p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Amity couldn't remember a day where she felt as miserable as she did today. The initial shock of pure serotonin that she had experienced just an hour earlier had already left her body, and instead of giving her hope and happiness to feel the same way again, all it did was make her feel worse. How was a drunk girl playing with her dog the happiest she had felt in years? Was her life that pathetic? What was she doing wrong? Feeling mentally and physically bad was not a good combination, the effects of not eating or sleeping correctly were definitely catching up to her and making her regret not doing any of those things, yet Amity found no inner strength to start changing the sad sad routine that had become her life. She had thought and hoped with all her heart that leaving her family would help her cope with the abuse she suffered all her life, yet all it did was show her that she could not take care of herself and show how much she needed help. But the brunette refused to accept any type of help, and that was partly because she refused to even acknowledge the bigger issue and was instead, just waiting for something truly bad to happen for her to even consider it. After all, admitting for help was admitting defeat and imperfection, and a Blight must always be perfect no matter what, even though Amity had since left those oppressive walls that came with her last name she found herself struggling every day to try and forget everything her parents had thought her, but she was obviously failing. Taking a seat as fast as she could the brunette closed her eyes and caught her breath, since when had walking become so hard? It seemed that as the days passed Amity found it harder and harder to do basic chores, from being able to feed herself without throwing up to now not being able to walk at all without having to sit down to catch her breath. Just what was wrong with her? Opening her eyes Amity looked down the endless rows of seats in front of her and all the way to the board, where she saw the words 'Test today'. Amity was sure she was going to cry, but she couldn't, not when there were so many people to watch her slip and break, crying was something to be done alone, crying was for the imperfect. Her professor began to explain something, but Amity's ears were plugged, and her brain was not capturing any information given. She knew she had to listen, even if it was forced and it will hurt her in the long term that seemed to be getting shorter and shorter the more she forced herself. Her world was spinning now and every color and light in the room was suddenly too bright to be looked at, every smell was too strong and she was hyper-aware of everything around her. Should she leave? It wouldn't be the first time she had broken down, yet she wasn't sure if she could push this one back long enough for her to arrive home. The youngest Blight looked up when a hand posed on her shoulder, a million memories of the same action passed through her brain at that moment, but at least her world had stopped spinning. "Do you have a quiz already?" The boy, she could not call him a man, in front of her asked as he motioned to a stack of paper in his hands. Amity tried to speak, but no words came out of her mouth, he seemed patient enough to wait for her with a smile, yet all Amity could think of was how bad he was judging her, after a few seconds Amity shook her head, the boy, whose bracelet said the name 'Gus' placed a quiz on her desk and left towards the next student to deliver the paper. Should she start now? Looking around the classroom she saw that most students had started, and if their faces were anything to judge then Amity was sure that most of them were not going to pass, and looking down Amity herself felt about to cry again. The page was too blurry and no matter how many times she read the questions they made no sense to the amber-eyed girl. She was going to fail for sure. Her only solace was the fact that it was a multiple-choice test and she wouldn't have to write down anything. She was going to fail. With a trembling hand, the suddenly too pale girl tried to write her name in cursive, only to give up in the middle and write it as best as she physically could, but her hand and brain didn't seem to coordinate and it read nothing more than gibberish, but hopefully, her professor would understand the sentiment./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The fact that Amity got home at all should be considered a miracle. Although she didn't live very far from campus the distance felt almost eternal, and the brunette was sure she might pass out. Opening the front door she found Caliban sitting in front of the door waiting for her, she smiled a little when the dog barked and moved towards her. "Hey, Caliban," Amity said, her voice not being able to reach above a whisper, petting his head Amity walked towards the kitchen. She had to eat something or she was going to pass out, but as soon as she entered the smell of the breakfast she threw away earlier hit her, and Amity's throat closed. Maybe she wasn't hungry? Amity didn't feel hungry, but she most definitely felt the effects of not eating, and looking down Amity could see just how slim she had become, she used to be so