The FORBITTEN Promise

Chapter 1 - Lilith

10 Years Later – October 27, 2011

“I’m leaving already and Ariel, I don’t want to see you in a skirt at school,” I said, putting on my sweater then pulling my sleeves up to my forearms.

I was leaving early for school to start my community service hours at Roosevelt High School, since now it’s a requirement to graduate. Today will count as forty-three hours, although the minimum was thirty.

“You can’t tell me the way I get to dress, you know.” Ariel said following me outside to our small green yard, still in her pink pajamas since she doesn’t want to start community service now and wants to wait until later in the year, which involves less work.

All I’m doing is sweeping the school for twenty minutes and getting the credit time of an hour.

Ariel and I are now physically different and six years ago it became noticeable, but we both still have a bit of a babyface, making us look about two years younger. Ariel still looked the same, her skin a dark shade of brown from being in the sun so much, her now short straight shoulder-length hair light brown with streaks of dark brown and her eyes dark brown, close to dark chocolate. But, Ariel’s body is more feminine than mine. She looks small and fragile with small hands and slim shoulders. As for me, I’m still the same, my skin still pale, even though I can be under the sun without getting a nosebleed – unless it’s really hot – or fainting.

But, at least now  I have a light tan on my arms and face. But, I’m still pale! But being pale does-n’t bother me, since I don’t want to be dark as my sister or else no one will tell us apart! This is something, I am not looking forward to. Besides the fact, I’m still sensitive to the sun and heat, I mean, if it’s seventy-five degrees outside it feels like it’s five to ten degrees higher for me.

My eyes are reddish-brown and unlike before when me and Ariel both had straight hair, my hair became wavy and is down to my lower back. My hair was dark brown, but then I dyed it black-blue, which goes with my pale Mexican complexion, but to other people, it just looks plain black until it hits a certain angle of lighting.

My body is a bit athletic – I gained a 'few' pounds – but in our mother’s term my body is built than Ariel’s. My shoulders are broad and my hands are firm. Me and Ariel stand at the same height of 5’3 and yet, there are times when it looks like I’m taller than her when I stand up, straight. I’m also, like, twenty pounds heavier than her. Since I do more heavy lifting and I like to eat more than Ariel. While Ariel, well, wants to look nothing more than a bag of skin and bones.  I’m my “father’s daughter”, our mother said to me.

Hell, I’m literally the son my mother never had. She makes me carry things that are “too” heavy for her and Ariel that is like nothing to me and makes me fix everything. She seriously has a problem with treating me like dad. I understood how my dad felt once I had turned eleven, during my first year in middle school. Nowadays, my back is always killing me. I feel like what I’ve been calling my dad for the past five years… an old man.

But, of course, there’s another reason why my back hurts.

“Lilith, let me wear what I want to wear. Today isn’t going to kill me or anything.” I stopped at the top of our little stairs and looked at the gray sky. I took a deep breath through my nose and smelled rain, a lot of rain.

Seems like we might have a downpour today. I smiled.

“Okay. Fine,” I said, walking down the stairs hiding my smile “wear a skirt if you want.” I yelled behind me still smiling. “But, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I said to myself. Ariel hates the rain and cold, just as much as I hate the sun and heat.

Even though it was barely 6:30 in the morning, cars were passing by the house to the 4th street bridge, which is just five houses away from ours. I put my earbuds in my ears, took my i-Pod out of my left back pocket, and turned it on. Today, I was wearing my black polo shirt, my black jeans with black steel toe boots, and my hair in a low ponytail.

I was barely two houses away from mine when a moving truck caught my eye. I watched as it slowed, turned, and drove up my driveway. Someone’s moving in? Across my house just outside my window, was a house for saleent it’s been vacated for three years since my aunt died in her sleep, and for some reason, people check out the house but never moved in.

Hopefully, this person isn’t one of those people that blast loud music through the whole entire night and tries to hit on my sister or me. They’ll be in for a surprise when they meet me and I start threatening them.

Theodore Roosevelt High school is named after our 26th president. Duuh. Roosevelt was founded in 1922, but opened in 1923 in Boyle Heights to the East of the Los Angeles River. Boyle Heights had been a community for new immigrants. Russians escaping from the Communist Revolution, Jews escaping from Germany and Japanese predominated the region before, we, the Hispanic, or Latino, the community became the majority. In the 1950s and 1960s the area became primarily Latinos as the other ethnic groups moved to other communities.

I was a block away from school, in front of the Nichiren Buddhist Temple. When I smelled something and felt like someone was watching me. I stopped where I was and sniffed the air. It smelled like spice and something else. I’ve never smelled anything like it before, but it smelled familiar and it was making my heart race. Smells really nice. I took off one of my earbuds and looked up, down, and across the street, still inhaling the scent.

