Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

She smiles. “You don’t have to be nervous.”
I cock an eyebrow, looking away. It’s an away game about an hour from
here. I’m surprised he’ll be home.
“You used to like us coming to your games,” she tells me.
“A lot of things were different then.” I shift on my feet. “Now, I’d just
like you both to stop pretending you’re married for the cameras.”
I might like it if they pretended for me a little bit, but hey.
She stops moving, the elliptical sinking to a resting position and her body
along with it as she looks at me.
I keep going. “I think we can agree the façade is downright painful
anymore, isn’t it?”
The pain in her eyes feels good, and I hate that it feels good. I used to
love my mom.
I know she’s alone. She’s suffered, and this week is especially hard, but
no one is safe from me, I guess. I’ve started bullying my parents now.
How could my father not be here for us? After all we’ve lost? And did
she really get an abortion like Macon said? How did he know that? Was it my
father’s baby? I don’t know how it could’ve been. He’s never home.
My parents have even less figured out about life than I do, it seems, and I
can’t trust anyone. Even my grandmother. What pieces of work they all are.
She says nothing, and I turn and walk out before she has a chance to.
Squeezing the stems in my hand, I climb into my Bronco and drive to school
with them in my fist the whole time, racing toward the one thing I don’t want
to hurt anymore.
The hallways are empty, only a few cars in the parking lot yet, and I look
around me, making sure no one is here. A pencil hangs off a string of yarn
next to the carpool signup on the bulletin board, and I snatch it off its staple,
keeping the pencil on one end as I tie the other around the flower stems.
I stick the pencil through a slit in the vent of Liv’s locker, the yellow
paint on the wood scraping off as I shove it through. Hanging from the inside,
the little bouquet dangles down the outside of her locker, a few of the pretty
white petals floating to the ground.
She probably doesn’t like flowers. She’ll probably think it’s a prank and
rip them off and throw them away, but maybe she’ll think they’re nice,
whoever they’re from.
Something for her birthday, because she didn’t get flowers or cards or
candygrams like the rest of us on Valentine’s Day, and I’d hated seeing that.