Sometime while Crista waited at the bus stop near the Vargas house, she had changed her mind about going home for dinner that night after all. Instead, she took another bus to an apartment building a few blocks from the school. After locating the apartment she was looking for, she took a breath and knocked at the door.

A dark-haired woman in her late thirties opened the door and gave Crista a head to toe glance as the girl attempted to smile a nervous greeting, “here to see Kole, I assume?” the woman asked her flatly.

“Yeah I’m---”

But before Crista could introduce herself, the woman shouted over her shoulder, “Kole! Girl!” she then simply moved away from the door to allow Crista to invite herself in.

Appearing from a nearby bathroom, while drying his long hair, Kole was a bit surprised to see his visitor. “Uh, hi?” he greeted her questioningly.

“Your hair... is black.” Crista narrowed her eyes at him as she nervously closed the door behind her.

“Yes, recent development” he smiled nervously as he tossed the towel back into the bathroom behind him and gave another wary look at where his father didn’t bother looking up from the TV in response to their guest, and his mom was simply back in the adjoining dining room again, smoking her cigarette and making her coffee.

“It looks good. Of course the purple looked good too. Pretty sure anything would look good” Crista stated quietly, her age always more apparent when she was nervous.

“We can talk in my room” Kole swallowed with a bit of nervousness of his own then.

“Door open!” his mom called after him, “we don’t need you to fuck up another girl’s life” she added coldly, to which Kole just cringed. Ignoring his mother, he tossed his bedroom door angrily shut behind he and Crista as his mother angrily yelled his name again. A moment later, she was slamming the door open again, “do not fuck with us on this Kole! Or your little friend can go right back home” she growled as she moved away from the now open door and returned to the dining room.

“Home sweet home” Kole grumbled as he took a seat at his computer, “and now you know why I don’t normally have my little friends over” he scoffed as he bit at a black nail, glaring toward the doorway.

“Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t have just showed up” Crista apologized sadly.

“Not your fault they’re assholes” he mumbled as he tried to distract himself from looking at her revealing white halter and skirt she wore that day.

“I looked up your address, obviously” she stated in the same apologetic tone. “I also gave your glove to Connor” she added more warily, which did cause him to look back.

“What now?”

“The glove that you wore to the mall last night; I gave it to Connor” she stated in the same wary whisper.

“Why?” Kole asked slowly as he turned his eyes toward the doorway once more.

“I just wanna make sure you’re ok. Considering” she added, her eyes also moving to the doorway.

“And?” he replied, teeth slightly clenched, “if I’m dying or something, they may like you even better than Sammi for delivering that news” he whispered sarcastically.

“Don’t know anything yet” she said, his words producing further sadness in her then.

Kole just sighed as he looked back at his computer, “well I feel fine, physically anyway” he mumbled, eyes on the screen in front of him.

“Well good, maybe it was just random” Crista said hopefully. She then looked back at the doorway warily before pulling up a chair next to him so she could speak even more quietly then, “I think you were wrong about something though.”

“Why you whispering? My parents will wholeheartedly agree with you on anything that involves me being wrong” he mumbled in the same bitter tone he always seemed to use when speaking of the two adults in the next room.

“About... stuff... not having to be over” she told him sadly.

“Stuff?” he raised a brow as he cast her another glance.

“About us no longer being able to have...” another look at the doorway, “the kind of weekend we just had” she decided on.

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Kole tensed slightly then as he cast another look at the doorway, “lemme guess. Cops bugging you?”

“No, but Sky and Star told me that they might” Crista stated with the same sad tone, “and they are really, really freaked out. Especially Sky” she informed softly.

“And I’m older than them” he mumbled, “plus, there’s already proof of me doing what they might try to claim I did with you” he decided on.

“What?”

“Sammi was fifteen when I... was with her last” he decided on, voice shaking, “and I had just turned sixteen, so. Trust me, if they wanna try to accuse anyone of doing that with you? I’ll be the first one they go after.”

“But...” she then just glared at the doorway again, “god it’s hard to talk like this” she added in her own angry mumble.

“Think that’s the point” he returned in the same bitter tone, to which Crista could only sigh in frustration.

It wasn’t much later that Kole gave his parents the excuse of Crista needing a ride home so they could at least go to his car and talk about any of the important things happening in their lives right then; as none of them would be very safe for parental consumption.