When I was a kid in second grade, my sense of smell, eyesight, and hearing improved after my seventh birthday and so did my strength. I hardly played on the playground because of my – used to be – weak body. But when I did the other kids would usually say I threw the ball too hard. I also caused a few people to go to the nurse's office… then again I threw the ball at their faces or stomach. By accident might I add. But because of that, the boys wanted me to play with them. Dodgeball, kickball, Volleyball, and Basketball – unless the boys and girls decided to share half the court. Ariel at the time only played patty cake and lemonade and whatever else that involved singing and clapping others’ hands. Which I was never good at, except for lemonade.

Then during the summer of 9th grade, I went to summer school to take Physical Ed. so I didn’t have to take the class during the school year. I lifted weights in the gym room, for a month, five times a week for one hour and I grew stronger. All the girls in the class could only or barely or couldn’t at all, lift 15lbs while I did 75lbs. I was even challenged by a couple of boys to do 100lbs, a couple of times. I also grew faster when it came to playing basketball, soccer, and flag football. I remembered I was the linebacker – who rushes the quarterback – in my team, my speed had improved so much I ran pass the tight end, – who protects the quarterback – who didn’t even see me until it was too late. I headed towards the quarterback of the opposite team, he was about to throw the ball but since I was small and fast he didn’t see me, until I was almost a foot away from him, reaching for his flag on his hip. I actually saw his face when he saw me, he got scared and jumped back yelling; ‘s**t!’. After I grabbed his flag, we laughed about it.

I looked around carefully again, using the one ear, I took my earbud out to listen. I saw or heard nothing but the cars and few people that were walking the streets, but the smell was still there. I put my earbud back in my ear and kept on walking, but kept looking around until I didn’t smell the scent anymore. It was probably just from the temple. I thought to myself. But, I still felt like someone was watching me because my lower back was tingling.

I was sweeping inside the school’s R building when my friend, Cindy started talking to me about a new student that was coming to school. Cindy was wearing blues jeans and a white v-shirt and was also wearing a big gray sweater, which belonged to her boyfriend. Cindy has dark brown eyes and black wavy, almost curly, hair, that she dyed.

“Who would transfer schools, when we’ve been in school for a month already?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “in the office. I heard he got kicked out of school and whatever it was, he was kicked out of the state.” I stopped sweeping and looked at her.

“He got kicked out of the state? What the hell did he do?” I asked and she shrugged. “Well, it can’t be true. I mean, getting kicked out of the state is like doing some major crime, right?”

“Yeah, I guess. If he did something he would be in jail.”

“By the way, why tell me we’re getting a new student in this school? I mean, this school has about five hundred students. It’s not like he’s going to stick out or something.”

“I just wanted to tell you. Didn’t want to keep it to myself.”

“Riiiiight.” I took out my three-year-old blue Pantech cell phone from my pocket and looked at the time “It’s 7:20.”

“Finally, I didn’t finish Aguirre’s homework.” She said.

“I didn’t either, need to finish the outlines for that Poisonwood Bible book.”

“You have AP?” she asked shocked.

“Yeah. Don’t you? You had AP last year with Soto.”

“I know, but… it’s too much work. So I told, Ms. Soto I wanted regular English.”

“Laaaaaazyyyy.” I dragged with a, somewhat, light high pitched voice.

“Shut up!” We both laughed as we walked back to the main office to drop off the brooms and scoopers and pick up our backpacks.

 People were already walking on the school campus walking to the cafeteria or just walking around to their hang-out spot when we left the office after we grabbed our bags and went our ways. Cindy went to the quad and I went up to the library in the L building on the 3rd floor.

I climbed all the way to the top third floor then leaned on the railing, feeling the cold metal on my bare forearms, and looked at the school buildings, feeling the cold air on my face and the smell of rain everywhere.

The school has many buildings there’s the A building for administration, R building for Roosevelt, which before used to be the main building until new buildings were built and added to the campus. Like the E, L, M, B, S, T, and C buildings. The school has a football field, track, utility field, gym, outside basketball courts, tennis courts, an Olympic-sized pool, and a softball field. Between the A and R building is the quad with a gazebo, the color of red while the rail poles are yellow, around the quad are several benches that students use during nutrition and lunch, also the color of red and yellow. I looked down, watching people walk around the campus.

 I stood there enjoying the cold air for a minute or two before I finally turned around and walked into the building to the library.

 “Morning Miss,” I said to our school’s head librarian, Ms. Leng. Leng is cool, but she freaks when it comes to books, on rainy days, she asks every student that comes into the library and checks out books if they have a bag to keep the books dry.

