I offer her a small smile before leaving her to process her pain.
I head down to the kitchen and feel my phone start vibrating again with another incoming call. I resist the urge to chuck it across the room, instead I drop the bowl into the sink with a loud clattering echo. I’m surprised when it doesn’t shatter.
I yank my phone out of my pocket, fingers poised to reject the call, when I see a text pop through from my father.
Dad: Since you refuse to answer your phone, I’ll tell you in text. The school board voted me in as the new headmaster of your school. Meet me first thing Monday morning. 7am sharp. I assume you know your way to the headmaster’s office?
My stomach plummets, feeling like it took an elevator to the bottoms of my feet.
Jesus Christ.
My father was going to be the new headmaster? I yank at my hair, and let out a bellowing scream of, “FUCK!”
“What the fuck, Walker?” Graham yells from the kitchen counter, knife poised mid-air. “I almost cut off my goddam finger over here!”
I hadn’t noticed him chopping a head of garlic, too wrapped up in my own thoughts.
“I can’t believe this shit.” I say, shaking my head, as I try to shake away the shock.
“What?” Graham asks, placing his knife down beside a pile of chopped garlic.
I shove the phone at him so he can read the text. He wipes his hands down on his apron before grabbing it. His thick brows furrow as he reads it over several times.
“Are you kidding me right now? This is a joke, right? Daddy Hart is going to be our new headmaster?” He pauses scooping up the chopped garlic and throwing it into a pan full of butter, the contact letting out a hiss into the air. “Well fuck.” He scratches the scruff on his chin.
I grab a beer from the fridge and chug it down.
“You going to put ice on those?” Graham asks, eyeing my poorly wrapped hands.
I shrug my shoulders, too lost in thought to think about the pain radiating in my hands.
I run my fingers over my scar absentmindedly. Everyone always asks me how I got it. They trail their eyes over it, and I can see the question bubbling inside them even before the words leave their mouths. Each one asking like they’re the first person to ever broach the subject of how I got my scar. There’s something off putting about a human who clocks a difference in another and feels the need to point it out, acting like they’re somehow owed an answer for your discrepancy from the norm. I loved fucking with them, choosing instead to give the most off the wall answers, changing the story every time. Anything to distract from the truth of how I received it, from the end of the sharp metal buckle of my father’s belt. It was a physical reminder of what I’d endured for years from that man, night after night. A human punching bag for his rage.
He is always portraying himself as the epitome of a stand-up citizen. Flawless reputation, a nuclear dream family, big house, and more money in the bank than he knew what to do with. But all that perfect façade melts away the moment the doors to the world close. Behind his perfectly constructed veneers lives a monster, and now that monster was coming to Kildale.
ChapterNine
SLOAN
SONG: WAKE ME UP BY AVICII
I’m caught in an endless void of muffled voices and haphazard beeping, where time seems to stretch on forever. I’m aware of the ever-present ache that slices through my muscles and burrows deep in my bones. I strain to open my eyes, but I can’t seem to move anything, least of all my eye lids. It feels like I’ve been here for years, but it could just as easily have only been a few days. Time means nothing here where I merely exist.
The murmurings around me come to a crescendo, a few words making it through the fog of my mind. Something that sounds likewake him up, too soon, brain damage,filters through and I feel myself plunge into anxiety. It wraps around me, pushing down and pulsating through my extremities that seem disconnected from my body, but still present at the same time.
I attempt to move my mouth, desperate to ask someone what’s going on with me. I wrack my brain trying to remember what happened. I see a flash of Skye’s blonde hair and full lips smiling at me while I take a bite of pie.
Oh my god, the fucking pie.
I remember the ride here while my body started shutting down.Am I dead?
A distant beep makes me think maybe not.
I want to scream. To escape this black hole. To do anything.
I feel trapped within my own mind, with nothing but memories and this anxiety that coats me like a second skin.
I would give anything to take a puff of my weed right now. It always seems to calm me without fail, helping to keep my demon at bay. At the thought of him, Sloth yawns loudly inside my chest pulling me down into a fitful sleep.