strong when she was younger, and now she looked so fragile and skinny that the wind might as well take her away along with the dead leaves it picked up. Amity gulped and walked towards her room, change of plans, she could eat later when hunger hit her, but assuming she'll be hungry later seemed nothing more than wishful thinking. Amity had purposely avoided weighing herself for a while, partly because of the fear she felt when she even thought of the number and partly for always forgetting about it, just like how she forgot to do other basic things, maybe she should change that, no, she should absolutely change that, she should change pretty much everything... but not today, not when Amity knew that whatever results she was going to get on the scale were going to break her, and she would much rather not breakdown than face the results. Sitting down on the bed next to the only light of her life Amity closed her eyes, letting everything that had happened today wash through. She felt like a truck had hit her, and for a moment Amity wished that a truck would hit he- 'Don't you even think about that!' Amity's inner voice screamed, and Amity opened her eyes and sat up on bed as fast as she could, trying desperately to catch her breath. When did it become so hard to breathe? And as much as Amity tried to free herself from 'bad thoughts' they were too strong to be ignored. She tried to remember happy times, yet all that came to her mind was this morning, the memory of Luz playing with Caliban, but all it did was make her more miserable. Why was that memory her happiest? A stranger playing with her dog while she stared like a creep? Just how pathetic was that. Amity could feel hot tears rolling down her cheeks now, her inability to breathe and the crying caused her to begin to sob uncontrollably. Closing her eyes and with the little control, Amity had left she grasped her reddish hair and massaged her skull. Falling down on the bed Amity began wondering what would have happened if she had left with the twins when they offered. But she had fourteen then, so naive and clueless, and at that time Amity had hoped that without the twins her parents would begin to love her... she had been so stupid then. Had she left would her life be better? How is that even a question, of course her life would have been better without them, every time she even thought of them as parents she felt her heart ache. Why couldn't they just love her? Why couldn't she be perfect so they would love her? She clearly wasn't perfect, not when she had just failed a test and had to skip the rest of her classes. The light of her phone suddenly turned on, illuminating the dark room, and the sound of a message made Amity's eyes open. Just who was texting her? She had never given her number to anybody. Her breath got caught in her throat when she saw the time. 1:21 PM. She came home at ten, how did time pass to quickly? It felt like it had been five minutes since she came home and broke down. A new text message came to the screen and Amity looked down to see who it was, the light was hurting her eyes, yet she made no attempt to adjust the lightning. The first message she read said a simple 'Hi', the next one said this was from Luz... Amity felt her chest begin to bump faster and her face redden like a schoolgirl. The fact that Luz even had her number seemed so strange yet so adorable. A new text came up saying that she got her number from Willow and she was worried when Willow told her she didn't show up for class. /p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"More tears rolled down her cheeks, yet this time Amity didn't feel the immense void in her heart. A new text came up, this one was a video of adorable cats with a caption of 'I know you like dogs but these are just too cute.' Amity didn't even bother opening the video, instead, she quickly typed 'thank, you. I forgot to write to you, sorry' She doubted for a minute if she should send it, deciding to just go with it, her trembling finger clicked the blue arrow and she closed her eyes, not wanting to see the possible reply she might get. Opening one eye Amity saw a new text from Luz. 'So, you got them?' Got what? Amity was confused, but she was too scared to ask what Luz meant. 'Caliban pics?' Amity let out a sigh when Luz texted her again. Going to her picture gallery Amity curated the best pictures(all of them excluding her) as fast as she possibly could and send them. Why was she so nervous? Luz was the one who asked her to send them, but maybe she was just being nice to her. Maybe she just wanted to own up to her after what she did last night, maybe she just wanted to end this as quickly as possible and not see Amity again. Yet she had seemed so nice yesterday that Amity found it hard to believe she could be so fake, granted, she didn't know Luz, but for what she had seemed of her she sounded so... she didn't know how to describe her apart from amazing and all the synonyms that the word might have. 'How can you say that About someone who you just met?' Amity scolded herself, and as much as she tried to agree with herself she just couldn't do it. 