she’d long since realised, made up for her lack of light.
•••
“Want me to give you a ride today?”
Carmen looked up at her father, her hands pausing in its fidgeting with her necklace.
She smiled, kind and warm, just like how she always smiled. “No, Dad,” she said with a slight shake of the head. “You know I prefer the walk.”
“It’s September,” he muttered. “It’s chilly out.”
“But it’s also the best time of the year for me to collect stuff for my journal,” she pointed out gently. Autumn leaves, specifically. Carmen just loved how September made the leaves blush in shades of red and orange.
She heard her father sigh, but done with affection. “You and that journal of yours,” he muttered, almost to himself, shaking his head. Carmen watched as his eyes lit up with his soft smile then grew distant as if remembering a hazy memory from another lifetime. She had to tear her eyes away once she saw pain flood into her father’s.
Pain, pain, pain.
There was so much pain. But, Carmen realised, if she could smile and find some ounce of peace in her mind when the battles within them had calmed for a brief moment, then the world wasn’t so bad a place, was it?
The world hadn’t robbed her of her smile. Not yet. She supposed she could be at least thankful for that.
“I love you,” she suddenly said. Because within that second, in that tiniest of infinities, she needed him to know.
Surprise sparked in her father’s eyes, albeit brief. But it was there, along with a smudge of joy as a smile crept back in his face.
It warmed Carmen’s heart. Her heart that, despite everything, was still capable of empathy and love.
And Carmen believed, in that moment at least, that was perhaps the most powerful defence she had against her own head.
•••
Carmen was in the school office during lunch, filling out the details on a form for her student ID card (she’d lost her previous one—much to her dismay since she had had it ever since freshman year) when the door flew open and a disgruntled Mrs. Cromwell stormed in.
She did not look happy.
“Smart ass,” she mumbled harshly un
der her breath. “Prettier than an ape, my foot!”
Carmen wrinkled her brows, confusion sweeping through her at the disciplinarian’s odd muttering. For a wild moment, she wondered if Mrs. Cromwell had hit her head somewhere and was harbouring a slight concussion.
“Everything all right, Martha?” One of the administrators in the office asked.
“As long as Asa San Román exists, no,” she snapped, malice inserted in every syllable of the person’s name. Carmen wondered what it was like to feel so much hatred in one’s heart. Surely, it brought no happiness, did it?
“Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on the boy?” the daring administrator asked and Carmen’s eyes flew to her name tag: Miss Willoughby. Carmen decided Miss Willoughby was quite a brave soul if not flinching under Mrs Cromwell’s venomous glare was any indication.
Sensing that the disciplinarian was about to give Willoughby a piece of her mind, Carmen quickly finished with the form, handed it over and left the office, saving the administrator from the embarrassment of getting chided in front of a student.
She walked down the hall with a ghost of a smile on her face, ready to give it to somebody who came her way. Truly, she never knew who might need a smile that day.
The thought didn’t finish crossing her mind when her eyes landed on a slightly pudgy girl nearby. She was standing by the lockers, alone, while people walked past her. Little bits of food littered around her feet and created a small trail towards a trash can nearby, where a whole tray of an uneaten meal was dumped.
Carmen was confused as to why anyone would want to waste a whole lot of food, but her curiosity didn’t matter once she took in the sad eyes of the girl.
So Carmen smiled at the girl. The girl blinked in disbelief, but eventually smiled back, too. And as those frowning lips curved up and the sadness dissipated from those lovely golden eyes, Carmen also felt warmth flood over herself in a gentle wave.
But as she walked past the girl, the warmth faded.
The unwelcomed and unwanted coldness swept in, reminding her of a memory she’d tucked in the farthest corner of her mind: that she was born with blood on her hands and no amount of smiles or waves of warmth were flushing that away.
03.