Yellow Thorns (Thorns Duet #0.5) by Rina Kent

By the time I get home, I think I’ve analyzed what happened back at the field a hundred times over.

Okay, that’s a lie. It’s been at least double that.

Despite being a cheerleader, I don’t actually talk to Sebastian or play house with the rest of the football team.

Sure, Reina, Brianna, and the rest of the squad do, but I don’t for the simple reason that…well, they expect sex. It’s not rocket science and I’m not a whore.

So why the hell did I make myself look like one when I looped my leg around his?

Desperate much, Nao?

I text Luce to ask her to call me as soon as she’s done with whatever satanic rituals for shape and beauty Reina makes them do. But I know she’ll be too busy for me today.

Or ever, for that matter.

She practically sold her soul to the devil, and Reina will make sure to keep her occupied.

Our house, or Mom’s pride and joy, as she likes to remind me, sits on a large piece of land in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. We even have a huge-ass garage that we barely use and a fancy pool that Mom can show to her friends when she invites them over.

She always plays the game of ‘accept me!’ and it’s kind of frustrating. I’m way younger than her and I already understand that we, as minorities, just don’t get accepted. At least, not by most of the racists plaguing this godforsaken town.

If I had a penny for every time someone’s called me ‘exotic’ or said I have such ‘strange’ eyes or that my soft black hair is so ‘unique,’ I’d be as rich as my mama.

She knows all that, but she just refuses to stop trying, which is both courageous and sad, I guess.

Instead of going inside, I rummage through the mailbox, searching for a very familiar black envelope…

Yes!

I get out Akira’s letter and smile as I open it. I even pause my core metal playlist. What? It means the letter is that important.

Juggling the rest of the mail in one hand and my bag on my shoulder, I open the letter from my pen pal.

And yeah, that sounds outdated, but his first letter got me smiling, and I needed to smile that day, so I wrote back.

True, I still know next to nothing about Akira, but it’s not like I’m telling him my deepest secrets or anything. It’s just something that I look forward to every week.

And maybe that’s because I’m pathetic and he’s one of just two people I have as friends.



Dear Naomi,

Should I stop that? Starting the letter with Dear Naomi, I mean. Doesn’t it sound tacky to you? I was thinking about it the other day, and somehow, it does to me.

Anyway, now that my musings about the salutation are out of the way, I want to tell you that your story for history class is lame.

You should talk about Japan and the Warring States period. You know you want to. But you can deny it, I don’t care.

Well, you were born in America, so you might not consider yourself wholly Japanese, but let me insist on this. Do something cool instead of that old, rehearsed topic.

My studies have been going well. Thank you for not asking. But then again, you probably think I’m a nerd and that studying hard is expected of nerds. *insert unflattering language here that basically means, screw you if you think that way*

Now, where were we? Right. My studies.

I don’t like what I’m doing right now and I’m thinking about changing majors, but I don’t know what I’ll change to or if I’d be making the right choice.

Do you ever feel like you understand nothing and when you finally do, the doors are closed? It’s like you arrive at life too late.

Or is that too melodramatic?

Anyway, I’m not going to bore you with my life’s story. Tell me about you.

Are you still eating the hearts of the cheerleaders, or did you grow some balls and quit?

If that happens, don’t worry, you can always be my Yuki-Onna. Or maybe I’m yours.



Sincerely,

Akira



I smile at the dork. He always has such huge illusions about Japanese spirits and their evilness.

He calls me Yuki-Onna because, according to him, I resemble her with my pale skin, rosy lips, and Asian eyes that are so dark, they’re nearly black.

He says I have the beauty of the snow woman, a ghost who roamed the mountains on stormy winter days to lure mortals and kill them.

And since then, it’s kind of become our inside joke.

I never thought this thing with Akira—friendship, as he calls it—would go this far, but I’m glad that I at least have him.

Even if I still don’t know what he looks like.

I contemplated asking for a picture; however, not only would he refuse, but it would also kill the image I already have of him. A cute guy who’s definitely an otaku and talks about porn more than necessary.

He’s corrupted me.

My feet come to a halt inside the front door of our house. It has a wide entryway into the living area that’s diagonal from the kitchen.

Mom stands in front of a mannequin, a pincushion on her wrist and a phone to her ear while she pins a piece of cloth to the mannequin’s chest.

She might have become the CEO of Chester Couture, but she still obsesses over a mannequin at home, trying to come up with her next masterpiece.

I hide Akira’s letter in my bag before she lifts her head. While Mom knows I have a pen pal from Japan, I don’t like her touching his letters. We talk about porn sometimes and that’s not a conversation I want her to be privy to.