'Calm down chief, I can't save all of them at the same tiem' '*time' Amity sighed and rested her head down on the bed rest, Caliban choosing this moment to place his head next to Amity. Luz suddenly bombarded her with messages about how much of a cutie her dog is and how much she wanted a dog then again about how cute he was. That caused Amity to giggle, and reading the messages caused her to be in a much better mood than this morning, Luz had no idea just how grateful Amity was. The next text Luz send her caused Amity to go into a loop. 'You're pretty cute too.' Blink. 'Sorry! Didnt mean ti send it!' Amity stared at the screen for a second until Luz, in all her infinite wisdom somehow made it worse. 'Stupid autocorrector am I right' Apart from the timing making no sense at all, Amity was inclined to believe Luz had made a mistake. How could she call her cute when she looked like she belonged in a hospital with sick people? If she had told her that three years ago then it would make sense seeing how she was generally very attractive, but she was not expecting Luz to say she looked cute at this point in her life. In an act of impulse, Amity pressed the call button, only to immediately regret it and hang up the second it started calling. But maybe Luz didn't saw it and she had nothing to worry about, then Luz called her not a second after. Amity gulped and Looked around. Should she answer? Amity felt inclined to answer, yet some part of her just wanted to turn off her phone and pretend this interaction never happened. Fuck it. Amity pressed the green button and used the speaker option, she didn't want her ears to hurt from the noise. "Sorry! Caliban accidentally pressed the call button." Amity bit her lip at the lie, it was credible enough, yet she felt something wrong. Some noise came from the other end of the receiver, it sounded like people talking and someone walking away from the noise. "Amity? What's wrong? You sound... agitated?" Amity closed her eyes and felt a sudden need to slap herself. Thinking of a lie came easier than she had expected. "Oh... I was running." It was a plausible lie, yet the way she said it gave her away. "You sure? You don't sound too sure." Amity quickly pressed the big red button on her phone, turned it off, and hid it inside the drawer of her night table. The amber-eyed girl stared at the wall for a second, not knowing what else to do. She felt herself about to cry again, yet she wasn't sure if she had any more tears left. Was she really that obvious? If Luz could tell something was wrong with her, then so could other people. Other people had seen her fall from her throne and struggle to even crawl and all they did was stare./p
hr style="margin: 0.875em auto 1.2525em; border-style: solid; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; width: 309.556px; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15.12px; background-color: #ffffff;" /
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The cold and unforgiving wind send chills to the core of Amity's bones. It had not been a good idea to walk Caliban during winter. Not for him, he seemed to be having fun, but Amity was dying internally. From the way she found it difficult to walk in the snow and how cold the whole place was, it was a nightmare for Amity. It wasn't like she was a stranger to cold temperatures, far from it, winters in France and Massachusetts were quite similar, but Amity was having much of a harder time dealing with it that she had had the previous years. But it wasn't all that bad... and who was she trying to fool, it was absolutely horrible and she hated it. It couldn't be worse than this. Amity heard Caliban begin to bark excitedly at something, and Amity supposed it was a squirrel and didn't give too much thought to it, but looking about Amity froze, this time not from the cold. Walking towards her was the last person she wanted to see, the one and only Luz Whatever-her-last-name-is. At that moment Amity felt the same terror she felt yesterday when she took the quiz. Should she leave? Or maybe hide? Luz looked so much more athletic than her, and she could be able to catch her. But again why would she even run after her? Amity's safest option was to hide, and the first thing she saw was a tree, it's trunk seemed thick enough to hide her, but it's not like it needed to be thick anyways. Running towards it and hiding, Amity closed her eyes and counted the seconds that passed, she was hoping that Caliban wouldn't fuck up her hiding. But she really couldn't trust her dog with it because it was the first thing he did. The golden retriever began barking excitedly and Amity wanted to disappear. "Hey, buddy!" Amity heard Luz's voice right next to her, and Caliban's barks and him pulling the leach only became stronger. "Hey, Amity." Luz giggled, she didn't sound mad, which surprised the still hiding woman. "Uhh... hey, Luz." The brunette said, opening her eyes to find Luz kneeled on the ground and petting Caliban, and once again, Amity's heart and cheeks melted. "I just wanted to give you this," Luz said and took out a card from her bag, extending her arm. Amity doubted if she could take it for a minute, but one look at Luz's adorable puppy face was enough to convince her to take whatever the dark-skinned woman was offering. It was a card similar to the one she had given her yesterday, but this one was a cookie with a band-aid, and the words 'You're one tough