“I already took a screenshot,” he says. If an eye roll were a tone, it would be that one. “Why are you in the middle of the woods anyway? I zoomed in, and there’s like, nothing there. It’s not even close to a Chipotle or anything.”
“I don’t like Chipotle, and you need to delete that screenshot. You can’t come here. Someone needs to watch Mom and Dad.”
“Yeah, butIlike Chipotle. What, you want me to starve when I visit?”
“You’re not visiting,” I reiterate. “You’re watching Mom and Dad.”
“Not if you don’t get off the phone with me and call them in the next five minutes,” he threatens. “Then I’m out. I don’t want to answer any more questions about which gravestones I think are prettiest. They’re gravestones. They’re not meant to be pretty. They’re meant to stand up in a graveyard long enough to get layers and layers of muck on them so that some middle-aged white lady can make a living off of posting videos of her ‘cleaning’ them in a hundred years.”
“That is… an opinion. Yep.”
“The correct one,” he asserts. “Now, call Dad. Or I’m showing up there with a backpack full of clothes and a cigarette.”
I frown. “You don’t smoke. Smoking is gross. No smoking.”
He scoffs. “It’s not aboutsmoking, Lia. It’s aboutthe vibes.” And then he hangs up.
I spin in my chair and pretend that the nausea I’m feeling is because of the whirling pinks around me and not the phone call that looms.
My phone buzzes.
Freddie:Two minutes, then I’m packing a bag
Whoever said teenage girls are dramatic must have never met a teenage boy.
I let another minute pass before I pull up my father’s contact and hover my thumb over the little green phone icon. Closing my eyes, I hit the button, cringing as it rings half a ring before he answers.
“Sarelia,” he barks. “Whereareyou?”
Chapter Twelve
?
Sarelia
“I’m still in the state,” I answer. “Don’t worry.”
“In thestate?” he worries anyway. “How far away are you that ‘in the state’ seems like an appropriate answer? You’re not at Colleen’s house?”
Colleen is an acquaintance I sort of kind of like from the job I had before I was making money from my books. I like her well enough, but we’ve never hung out outside of that job, and I’ve certainly never gone to her house, despite Dad’s hopeful dreams that I was making myself a lifelong friend.
“I’m not at Colleen’s house,” I tell him. “I have never been at Colleen’s house. I will never be at Colleen’s house. You have to let the Colleen thing go.”
He grunts. “I just want what’s best for you,” he insists. “Which, by the way, is not you being off in some random part of the state after leaving home in a huff, crying and carrying on because your mom and I wanted to offer you help. Do you have any idea how worried you’ve made us? Your mother is in pieces, thinking you’ve died. You know how she is. You couldn’t have called? Sent a text to let us know you were okay? Did youwantus to worry like this?”
Shame hits me square in the chest, followed quickly by irritation. “Of course I didn’t want you to worry,” I reply. “You’re right, though. I should have known that I would worry you. I should have thought about what you guys would be feeling.” Even if they so rarely think aboutmyfeelings. Still. Bigger person. Trying. “I apologize. I wasn’t ready to speak to you guys,but that doesn’t mean it was okay for me to be inconsiderate like that. I should have texted to let you know that I’m safe.”
He sniffs. “Yes, you should have.”
Not exactly an “I forgive you,” is it?
“I am safe, though,” I assure him through a forced smile. “I’m in a safe place with safe people that I trust. You guys don’t need to worry.”
“We don’t need to worry?” he repeats, voice rising. “Our only daughter has run away to who-knows-where with who-knows-who, and we don’t need to worry?”
“That’s Sarelia?” I hear Mom ask in the background. “She’s not dead?”
“She’s not dead,” he grumbles. “She’s just off ‘in the state’ with ‘people she trusts,’ whatever that means.”
