I follow behind Zack for the first few blocks unsure why I was even doing so. After the fourth block, I jogged to catch up to him. We walked silently together for a few moments but I decided to break the silence as the liquor store came into view.

“How do you expect to buy beer if you don’t have a fake ID?” I asked him. Partially because I wanted to strike up a conversation, but also because I didn’t want him to think I was carrying mine.

“I have my ways,” he mumbled,

I nod, shifting my notebooks from one arm to the other. “Well, we’re not robbing the place, are we?” I half-joke.

Zack laughs. “No,” he replies as we reach the store. He pulls the door open with his left hand and guides me through it with his right. A quick glance around tells me the place is empty besides a woman a few years older than us behind the counter.

When she glances up her eyes trail from me to Zack and then she gasps audibly. “What the fuck happened?” She rushes out from behind the counter and approaches us. She was nowhere near old enough to be Zack's mother, so who was she? Another Gena? I mean, I didn’t know Zack very well so it was possible. He could be a total player. Whatever. Why did I even care?

“Stop,” Zack half-laughs, half-demands as the woman runs her thumb across his battered face.

“What the fuck happened?” She asks again, back away.

Zack shrugs. “Got into a fight. Got suspended.”

“Mom is going to be pissed. This is the second time this school year already,” the woman – his sister? – replies.

Zack groans. “I know. Can we talk about it later though? I really just want to get to the beach.”

The woman crosses her arms. “Oh, so, you just came here for beach booze?” Zack gives her a look as if to say Well, yeah. “No fucking way, dude! You got me in trouble last time when you came home fucking hammered!”

Zack laughs. “I won’t this time, okay? I swear! Sheridan is coming with me, so she’ll limit me.”

Mystery girl’s eyes shift from Zack to me. I shift nervously under her gaze. If this chick really was another Gena, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to deal with her shit. “I’m Zina, Zack's older sister.” She sticks out her hand and I take it.

“Sheridan,” I answer with a smile. I wasn’t even aware of the creeping jealousy that began to fill me until it started to wane.

“Alright,” she sighs with a grin. “Make it quick, before my boss gets back.”

“Ah, I knew you loved me!” Zack smiles, making his way deeper into the store.

“Yeah, yeah,” Zina mumbles as she returned to the counter.

I follow Zack as he makes his way through the aisles and towards the coolers. “Get whatever you want. My treat.” Zack tells me as he grabs a twelve pack of beer.

“Oh,” I say looking around at the assorted beers, liquors, and wines. It was tempting but I knew it wasn’t a good idea. “It’s okay, I’m fine.”

Zack shrugs and grabs a bottle of Jack Daniels from a shelf. “Okay, suit yourself.”

We make our way to the front counter and Zack sets down the beer and whiskey. “Oh, no way. Go put the Jack back. If you take that you’re definitely going to come home drunk,” Zina says.

“Oh, come on, sis,” Zack begs. Zina shakes her head and rings up the beer. “Can I at least have one of these mini teaser bottles to help numb the pain?” Zack pouts but is only able to hold it for a second before he cracks a smile.

Zina smiles, too, before grabbing one of the tiny bottles off to the side of the counter and ringing it up. “You know the drill, show me some ID so I can at least fake it for the cameras.” Zack begins to dig in his back pocket as I grab the bottle of Jack and return it to the shelf.

“Thanks, sis,” I hear Zack call as he makes his way to the door. I follow him.

“Hey, Sheridan,” Zina calls before I can make it out the door.

I turn to her. “Yeah?”

“Take care of my little brother, okay?”

I nod, giving her a reassuring smile before walking out the door and catching up with Zack. “You never told me you had a sister.”

Zack shrugs. “You never asked.”

“So, I have to ask specifics about your life for you to tell me things?” I ask him.

He looks at me for a second before pulling a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. “No, I guess not.”

We enter the beach area and I'm relieved to see it’s basically empty. Zack sits in the sand, his cigarette half gone by now. I sit next to him as he grabs one of the cans from the case of beer.
He offers me one but I decline it.

“So,” I start, “are you going to tell me who you got into a fight with? Or why?”

Zack takes a swig of the beer. “Maybe after a few more of these.”

“Do you have any other siblings?” I ask him.

He nods. “A younger brother. Hence one of the reasons why my parents get so mad at me when I get into fights. Leading a bad example, you know? But I didn’t ask to be anyone’s role model, so whatever.”