“Morning Lilith,” she said. Leng is short, shorter than me by… maybe two inches or so. She’s nice and all but can be a bit annoying when it comes to books. “Lilith, you have a bag to keep the books dry? I heard it was going to rain.” See what I mean.

“Yeah. I have a bag, Miss.” I said and went straight to the computers.

            I leaned back against the chair as the computer was warming up. I pulled my sweater off and looked around the library as few people were walking in. There are three purple couches in the middle of the room, where people always fight for because the couches are so comfortable, you sink into it, literally. There are also two other couches, smaller than the ones in the middle that are behind the shelves next to the entrance.

I use to sit in one of the smaller couches during my first semester in 9th grade until I met a friend of mine from middle school that I didn’t know was here, who invited me to hang out with her by the fountain, behind the R building. I started hanging out with her and her friends,  most of them were seniors and juniors but about five of them weren’t. They would still be here but they either moved or are attending a different school. But, I met new friends.

“Lil-liiiith!!” I looked towards the door to see Ashley and her younger sister, Lauren.

            Ashley and Lauren are both colored – meaning black, but I hate referring them to the color name. Ashley is tall, 5’10 to be exact.  She has light brown skin and hair. She’s not just tall but she’s really skinny if you hug her you feel like you might break her. Lauren is different, her skin and hair color are darker, she’s shorter than Ashley. She’s about an inch shorter than me, but she has more “meat” on her than Ashley and they both have rectangular glasses. Ashley is wearing a black v-shirt with a blue vest and blue jeans, with a black – but short – raincoat while Lauren is wearing a blue shirt and gray jeans with also a black – but longer – raincoat… Actually, I think they switched raincoats.

“Morning Lily.” Lauren said. Lily is my nickname because some people can’t pronounce my name so I have them just call me ‘Lily’ for short. Lauren gave me a hug and I hugged her back, just a little too hard and tightly. “Lily, ow, let go, that hurts.”

“Sorry.” I said, letting her go. “I told you, I’m a much of a hugger.” Which is true.

I’m wasn’t much of a hugger when I was little, because I wasn’t use to giving or people giving me hugs very often and so for some reason my muscles become tense, which causes me to hug my friends and some family members tightly, crashing them against me. My mom says it’s genetic that I don’t like hugging people. Because of my dad.

Me and my dad don’t really like hugging or display any kind of affection towards people because that’s just the way we are, and thus my mom’s favorite saying to my dad is; “She’s so much like you, she’s another you. Too bad she wasn’t born a boy.” The irony that would have brought to my family if I really was born a boy. But, oh well, I’m a girl and not a boy. Which has its ups and downs.

“Lilith, you bum, you didn’t do your homework.” Ashley said, sitting in a chair beside me.

“I’m not a bum, bum.” I told her. “I just didn’t finish the outlines.”

“What’s up, my bitches?” I turned my head around to see Brenda. Brenda came and hugged me from behind. “Hi, baby girl.” She said. Brenda is short, 5’1, with dark brown eyes and brown shoulder length hair with orange-like highlights. She dyed her hair red, but it soon faded to orange within a week. She’s wearing a black shirt with a cross design with wings and blue jeans with a blue and black checker-like sweater.

“Try anything and I’ll bite your arm again.” I told her.

About a month ago, during lunch Brenda kept groping me, while I was eating and I was getting pissed off then without thinking, or realizing, I bite her arm, hard, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. When I bit her I thought I broke the skin but my mouth was full of bread that I was eating, thankfully, so she didn’t bleed but I still left a bruise on her arm, which she still has with my teeth marks less visible than before.

“I’ll never do anything to my baby girl.” She said.

“Like, I’ll believe you.” then the bell rang. Wow, how time flies, did I zone out or something? I could have sworn there were still ten minutes left. “I didn’t do the outlines!” I banged my head against the table. “Well, it was nice knowing you.” I said and pretended I was crying. “Tell my sister, I hate her.” I told them.

“I think, she already knows.” Ashley said. I looked at her, thinking about it for a second.

“Yeah, that’s true.” I said laughing, putting away my notebook in my backpack.

“Come on, Lilith.” Brenda said, quickly pulling on my arm and off the chair. I quickly grabbed my backpack from the floor and threw my sweater over my shoulder.

“Where?” I asked, slinging my bag over my shoulder while she dragged me out the door, backward. “Class is gonna start.”

“To say ‘Hi’ to Lily.” She said. Of course, it’s a morning rotating before we go to class.

“See you in class, Ashley.” I said as I was still being pulled backward. I turned around in time before Brenda pulled me down the stairs, backward. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, she grabbed my hand, intertwining our fingers and pulled me towards the bench next to the quad where Lily, Ana, and Ingrid were sitting.

“’Sup Lily #1, Ana.” I said then looked at Ingrid, who was listening to her iPod then looked up at me and Brenda. I nodded my head towards her and she nodded back.

Lily #1 is a nickname I gave to Lily because we both sometimes go by Lily and since her birthday is before mine, I’m called #2. And there are times when we joke with our names for instants I’ll wave hi and say ‘Lily #1!’ and she’d the same thing and say ‘Lily #2!’ We’ll just keep saying it over and over again because we’re just that bored.

Lily is a plump girl about 5’4, with black hair and some dark blond highlights, behind her black and purple rectangular glasses she has dark brown eyes. Today she’s wearing her anime shirt Bleach with Ichigo and black pants. Ana is a bit shorter than me with light brown hair and blond highlights with dark brown eyes. She’s wearing a white shirt with blue jeans. Ingrid is skinny, but she knows how to pack it. She’s about 5’4 but still weighs about a hundred and ten pounds. She has long dark brown hair with dark brown eyes and rectangular glasses. She’s wearing a gray strip hoody, with her hood up and faded black jeans.

I placed my backpack beside Ingrid then pulled my sweater on. Pulling my sweater sleeves up my forearms and sling my backpack over my shoulder.

“What’s up, Lily #2!” Lily said, getting up and hugged me and Brenda. I pointed up at the sky.

“The sky, clouds, space and whatever else up there.” I said.

“Hmm, true. True.” Ana said smiling and we both laughed. Then I felt a faint wet spot on my forehead. I looked up at the sky and felt more drops until it started to rain.

“We better go.” I said, looking at Brenda. “Class is going to start anyway.” Suddenly my body turned toward the administration office. Where I saw my brother from another mother, Anthony. Anthony is literally my brother from another mother, he’s my half-brother.

He’s tall – taller than our dad whose 5’10 – almost hitting six feet. He has black short hair and light brown eyes. He’s wearing a gray shirt under his red sweater with black jeans and converse shoes. He’s the same grade as me and Ariel, but he’s a year older than us. But, it wasn’t him who caught my eye. Even if my half-brother is quite handsome.

It was the person who was standing next to him, who was looking at me.

He was tall, taller than Anthony. He’s maybe about 6’ to 6’2 with very broad shoulders compared to my brother’s. He was wearing a black polo shirt – like me – with a black raincoat and blue jeans, even through his raincoat, I see his muscles. He had dark brown eyes and from here I can see he was clean shave but there was some stubble on his cheeks and jaw and he had a short faux hawk hairstyle. And don’t ask how I know what kind of hairstyle that is!

“Sorry, I can’t.” Anthony said to our school’s principal, Mr. Bautista. Mr. Bautista is short just barely past 5’3 wearing his black suit and tie and his black Fedora over his bald, but shiny, head. Mr. Bautista is also the person I have to go to in the morning for my services hours. “I have a class here on the third floor and I can’t be late to class anymore.”

“Well…” Mr. Bautista began but then saw me. “Lilith!” he called and waved his hand for me to go over where he’s at. I forced myself to smile and waved my hand.

“I’ll see you guys later and Brenda,” I said looking at her. “get to class.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She said still standing there, not moving. I forcefully turned her around towards the L building.

“Physics. Now!” then pushed her towards the building. She turned and said walking backward.

“I’ll miss you baby girl.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I mumbled to myself.

“Bye Lily, see you later!” Lily said as I walked closer towards Mr. Bautista, Anthony, and the new student.

“See you at nutrition, guys!” I yelled back but then I caught the smell of a spicy and masculine scent that l had smelled earlier this morning, instantly it sent my heart racing.

“I got to go.” Anthony said and started walking back towards the door.

“Yes. Thank you, mi hijo.” Mr. Bautista said.

“Later, Anthony.” I said.

“Later, Lilith.” He said and ran into the building.

“Lilith, this is a new transfer student, Mr. Charles Blackthorn.” Mr. Bautista said while patting Charles on the shoulder – well as far as he can reach to his shoulder. “I hope you don’t mind, but I need you to take him to his first period.”

“Oh, sure.” I said. “I don’t mind Mr. Bautista. I’ll take him to class.”

“Okay, good. Thank you, mi hija.” Mr. Bautista said then went into the building to his office. I looked at the new kid.

“Where’s your first-period class?” I asked.

He stared at me for a while before he gave me the schedule that he had in his hand. I took it and held it a little close to my face since I didn’t want to take out my reading glasses from my backpack in the rain. I looked at the schedule and felt my eyes widen.

Wow! What are the chances of that? One in a million – no – one in a billion is more like it! I have him for every class!