When they got to the parking garage and got into the car, Kole sighed heavily as he took his seat behind the wheel and ran his fingers through his newly blackened locks. Crista looked over at him nervously then, suddenly remembering their snippets of conversation upstairs “proof?” she asked.

“What?” Kole replied as he cast her a questioning look.

“Proof of you doing what they might accuse you of doing with me?” she asked warily.

“Well obviously not proof of me doing it with you. Least I doubt it” he shook his head, “but proof of me doing that with Sammi, when I was sixteen and when she was fifteen; which you aren’t even yet” he added more quietly.

“I’ll be fifteen in two months” Crista informed hopefully.

“If only that made a difference in the eyes of the law” Kole sighed.

“But if you were sixteen then...”

“And I’m seventeen now. For another month at least” he sighed. “Either way the age of consent is sixteen. If a sixteen or seventeen year old has sex with a fourteen or fifteen year old” he just shook his head, “it’s utterly ridiculous, and they did ultimately let it go with me and Sammi since we had been having sex before I turned sixteen” he shook his head.

“The Romeo and Juliet stuff?”

“Yeah” he mumbled, “but I doubt that’ll work here. Since none of us ever had sex with you when we were under the age of consent, since you were fucking twelve then” he sighed. “And none of us are technically in a relationship with you. Least not one that would make sense to anyone but us” he added more quietly.

“Why was it even an issue with Sammi though? How did anyone even know or care that you two were sleeping together? I’d think what happened with she and Curt would be a little more of a concern, legally.”

Kole took a shaky breath, eyes down once more, “I’m already considered someone who’s capable of committing statutory rape; after me and Sammi’s sex life came up when they investigated her suicide” he answered, still nearly choking on that word every time he used it.

“Why would your sex life even matter? Sex with you wasn’t what made her kill herself” Crista stated softly.

“Opinions vary” he whispered.

“What? But Curt’s the one who actually raped her” Crista returned worriedly.

Kole then moved his hands to his face as he leaned on the steering wheel, “but I’m the one who made it so much worse” he choked on the words.

“How? How could you have made getting raped worse? I mean it doesn’t sound like you ever blamed her for the rape; and I can’t imagine any other reason why---”

“But I’m the one responsible for the real reason she killed herself” he whispered, biting back more tears as he told the story once more.

“The real reason?” Crista was even further confused by that.

“The miscarriage she had, while Curt raped her. You can see why I hate our school. That’s where my baby died, and where its mother gave up on life too” he whispered as the tears finally broke free at last.

There was a long moment of silence as Crista tried to take in that confession while Kole tried to force some sort of composure again. Finally, Crista spoke again, “now I’m even more amazed that you didn’t kill Curt.”

Kole scoffed as he finally looked up again, wiping away a few offending steaks of eye makeup, “that’ s what I keep hearing. I’m damned near an angel, right?”

Crista sighed heavily, “they can question me all they want. I won’t tell the cops that you and I made love this weekend” she allowed her own sniffle, “you don’t deserve any part of that shit storm” she whispered as she moved to embrace him.

“I just told you I’m the reason the girl I loved killed herself, and you’re hugging me?” he scoffed, though couldn’t help wrapping his arms around her as well.

“That’s bullshit Kole. She didn’t kill herself when she found out your baby was inside her. She killed herself when she found out that Curt ended that baby’s life” Crista sniffled again as she held him even tighter then.

Then Kole took her back to that motel where Sky had taken her and Kole had taken Sky, not even a week earlier. And they got their room and they made love to each other once again. Both of them knew it was wrong in the eyes of the law. Both of them knew the risk of a condom breaking and the pill not being effective yet. But they also knew that they both needed to remind one another that there were still things worth living for, no matter what others thought of those things.

And once again, their draw to each other made it more than clear that the four of them did all truly seem to be sharing one soul now, and nothing would ever change that fact for any of them. They were all the one thing that was keeping each other going at that point, no matter how truly hard it was for any of them to keep going at all from one day to the next.

And then the next day did happen. And the police decided to move forward with the charges against Curt, and the investigation into his past and all of the people in his life, including the victims and alleged victims.

And then the police showed up at the school and took Curt away. And then would begin the real test for all of them. Then they’d have to find out exactly what their shared soul could truly take, after all.