I give him an odd look. “Well, that’s a shitty way of looking at it.”

He sighs and takes another gulp. “I don’t mean to sound like an asshole. It’s just…anytime I get in trouble for something it can’t just ever be about me, you know? Not only do I get bitched out about my future, but I get bitched out about his too. It’s annoying is all.”

I nodded like I understood, but I didn’t, not really, anyway. I was never held accountable for anyone’s actions but my own. Zack took my silence as a reply and spoke again. “What about you?” he asked. “Do you have any other siblings besides Eli?”

I shake my head. “No,” I tell him. I chew on the inside of my cheek as the next sentence hits the tip of my tongue. “I wouldn’t even consider him my brother, either, really.”

Zack finishes his beer. “What? Why not?”

I shrug. Zack grabs another beer from its pack and I take it from him. He looks at me, raising his brows before grabbing another. We crack them open, together and I put mine to my mouth, taking a long swallow. “Our parents divorced when I was young. My dad wanted to stay in Kansas and my mother wanted to move here. I looked it up once in class, a few months after she left. It’s like 1,600 miles or something. At first, both parents wanted custody of both kids but then they decided to separate us. Dad got me, mom got Eli. I didn’t see either of them much after that and you can’t really have a relationship with someone you never see or talk to, family or not, you know?” I sigh. “Anyway, I would have never moved in with them if I didn’t have to.”

“And why did you?” He asks. “Have to, I mean.”

I chew on the inside of my cheek again. “Who’d you get into a fight with?”

Zack narrows his eyes. “An answer for an answer, huh?” I smile. I wasn’t thinking of it that way, I just wasn’t sure If I wanted to divulge about my dad. But if that’s how he wanted to play it, sure. “Okay,” he agrees. “I got into a fistfight with Michael Taylor.”

“Why?”

Zack smirks. “Why’d you move away from Kansas?”

I sigh. “I didn’t have a choice. The state wouldn’t let me live on my own since I'm only seventeen and they weren’t going to put me in a foster home since my mom was willing to take me after…after my dad died.”

Zack gives me a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

I shake my head. “You couldn’t have. You’re the first person I’ve told since it happened.” Truth was, he was the only person there was to tell. The night I got out of the treatment center, the night my dad died, I didn’t have much when it came to friends. I didn’t have any, honestly. All of my friends wanted to party, do drugs, have a good time; I just got out of a treatment center for trying to kill myself. I was the Oxford dictionary definition of a buzzkill. “It was a robbery gone wrong,” I continued. “He was coming to pick me up from a…from somewhere and he stopped to get gas, I guess. Walked in on a robbery and…well…” I trail off. I didn’t realize how bad I needed to talk about what happened until the words rolled out of my mouth. It was like they rolled off my chest, a weight I didn’t even know was gone when I finished speaking.

Zack offered his condolences as we finished off our beers. Then, he offered me another which I took. “Michael is constantly giving me shit about how my band is going to fail, how I'm going to fail. He is constantly just being a dick in general. It doesn’t bother me, you know? Not in the way he thinks it does. He thinks his words get under my skin but I hear shit like that all the time. People are constantly doubting my potential, my bands potential…but that’s fine, I’ll prove them wrong. I’m not the best right now but someday, I will be. And the best revenge is bettering yourself. So, fuck them.”

“So, you basically just got into a fight because the guy is an asshole?” I ask; and he was, Michael was a cocky piece of work, and not in a good way.

Zack nodded, laughing. “Yes,” he confirmed. “Talk shit, get hit.”

I laugh too, wondering if it was really worth it. Zack looked pretty beat up. After a few seconds, I reply. “He’s wrong, you know? They’re all wrong. I saw the passion from all of you at the Halloween party. All you need is passion and talent and you guys have it. You won’t fail.”

Zack smiles and pulls me into a one-armed hug. “Thanks, Sheridan,” he tells me before pulling away. He stretches and stands.

“What? Done day drinking already?” I ask.

“Nah,” he says. “But I think I’m going to go swimming. You, too.”

I laugh thinking he’s joking. “Zack, it’s November, not July.”

He laughs, pulling off his shirt. I feel the heat in my cheeks when my eyes scan his chest and quickly look away before he notices. “Sure, the water is going to be a little colder but it’s warmer this month than usual. It’ll be fine.”

“Do you carry a swimsuit in your bag or some–” I stop as I watch Zack unbutton then unzip his jeans. They fall to the sandy beach and I begin to blush, again.

Zack, noticing the blood rush to my face, smirks and grabs my arm, pulling me up. The smirk on his face fades quickly, though. My gaze follows his down to where our skin meets. Zack slowly runs his thumb across long, thin, white scar. It’s then that I know that he knows. The look on his face, the way he ran his thumb across it – he knew. He knew that scar came from a night of crying and self-loathing. He knew it came from a shiny X-Acto blade. Maybe now he knows that underneath this smile, behind this façade, there's a broken girl.

I don’t yank my arm away. There’s no point, he already knows and if he’s going to stop talking to me over it, better now than later. As soon as the thought strikes me, though, Zack lets go of my arm and gravity brings it to my side.

“Last one in is a rotten egg,” Zack grins, but it’s obvious it’s fake. He’s kicking off his shoes and running off to the water in his boxers before I can even reply.

“What does that even mean?” I call after him.

“Oh, shit!” Zack yelps as he hits the water. I watch him shiver exaggeratedly before diving under. “Come on,” he calls once he surfaces. “The water’s great!”

I laugh and take a few steps forward. “Oh, bullshit! I saw that shiver!”

Zack laughs. “that was just the initial impact. Once you dive in, it’s great!”

I chuckle, shaking my head. “I don’t even have a swimsuit,” I tell him.

“Neither did I,” he calls back.

I grinned. “Is this your way of getting my clothes off?” As a reply, Zack winks, causing me to laugh again. I pull my shirt over my head. I mean, really, what’s the difference between a bikini and underwear? I unbutton my pants and tug them from my hips. I can feel Zack's stare and I smirk as I kick off my shoes. I toss my clothes further up the bank next to Zack’s before stepping into the water.

And then immediately stepping out. “No way! That water is cold!” I call back to him.

Zack laughs. “Oh, come on!”

“No fucking way! I’ll talk from here!” I sit down but as soon as my butt cheeks touch the sand, I hear the water splashing and I glance up to see Zack running towards me at full speed with a mischievous grin on his face.

“Oh, no!” I yell, standing up and running away. I don’t get very far before Zack catches up with me. His arms are around my waist and he’s throwing me over his shoulder before I can stop it.

“No!” I laugh. “Stop!” I slap at Zack's wet, bare back but he just laughs as he trudges through the water.

Once waist deep, he gives an evil laugh before dunking me under. The water is cold at first but my body gets used to it quickly. And like Zack said, it’s not that bad when I surface. I wipe my eyes as dry as my wet hands allow and push my soaked hair from my face.

“You asshole!” I laugh.

Zack is laughing so hard he loses his balance but catches himself before he submerges. “No, Zack; stop, Zack!” he mocks in a high-pitched voice.

I laugh and splash him in the face. “I don’t sound like that!”

“You did just now!” he counters.

I shake my head and wipe the stray water droplets climbing down my face away. When I look at my hands, they’re partially black. “Aw, man,” I cry, rinsing the mascara from my hands. “I bet I look like a clown.”

“Nah,” Zack smiles, “you look like a really sad clown.”

“You ass,” I remark with a smile as I continue to try to wipe the rest of my makeup away.

Zack and I continue laughing, joking and swimming for an hour or two before we decide to get out of the water. Then, we sit on the beach and continue to talk until the sun began to set.

Before I was ready, Zack announced he better get home and deal with the consequences of getting into another fight, and I knew I should be getting home too.

Zack insisted on walking me home first. We laughed the entire time; it seems like we never ran out of things to talk about or to laugh about. He was a good thing, he made me happy.

“Alright,” I sigh when we approached my house. “I hope you don’t get into too much trouble.”

“Ah,” Zack shrugs. “I’ll probably just get grounded or something. No biggie.”

“Okay,” I smile. “See you later, then.”

“Later,” he winks before turning and walking away.

Notes

Thank you guys so much for reading! I hope you all enjoyed it!

Thank you to everyone who commented on the last chapter. I'm running super late for dinner with friends, so I'll edit this and give you a proper thanks when I get back. You are all so awesome! Keep it up! Don't forget to comment, vote and subscribe!

Edit: Thank you so, so much for commenting on the last chapter: AvengedLover, DaphneG, imagine fiction and MeRi.

Title credit: She Wants Revenge "She Will Always Be a Broken Girl"

You can find the journal entry here.