Amaya's POV

December had come quick enough for me. My best friend of my entire life was fighting with me.  Oscar hadn't spoken to me in weeks now.

After I finally let out my biggest secret, my biggest defeat, he stormed out of his house leaving me there with the high school students.

Out of fear I didn't take the job with Chamber and I eventually quit my job DJing. Teaching became my whole being after that night.

Thanksgiving was awful. 

The whole month of November couldn't get any better. My mom invited Santos to our dinner. Thankfully Oscar had not allowed them to come. She was pissed but was too occupied by cooking to really give a shit. 

After that day I took a few weeks to talk to my students about college. They needed to think about something other than Lil Ricky or Cuchillos for a while. College would clearly distract them long enough.

Jasmine took my advice about applying to the Police Academy.

Jamal took my advice and threw it out the window. I told him he'd be a good candidate for the FBI Academy. He laughed and then realized I was being serious which led to him running away from me all of November.

In an effort to avoid Santos I didn't make any recommendations for Cesar or Monse but from what Ruby said they both decided on schools a while ago. 

Ruby wanted to go to Business school away from California but not too far so he was looking at Arizona and Nevada.

I personally wrote each of them a reference so they could go far away from here.

~

I went to the doctors after my week at home. My gallbladder was definitely going to be removed. The concussion I had, had would go away in the month that I avoided everyone. 

~

It was nice to hang out with my sisters instead of dealing with all my bullshit. 

Katia and Lilia had me make silk flower bouquets for their quince. Sara had me watching every season of Game of Thrones with her. Mom didn't care about anything she did. 

Sara was probably the best one out of all of us sisters in her eyes.

~

Mom and I went shopping in our free time to catch up. 

We found all the decorations and flowers, EVERYTHING we could need for the twins birthday. I liked that we found them both matching White Gold Hoops to match mine. Big ass one's for Katia and a moderate sized one for Lilia.

The twins had changed their minds on their court throwing my mom off the wagon. 

They had messed up their dance rehearsals so much that the instructor fired us. Great for me because it meant I'd get more free time. Bad for my mother because now she was double timing rehearsals.

 The twins had me designing their invitations after making me create about 20000 silk roses and they hated everything I designed. Finally I said fuck it and printed out the ones I liked. It was the same information just on a different design than they imagined. I didn't care as long as they had the damn party.

~

December meant Christmas time. Cookies, eggnog, pine trees, the music. Christmas time was always the worst time of year for me but now that I was home it wasn't too bad. People invited me to parties left and right. Whether it be just a house party or a Christmas party I wasn't going. 

My trust and anxiety got the better of me.

Six new people knew what had really happened. 

Even if they didn't know why I left, they were smart enough to put the pieces together. I distanced myself from almost everyone on my life. I built my walls up extra high after that night.

The biggest change in our life was instead of Santos protecting our house, my Uncle had his motorcycle gang keeping tabs. They weren't has friendly as say Nieves or Sad Eyes but it beat seeing them.

Or another change was Angelica actually asked me to hang out. I don't know if Mario held a gun to her head and said be nice, but it was nice. 

~

We had gone to dinner, to get our nails done, hung out with her other friends. She even invited me to her bachelorette party, she might have said I couldn't go to the bachelor party which I hadn't planned on it. But still it was an olive branch friendship.

The bachelorette party was weird. 

Her friends definitely didn't know she was pregnant so Angelica had to keep pouring out drinks they gave her. Or I'd have to take them. They brought out someone's cousin who was a striper. I'm pretty sure we went to high school together.

I kept thinking to myself 'wow how are lives are so different.'

 The weirdest part of the whole party was that they choice to have it on a Sunday at 1 pm. It's like they hit 23-24 years old and forgot that they can party at 11 o'clock at night.

~

When her party was over it was time for me to go shopping with my mom for Christmas presents.

"Mija, I have six Christmas' to make up for." Was her motto.

I'd say something on the lines of, "You don't have to make up for something that I gave up." And then she'd hush me and then we'd go into a different store.

Picking presents was kind of easier than I had expected.

Sara pleaded for a gold chain so I got one at Macy's for 20 bucks, Lilia only wanted one thing an iPhone ring light which wasn't hard to find at Forever21, Katia was easier with a fanny pack with some makeup brushes.

My mother wanted nothing. But that wasn't going to happen. Collectively the sisters and I came up with $150 dollars to buy her the best present.

Katia thought we should get her Korean skincare products. Pretty sure that Katia just wanted those for herself.

Sara suggested we get her silk pajamas because she kept pining over a pair in a magazine.

Lilia came up with a photo shoot with all of us.

Living in Freeridge all we needed was someone with a nice camera to take our photos. But being someone who has connections I got us a better photographer in Malibu. We could have the beach as a back drop, I ordered special glass frames. And I picked out silk pajamas so Sara would shut up.

Being distracted from one problem let me worry about another. Putting my time and effort into the twins party let me not worry about my failed job or even think about Oscar and how he walked away from me. 

That would just play in my head at night before bed. Over and over until I needed to talk to Raf about him prescribing me something to go to sleep. He said I needed to do yoga or even meditate. His next great idea was for me to talk to 

That was a load of shit. 

Crock of shit.

Not until he tried to talk to me would I try to talk to him.

That changed one morning when Cesar came in scared, looking around the room, breathing heavy.

"AJ, can I talk to you?"

I pulled him into the hall.

"What's wrong?"

"Oscar hasn't been home in a week. Last time something happened like this 19th street kidnapped him for Cuchillos."

"Oh no."

Oh fuck.

You all are invited to the: