The tears came harder, faster, and the doormen both looked on with concern as I barreled toward them and slipped out the doors they hadn’t had a chance to fully open.
Down the steps and across the lot, I didn’t stop until I’d passed the hospital, the airport, and I’d reached the darker streets leading home. It would take me hours to scale Crest Road and get there, but I didn’t care.
When I could no longer run, I walked, only pausing long enough to see a familiar black truck speed by when I took off my heels.
Silas. Where was he going? He had to have seen me walking, yet he hadn’t stopped.
Fuck him. I flung my shoes at the road, hoping someone crushed them beyond repair, much like the asshole I’d crushed on for years had done me.
Finally, I gave in and called an Uber. A different driver picked me up, thankfully. He was old enough to be my grandfather and only asked if I was okay before keeping his mouth shut.
My phone rang. Cory.
I sent her a text saying I was home and watched the Uber pull away as I stared daggers through blurred eyes at the house next door.
My prom dress, soiled and crinkled from all the walking, still sat in a heap on the armchair in my room a week later.
“I’m going to ask you one last time, Fern,” my mother said, seated on the edge of the bed. “What the hell happened, and who did this to you?”
I couldn’t tell her. Not only because I was hiding under my comforter and I didn’t want to, but because I knew her. She’d insert herself in some way to try to fix it—to fix me.
In grade five, Ryan Jeckle pushed me off the monkey bars, and I broke my arm. She’d had him expelled from school, and his father fired from where he worked at the power plant.
“Fine,” Mom said, the bed shifting when she stood. “You leave me no choice.”
I closed my eyes over a new wave of tears. I was surprised I had any left to spill.
I trapped them, and eventually, I fell back to sleep.
I woke some hours later to the sound of my mom’s raised voice. “I don’t care if she doesn’t want to see you.” There was a pause, and I pushed the comforter off, shying away from the brightness cascading in from the floor-to-ceiling doors. She’d opened the curtains.
She’d opened the fucking curtains.
I rolled out of bed to the floor, commando crawling so as not to be seen. I doubted he was watching. I doubted he gave one single shit about what I was doing or how he’d made me feel.
Still, I refused to let him see any part of me.
I tore them closed and fell back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.
“Fuck school,” I heard Mom say into the phone. “I’m sending a car. Get over here and tell me what’s happened to my daughter.”
School. Right. A place I hadn’t been since that nightmare night. I could never show my face there again, and I’d prayed and hoped and wished with every new tear that I’d still be able to graduate without attending.
I’d been a perfect student, after all. Maybe I could take my finals online.
Mom broke my panic with something I’d already guessed at. “Cory’s on her way over, Fern! And she will tell me everything.”
I would’ve protested, but I didn’t have any room to care.
Jude
Fern graduated, I knew that much, but she didn’t show her face at school until then, and no one besides Cory had seen her since. The brief drop back into the world hadn’t gone well for her. Most had found new things to talk about since prom, but her resurgence, the paler complexion, and the gaunt look to her cheeks got their chins wagging in an instant.
She’d been quiet, not even so much as a smile when she’d accepted her diploma.
And then she was gone.
I think I love him.
I wouldn’t feel bad. No matter how many times I’d reopened that diary of hers to reread some of the inner workings of her mind.
She wasn’t only delusional and weird as fuck, but she was downright crazy. Ted Bundy crazy.
Besides, Marnie and I were finally official once more. Better late than never.
After prom, she’d said I’d proven myself. Whatever the fuck that meant. She’d also asked that I try to be honest with her, or that I at least try to open up a little more, explaining that we could be even better than before if I did.
I didn’t plan on doing that, but I needed something, and she’d been something I’d needed for months, regardless of how conflicted I sometimes felt.
So the start of summer had been spent getting to know someone I already fucking knew. Her request, not mine, and she wouldn’t let me bang her until we’d reconnected properly.
Sex just muddles everything up, she’d said.
But it makes arguing a lot more fun, I’d retaliated.
To which she’d called me a pig and slapped me across the chest, her eyes laughing.
Maybe if she could quit smacking me, I’d feel a little more secure myself in this discomfort that used to be the most comfortable thing on earth.
So much so, I’d destroyed something in order to get it back.
Butcher.
I drew in a shaken breath, dragging my fingers through my mussed hair.
Marnie’s arm clung to mine. “Is it bad that I can’t even remember what movie we watched?”
We skirted people waiting in line and headed for the doors.
Lowering my head, I whispered, “All I remember is wanting to stick…” My words trailed away from me, my thoughts emptying at the sight of my dad standing next to my car by the curb.
His arms were crossed, his long black jacket fluttering in the breeze to reveal his usual attire of suit pants and a crisp gray shirt. If the blank look upon his face wasn’t bad enough, then the fact that January Denane was standing beside him sealed the deal.
My stomach turned to cement.
“Jude?” Marnie questioned. “Why’s your dad here?”
“I’ve, uh…” I stopped and glanced around. Spying a cab waiting up the street, I walked her there. “I’ve gotta go.”
“What do you even mean you have to go? Jude.” She grabbed my arm when I opened the cab door. “Jude,” she growled. “You said you’d be as honest as possible from here on out, so tell me what the hell is going on.”
Ice rolled over my body, freezing every breath as I stared at her, knowing I never should’ve said that. That maybe, I never should’ve thought this could work out in the first place. “I lied. Please, Marns, just go home.” I walked off before she could ask me anything else, my hands tucked inside the pockets of my hoodie.
The breeze carried my name along it, and eventually erased it as I neared my father and his second. I kept my expression neutral. Not the easiest feat under the reproachful sneer of January. I could see Fern in the slender curve of her neck and jaw, that petite nose and her hair. But the rest of her must have belonged to her father. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
January stared me dead in the eye. “Get in the car before I shove my foot so far up your ass, you’ll be shitting out your snide attitude via your nostrils for months.”
My father coughed to hide a shocked bark of laughter, and I gaped at him, incredulous.
He wiped his expression clean, then gestured to the awaiting Town Car. “Get in, Jude.”