cookie' Appeared on the top. "I know you were not feeling great yesterday, and I won't push you to tell me why, but I just wanted to tell you that I'm here if you need help," Luz stated as she sat down on the floor. "Why? We don't know each other, it's we're not like we're friends." Amity found herself saying before she had time to think. Luz didn't say anything, instead, she just stared at Amity. "Well, I didn't know any of my friends before meeting them. We can get to know each other and become friends." Luz smiled. Amity just stared at Luz while contemplating all the choices that led to this moment. She was getting a friend. It seemed so unrealistic and far fetched that Amity had trouble believing it was real. "I-i'd like that." The brunette whispered. Luz's face got covered in a happy grin and she stood up, extending her arm expectantly. /p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""Well, if that's settled, may I walk Caliban with you?" Luz asked. Amity quickly nodded and followed Luz towards the park trail. She began talking about many things, and Amity listened to her with more interest than any of the lectures her professors gave, Amity didn't talk much, but Luz didn't seem to mind. For a moment the idea of actually having a friend, a real friend who wanted to be with her for her, and not for her money or reputation, a friend that hadn't been picked out by her parents, it seemed so strange but so nice, the thought of someone actually wanting to be with her felt so alien. But it was true and Amity knew it, her sane and insane part both agreed that Luz was just amazing and she couldn't be doing this for money or status. Amity wasn't sure Luz even knew who her family was, instead she just wanted a friend out of the girl whose backyard she had trespassed to play with a dog. "Amity!? Are you okay?" Luz asked in sheer panic once she noticed Amity had stopped walking and was instead frozen in place crying. "I... yeah, I'm just really happy to have a friend." The amber-eyed girl confessed, Luz's face shifted from worry to something between happiness and understanding. Amity was taken out of her reverie by Caliban barking at her. "Well, another friend." Amity corrected./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The fact that Amity got home at all should be considered a miracle. Although she didn't live very far from campus the distance felt almost eternal, and the brunette was sure she might pass out. Opening the front door she found Caliban sitting in front of the door waiting for her, she smiled a little when the dog barked and moved towards her. "Hey, Caliban," Amity said, her voice not being able to reach above a whisper, petting his head Amity walked towards the kitchen. She had to eat something or she was going to pass out, but as soon as she entered the smell of the breakfast she threw away earlier hit her, and Amity's throat closed. Maybe she wasn't hungry? Amity didn't feel hungry, but she most definitely felt the effects of not eating, and looking down Amity could see just how slim she had become, she used to be so strong when she was younger, and now she looked so fragile and skinny that the wind might as well take her away along with the dead leaves it picked up. Amity gulped and walked towards her room, change of plans, she could eat later when hunger hit her, but assuming she'll be hungry later seemed nothing more than wishful thinking. Amity had purposely avoided weighing herself for a while, partly because of the fear she felt when she even thought of the number and partly for always forgetting about it, just like how she forgot to do other basic things, maybe she should change that, no, she should absolutely change that, she should change pretty much everything... but not today, not when Amity knew that whatever results she was going to get on the scale were going to break her, and she would much rather not breakdown than face the results. Sitting down on the bed next to the only light of her life Amity closed her eyes, letting everything that had happened today wash through. She felt like a truck had hit her, and for a moment Amity wished that a truck would hit he- 'Don't you even think about that!' Amity's inner voice screamed, and Amity opened her eyes and sat up on bed as fast as she could, trying desperately to catch her breath. When did it become so hard to breathe? And as much as Amity tried to free herself from 'bad thoughts' they were too strong to be ignored. She tried to remember happy times, yet all that came to her mind was this morning, the memory of Luz playing with Caliban, but all it did was make her more miserable. Why was that memory her happiest? A stranger playing with her dog while she stared like a creep? Just how pathetic was that. Amity could feel hot tears rolling down her cheeks now, her inability to breathe and the crying caused her to begin to sob uncontrollably. Closing her eyes and with the little control, Amity had left she grasped her reddish hair and massaged her skull. Falling down on the bed Amity began wondering what would have happened if she had left with the twins when they offered. But she had fourteen then, so naive and clueless, and at that time Amity had hoped that without the twins her parents would begin to love her... she had been so