* * *
ME: That’s romantic. Now he’s a part of you. Don’t worry. You’ll shit him out tomorrow.
* * *
A second after I hit send, the phone comes to life in my hand. Her name lights up the display, flashing urgently. It takes a lot to provoke Meredith into a pique of rage, but I think I might just have managed it with that last comment. I hit the decline button, which will only incense her further. And so begins our next war. She’ll call me again and again over the next few days, growing angrier and angrier. I’ll avoid her like the plague. Eventually, she’ll call in her shaman to cleanse her and the penthouse, and then she’ll send me a long, passive aggressive email about how she’s sorry that I’m so broken inside and I can’t handle my own emotions well enough to interact with the outside world in a kind manner.
Which I will also ignore.
For now, I’m content in the knowledge that she’s standing in her precious penthouse, scrubbing the grim patina of my father’s ashes from every surface, cursing the very name that she gave to me. Karma’s a bitch, Mom.
I’m so pleased with myself that I actually clean my room. My clothes get folded and put away into drawers. All of the random objects, books, games, and junk that was scattered all over my floor get either put back where they belong or thrown in the trash. A lot of it gets thrown in the trash. When I’m done, the polished floorboards are swept clean. The rug at the foot of my bed has been vacuumed. I can actually see the sofa by the windows, instead of just a mound of unfolded clean laundry. I put clean sheets on my bed, feeling equal parts accomplished and frustrated.
I should feel better now. The nagging voice in the back of my head that hasn’t shut up all day should be quiet, now that my environment is so clean and organized. At least, that’s what I assumed would happen. Turns out the nagging voice had nothing to do with the mess in my room; it’s still there, and it won’t shut the fuck up.
Because of the girl.
Chase.
She was the reason why I couldn’t sit still in the dark room.
Every time I shove her out of my head, she slips in through a side door, or cracks a window and lets herself back in. She’s fucking insidious. I was absolutely vile to her today. I hurt her, I know I did. I should have walked away from the situation feeling better about myself, but that’s not what happened, is it? No, I’ve felt all wound up and contorted inside, and I still fucking do. I thought she’d fade from the forefront of my mind if I gave her a talking to in public, but I was wrong. And one thing I do not like is being wrong.
21
PRES
* * *
“I’m not happy about this.” Dad peers up at the academy wearing an unhappy frown. “I hope you can at least acknowledge how fucked up this is, Presley.”
Being at the house has been pure torture. Most nights, I’ve waited for him to go to bed and then I’ve crept downstairs to sleep on the couch. He started locking all the doors and windows, as if he really did expect me to bolt in the middle of the night and make a run for Germany. I told him in all seriousness that I’d do that because I was desperate, and I didn’t know what else to say to make him understand how badly I didn’t want to sleep in the house anymore. I would never have done it. I shouldn’t have even said it, but yeah. Like I’ve already mentioned. Desperate.
He's been hovering over me ever since I got out of the hospital, trying to cheer me up, trying to ‘make me feel better,’ but he’s seen how abjectly miserable I’ve been. How I’ve jumped at every loud sound in the house. How I can’t sit still, can’t relax, can’t eat…
And so he’s caving, under duress, anxious as hell, and letting me move back into the academy on the proviso that I either see him face-to-face or FaceTime him every day, no matter what, so he can see with his own two eyes that I’m okay.
I’ve agreed to his rules. And I do feel terrible that I’ve kind of forced his hand like this. But I already feel less panicked at the prospect of being far, far away from Grandpa’s old place. So many happy childhood memories, torched and burned to the ground because of one night. I’ll never be able to step foot back in that place now, without feeling the need to run. Scream. Hide.
Don’t think about it, Presley.
Don’t think about it.
As a consequence of Dad moving my stuff out of my room at the academy, I’ve lost my old room on the same floor as Elodie and Carrie to another student who wanted to move, which really sucks. I’ll now be two floors down from them, on a floor without any of my close friends, but I don’t mind. My new room is pretty cool, actually. A corner room, with huge bay windows. Taking my overnight duffel bag from Dad, I loop the strap over my arm, looking up at him. He’s so tired. It’s not just the huge shadows under his eyes. It’s the way he’s stooped over, curled in on himself, as if he can barely hold himself up anymore. I’m responsible for this. He’s suffering because of me. I’m not the only one who’ll benefit from me being out of that house; he’d never admit it, but Dad’s going to be better off with me gone, too. At least he'll be able to focus on the restaurant’s approaching grand opening and not on whether I’m trying to break out of the house.
I pop up onto my tiptoes and kiss him quickly on the cheek. “I’ll call you tonight, I promise,” I tell him.
“You’d better. You miss one call—”
“I know, I know. I’ll be heading back down the mountain quicker than I can blink. I got it, Dad.”
His eyes have taken on a glossy, glazed over look. “I love you, kiddo.”
“I love you, too.”
“All right, then.” He sniffs. “Go and kick some ass in class. Show ‘em who’s boss.”
“You know I will.”
As I walk up what’s left of the gravel driveway that leads to the academy’s entrance, I heave a sigh of relief. I doubt I’ll be kicking ass any time soon. But at least I’ll be able to breathe.
At the bottom of the steps, I happen to look over to my left, toward Wolf Hall’s tiny Victorian cemetery and the lake, and there stands Pax. I can’t see his face for the camera that he’s holding up in front of it, but it’s clearly him—the jerk who made me feel like shit at lunch yesterday. The guy who promised to deliver more pain and misery with the last words that he spoke to me.
Turns out he doesn’t just want to take pictures of me when I’m naked; it would seem I’m fair game when I’m fully dressed, too.
Asshole.
They say redheads are a dying breed. It’s a recessive genetic trait, after all. Even if both parents have the gene for red hair, statistically only one in four of their children will come out with red hair. Apart from me, there’s only one other girl at the academy who has said red hair, and she’s more auburn than red. That makes spotting me in a crowd pretty fucking easy. I’ve gone all morning without catching sight of a certain, shaved-headed, belligerent photographer, but my luck can only last so long. After lunch, I catch sight of Pax walking down the hall at the exact same moment he sees me, and there’s a moment where we both fire daggers at each other. But then his jaw sets and he powers forward, coming right for me, forging a path through the sea of students making their way to class. He doesn’t really need to work hard for that pathway; our classmates part like the Red Sea for him like he’s Moses himself.