Part 2: The Wedding Vows, Chapter 4.5

READ PART 2: THE WEDDING VOWS, CHAPTER 4.4 I awoke to strangeness. The mattress underneath me, the cold air hitting my face, the cozy warmth encasing me from head to toe, the sensation of being weighted down—all strange. Drifting through the shallows of unconsciousness, I tried to turn over on my side and found myself…

Part 2: The Wedding Vows, Chapter 4.4

READ PART 2: THE WEDDING VOWS, CHAPTER 4.3 Christian baked me a birthday cake. Or so he said. “What? It’s true,” he insisted when I stared at him. We’d cleared away the dirty dishes and set the chocolate cake in the middle of the table beside the bowl of tea-lights. I tore my gaze away…

Part 2: The Wedding Vows, Chapter 4.3

READ PART 2: THE WEDDING VOW, CHAPTER 4.2 When Ate Grace arrived to pick us up at school and came face to fender with a black SUV waiting at the school gates, with Faith and me sticking our heads out the window and waving, the look of shock and perplexity on her face could only…

Part 2: The Wedding Vows, Chapter 4.2

READ PART 2: THE WEDDING VOWS, CHAPTER 4.1 “I learned something today.” I looked over at Christian, who was walking beside me with one hand in his pocket and the other hooked around the strap of my schoolbag, which he’d slung over his shoulder. With final period over, Mia, Renee and I were heading over…

Part 2: The Wedding Vows, Chapter 4.1

READ PART 2: THE WEDDING VOWS, CHAPTER 3 I received the best and the worst birthday presents the day after my tenth birthday. It began in the afternoon, in the middle of Social Studies class. I’d been doodling flowers in my notebook and drifting in and out of focus when I became aware of a…

Part 2: The Wedding Vows, Chapter 3

READ PART 2: THE WEDDING VOWS, CHAPTER 2 “Hmm? What was that, Joy?” Mrs. Santos, our Math teacher who was also our Science teacher, our homeroom adviser and our Music teacher whenever Mrs. Cruz was having one of her spells, barely looked up from the sheaf of seatwork exercises she’d collected. Behind me, kids were…

Part 2: The Wedding Vows, Chapter 2

READ PART 2: THE WEDDING VOWS, CHAPTER 1 One evening in my eleventh year, I slipped into our room with my favorite orange tabby cat Siopao, quietly locked the door, pushed it securely into the doorjamb with my knee, then jammed a chair underneath the doorknob. The precautions might have seemed a little unnecessary, what…

Part 2: The Wedding Vows, Chapter 1

READ PART 1: THE WEDDING RINGS, CHAPTER 4. The year I turned ten, I woke up one morning and thought about changing my life. I lay still on the mattress in the lower bunk that I shared with my little sister, staring at the tiny, curling dust motes floating through the sunbeams, and felt the…