stupid then. Had she left would her life be better? How is that even a question, of course her life would have been better without them, every time she even thought of them as parents she felt her heart ache. Why couldn't they just love her? Why couldn't she be perfect so they would love her? She clearly wasn't perfect, not when she had just failed a test and had to skip the rest of her classes. The light of her phone suddenly turned on, illuminating the dark room, and the sound of a message made Amity's eyes open. Just who was texting her? She had never given her number to anybody. Her breath got caught in her throat when she saw the time. 1:21 PM. She came home at ten, how did time pass to quickly? It felt like it had been five minutes since she came home and broke down. A new text message came to the screen and Amity looked down to see who it was, the light was hurting her eyes, yet she made no attempt to adjust the lightning. The first message she read said a simple 'Hi', the next one said this was from Luz... Amity felt her chest begin to bump faster and her face redden like a schoolgirl. The fact that Luz even had her number seemed so strange yet so adorable. A new text came up saying that she got her number from Willow and she was worried when Willow told her she didn't show up for class. /p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"More tears rolled down her cheeks, yet this time Amity didn't feel the immense void in her heart. A new text came up, this one was a video of adorable cats with a caption of 'I know you like dogs but these are just too cute.' Amity didn't even bother opening the video, instead, she quickly typed 'thank, you. I forgot to write to you, sorry' She doubted for a minute if she should send it, deciding to just go with it, her trembling finger clicked the blue arrow and she closed her eyes, not wanting to see the possible reply she might get. Opening one eye Amity saw a new text from Luz. 'So, you got them?' Got what? Amity was confused, but she was too scared to ask what Luz meant. 'Caliban pics?' Amity let out a sigh when Luz texted her again. Going to her picture gallery Amity curated the best pictures(all of them excluding her) as fast as she possibly could and send them. Why was she so nervous? Luz was the one who asked her to send them, but maybe she was just being nice to her. Maybe she just wanted to own up to her after what she did last night, maybe she just wanted to end this as quickly as possible and not see Amity again. Yet she had seemed so nice yesterday that Amity found it hard to believe she could be so fake, granted, she didn't know Luz, but for what she had seemed of her she sounded so... she didn't know how to describe her apart from amazing and all the synonyms that the word might have. 'How can you say that About someone who you just met?' Amity scolded herself, and as much as she tried to agree with herself she just couldn't do it. 'Calm down chief, I can't save all of them at the same tiem' '*time' Amity sighed and rested her head down on the bed rest, Caliban choosing this moment to place his head next to Amity. Luz suddenly bombarded her with messages about how much of a cutie her dog is and how much she wanted a dog then again about how cute he was. That caused Amity to giggle, and reading the messages caused her to be in a much better mood than this morning, Luz had no idea just how grateful Amity was. The next text Luz send her caused Amity to go into a loop. 'You're pretty cute too.' Blink. 'Sorry! Didnt mean ti send it!' Amity stared at the screen for a second until Luz, in all her infinite wisdom somehow made it worse. 'Stupid autocorrector am I right' Apart from the timing making no sense at all, Amity was inclined to believe Luz had made a mistake. How could she call her cute when she looked like she belonged in a hospital with sick people? If she had told her that three years ago then it would make sense seeing how she was generally very attractive, but she was not expecting Luz to say she looked cute at this point in her life. In an act of impulse, Amity pressed the call button, only to immediately regret it and hang up the second it started calling. But maybe Luz didn't saw it and she had nothing to worry about, then Luz called her not a second after. Amity gulped and Looked around. Should she answer? Amity felt inclined to answer, yet some part of her just wanted to turn off her phone and pretend this interaction never happened. Fuck it. Amity pressed the green button and used the speaker option, she didn't want her ears to hurt from the noise. "Sorry! Caliban accidentally pressed the call button." Amity bit her lip at the lie, it was credible enough, yet she felt something wrong. Some noise came from the other end of the receiver, it sounded like people talking and someone walking away from the noise. "Amity? What's wrong? You sound... agitated?" Amity closed her eyes and felt a sudden need to slap herself. Thinking of a lie came easier than she had expected. "Oh... I was running." It was a plausible lie, yet the way she said it gave her away. "You sure? You don't sound too sure." Amity quickly pressed the big red button on her phone, turned it off, and hid it inside the drawer of her night table. The amber-eyed girl stared at the wall for a second, not knowing what else to do. She felt herself about to cry again, yet she wasn't sure if she had any more tears left. Was she really that obvious? If Luz could tell something was wrong with her, then so could other people. Other people had seen her fall from her throne and struggle to even crawl and all they did was stare./p
