When I come home, all the lights are off apart from the sitting room light. I park up my truck and then slowly get out. I take off my shoes once inside and walk to the main staircase.

"Tyler," my dad calls out from the sitting room. "Come here."

I take a deep breath and turn around, walking to the sitting room. I look in, expecting to see my mom and dad but only my dad sits there on the elegant, uncomfortable couch.

I shove my hands into my pockets and look at him. "What?"

"Where were you last night?" he asks, peering at me.

My dad isn't too old with dark hair that's shaggy and messy. He has a dark stubble that covers his jaw and a cold look in his eyes as he stares back at me.

"With Ethan," I say.

"Where?" he asks again, his voice stronger.

"We went to the bike stadium. I watched him."

My dad stares at me a second longer and there's a look in his eyes that makes me tense up. He reaches down beside him and brings up a shirt and immediately I know I'm in trouble.

"Well, then, how did your shirt get like this?" he asks.

I stare at the blood-stained shirt and grit my teeth. "You've been in my room."

"What the hell is this, Tyler?" My dad stands up, his face contorted in anger. "This isn't normal. You have a bloody shirt in your room. What the hell happened?"

I don't say anything. I don't know what to say. Ethan would have come up with some clever excuse by now and everyone would buy it without hesitation. But I'm not Ethan. I just look at the shirt and feel myself sweat and my neck clench as I gulp.

"Tyler . . . " my dad sighs and drops the shirt back down onto the foot stool. "I'm not accusing you of anything, but you have to understand how this looks. There's a shirt in your room with blood all over it."

"Why were you in my room, anyway?" I ask with a snarl, trying to mask my panic with anger. "You shouldn't even be going in there."

"This is my house, Tyler, and if I want to go in your room, I damn well will!" He stands up, his hands clenched at his sides.

"This is bullshit. You can't just go through my stuff . . . "

"As your father—"

"Well, you're not my father!" I cry out.

It's silent and I finally register what I've said. I feel cold inside and my anger dies down as my regret comes up. My dad looks at the ground, chewing on his bottom lip as the impact of my words hit him.

I want to take them back and say I'm sorry. I want to be able to just walk over and hug him and then everything will be okay. But that's not how it works in my family. So I storm up the stairs and slam the bedroom door behind me.

***

The hallways are completely empty when I finally make my way to school. I bypass a few teachers lurking around the end of the corridor, and quickly head over to the drama room. When I open the double doors, every single head turns to look me.

I ignore them and grab a chair from the side of the room. They're in a circle again and the irritation I experience from looking at it is slightly amusing. I place my chair outside of the circle and sit, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Tyler." The drama teacher with bleach blonde hair and an old face looks down at me. "Thank you for finally joining us."

I ignore her remark and bring my phone out of my pocket. The screen shows three new texts from Ethan. I curse in my head and unlock the screen, but just as I'm about to read the first message, someone appears in front of me.

The teacher's bright pink lips are stretched into a smile as she holds out her hand. "Phone, please."

I raise an eyebrow and scoff. "You can't be serious."

"Oh, I'm very serious, Mr Madden," she says. "Phones are the work of the devil, my friend. They will eat your brains out."

"That's a zombie," I mutter.

"You can't focus on your work if you're socializing on a phone," she says and plucks my phone out of my hand before I can stop her, dropping it into a little box at the front of the class. "You'll get it back at the end, Tyler."

The teacher, whose name I haven't bothered to learn, brings out a huge stack of papers and passes them to one kid who hands them round the circle. A set of papers lands on my knee. I don't even look at it.

"This is the script for the end-of-year production," Miss Joit says. "It won't be performed for quite a few more months but I see no harm in getting started early. Auditions are starting in a few weeks so I wanted to give you the most time possible to prepare. For those who don't want to perform, I ask that you now go to the cafeteria where you will be making set designs. Today is just to give everyone a rundown of what is happening. It will be normal classes after that for a while."

Hesitantly, a few people stand and move towards the door, heading to the cafeteria. I stand up, grabbing my bag and leaving the script on the floor as it falls off my knee. I wait till most of the people have walked out and then move myself. I catch the doors just as they're about to shut and walk through, noticing someone right behind me. I glance back and it's the girl from yesterday, the one who noticed the bruise on my face.

"Thanks," she says.

I shut the door after her and make no conversation. I don't want her getting any closer to me, seeing as she had been seconds away from rattling off to everyone about my latest bruises yesterday.

My body aches at the memory of the fight two nights ago, and I clench my fist, willing the pain in my muscles to finally just go away for good. But that's never how it works. That's never how Carl wants it to work. He wants me to remember the pain of having that man's fist slam into my skin over and over again. He wants me to remember the sight of that man lying on the floor covered in blood. Most of the fight I don't recall; it's a painful blur and it happened too fast.

But little pieces I can put together and the final image of it scares me.

More than I want to admit.

I follow the others to the cafeteria. Once inside, I notice that there is another class there, sitting on top of tables with paintbrushes in their hands. I have the sudden urge to turn around and walk out of the room, not looking back. But I walk further inside until I'm clumped together with the rest of the students who opted out of performing.

We stand in front of Mr Small, the main art teacher, who stands to about my chest—he lives up to his name. He has beady eyes, a round head, and messy stubble that's turning into a beard as fast as it's greying.

"Okay, so you guys will just be painting things for the set. We're doing them early so they're out of the way and ready. Walk around, pick a board and start painting, supplies are in the back. Make sure that you actually look at the picture and paint it accordingly. I don't want purple trees or yellow rocks," Mr Small says and then walks away.

Everyone picks a board and I slowly walk round the room until Mr Small appears in front of me. I look down at him.

"Tyler, are you going to start painting anytime soon?" he asks.

I sigh. "Of course."

He smiles tightly and walks off as I begrudgingly pick up a board and walk over to the only available space left. I drop the cut-out down onto the table and stare at the badly shaped bush that I am supposedly meant to paint.

I glance behind me and the table full of paint is laid out carefully with people grabbing stuff and walking away. I head over when it's empty and look over the different palettes of paint. After a minute of just staring at them, someone comes up behind me and I look over to see the girl from class.

She has brown hair that's curly and kind of messy, big eyes, and an average-sized nose. Her lips stretch into a smile.

"You look lost," she comments.

I glance back at the paint before biting the inside of my cheek. "Um, can you get me the green?"

She raises her eyebrows and stares at me for a moment before reaching over to pick up a palette from the back that has three sections filled with paint.

One black.

One white.

One a murky yellow.

At least, that's how they look to me.

"Thanks," I mutter and walk away after grabbing a random paintbrush from the container.

The paint on the palette doesn't look green, just dirty. I shrug, dip the tip of my paintbrush in, and start to paint silently. I do random strokes up and down, not even too sure what I'm doing.

By the end of the class I have the entire bush painted green.

But it doesn't look green to me the same way it looks green to everyone else. And that bothers me. It shouldn't . . . but it does. I don't like being different.

And my main problem is that I am different.

More different than anyone knows.

You can follow my socials at EllieSPindolia on twitter, and authorelliesita on Instagram!

(French edition of my book ASK AMY is available in bookstores in France and online retailers outside France)