hr style="margin: 0.875em auto 1.2525em; border-style: solid; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; width: 309.556px; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15.12px; background-color: #ffffff;" /
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The cold and unforgiving wind send chills to the core of Amity's bones. It had not been a good idea to walk Caliban during winter. Not for him, he seemed to be having fun, but Amity was dying internally. From the way she found it difficult to walk in the snow and how cold the whole place was, it was a nightmare for Amity. It wasn't like she was a stranger to cold temperatures, far from it, winters in France and Massachusetts were quite similar, but Amity was having much of a harder time dealing with it that she had had the previous years. But it wasn't all that bad... and who was she trying to fool, it was absolutely horrible and she hated it. It couldn't be worse than this. Amity heard Caliban begin to bark excitedly at something, and Amity supposed it was a squirrel and didn't give too much thought to it, but looking about Amity froze, this time not from the cold. Walking towards her was the last person she wanted to see, the one and only Luz Whatever-her-last-name-is. At that moment Amity felt the same terror she felt yesterday when she took the quiz. Should she leave? Or maybe hide? Luz looked so much more athletic than her, and she could be able to catch her. But again why would she even run after her? Amity's safest option was to hide, and the first thing she saw was a tree, it's trunk seemed thick enough to hide her, but it's not like it needed to be thick anyways. Running towards it and hiding, Amity closed her eyes and counted the seconds that passed, she was hoping that Caliban wouldn't fuck up her hiding. But she really couldn't trust her dog with it because it was the first thing he did. The golden retriever began barking excitedly and Amity wanted to disappear. "Hey, buddy!" Amity heard Luz's voice right next to her, and Caliban's barks and him pulling the leach only became stronger. "Hey, Amity." Luz giggled, she didn't sound mad, which surprised the still hiding woman. "Uhh... hey, Luz." The brunette said, opening her eyes to find Luz kneeled on the ground and petting Caliban, and once again, Amity's heart and cheeks melted. "I just wanted to give you this," Luz said and took out a card from her bag, extending her arm. Amity doubted if she could take it for a minute, but one look at Luz's adorable puppy face was enough to convince her to take whatever the dark-skinned woman was offering. It was a card similar to the one she had given her yesterday, but this one was a cookie with a band-aid, and the words 'You're one tough cookie' Appeared on the top. "I know you were not feeling great yesterday, and I won't push you to tell me why, but I just wanted to tell you that I'm here if you need help," Luz stated as she sat down on the floor. "Why? We don't know each other, it's we're not like we're friends." Amity found herself saying before she had time to think. Luz didn't say anything, instead, she just stared at Amity. "Well, I didn't know any of my friends before meeting them. We can get to know each other and become friends." Luz smiled. Amity just stared at Luz while contemplating all the choices that led to this moment. She was getting a friend. It seemed so unrealistic and far fetched that Amity had trouble believing it was real. "I-i'd like that." The brunette whispered. Luz's face got covered in a happy grin and she stood up, extending her arm expectantly. /p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""Well, if that's settled, may I walk Caliban with you?" Luz asked. Amity quickly nodded and followed Luz towards the park trail. She began talking about many things, and Amity listened to her with more interest than any of the lectures her professors gave, Amity didn't talk much, but Luz didn't seem to mind. For a moment the idea of actually having a friend, a real friend who wanted to be with her for her, and not for her money or reputation, a friend that hadn't been picked out by her parents, it seemed so strange but so nice, the thought of someone actually wanting to be with her felt so alien. But it was true and Amity knew it, her sane and insane part both agreed that Luz was just amazing and she couldn't be doing this for money or status. Amity wasn't sure Luz even knew who her family was, instead she just wanted a friend out of the girl whose backyard she had trespassed to play with a dog. "Amity!? Are you okay?" Luz asked in sheer panic once she noticed Amity had stopped walking and was instead frozen in place crying. "I... yeah, I'm just really happy to have a friend." The amber-eyed girl confessed, Luz's face shifted from worry to something between happiness and understanding. Amity was taken out of her reverie by Caliban barking at her. "Well, another friend." Amity corrected./p