19
Raine
WatchingHaven drive off with her fiancé stirs something up inside of me, and I'm not sure what it is. I wonder what the douchebag knows or doesn't know about me. Haven may be full of apologies but did she ever consider telling anyone the truth, besides me? A sick part of me wishes for karma to take its effect on her life. I thought if I ran into her, maybe she'd be overweight or hideous. Now I see that karma did take her for a ride, and she's still holding on for dear life, ready to fall off at any second. The Haven I knew, or thought I knew, didn't want the life she's living.Well, good.
Feeling exhausted from this day, I debate returning to Crystal's side or going back to sleep on that nice bench in the park. "Raine," Crystal shouts. "Why you standing outside in your underwear?"Proving a point.I scratch at my brow and turn around to walk back inside. "Ready for round three?" Crystal runs her tongue across her top teeth, and I think she's trying to seduce me, but…I’ve had enough for one day and I just want to get some sleep.
"I'm beat," I tell her.
"You know what I can beat?" she says through a sloppy slur.
"Yeah, I think I’m good," I tell her, falling back into the bed. I fold my arms behind my head and close my eyes, ignoring the scowl on Crystal’s face.Yup, I’m using you for a place to sleep tonight. Deal with it.I’m expecting her to kick me out, but the bed bounces only seconds after I close my eyes.What the—?I push up on my elbows, looking down at Crystal, who's passed out with her mouth hanging open.Jesus. I push her to the side and roll over to try and pretend she isn’t here. I just need to forget everything that led up to falling asleep in this bed tonight and focus on the plushness of the bed I once called a wooden plank, years ago. The pillow feels like a thick cloud and the scent of detergent on the linen could be its own perfume as far as I'm concerned. Sleeping is no problem for me, but shutting everything else out is.
The stress of dreading my nightmares causes a weak spell of tremors to work through me, which means I'll have a sweet old migraine in the morning and an ache in my back that'll linger for the next week. Now that I’m getting closer to thirty, that's what my condition has developed into. More side effects of my mother’s lifestyle while pregnant with me.Thanks, Carly.I reach for my pants and snatch the bottle of pills out of my back pocket. The one good thing about prison was that they fed me the pills I needed to keep my body from going haywire every day. I tap the container into my hand, finding I only have one left.That’s that.It's back to the good old days of suffering. I dry swallow the pill and fall back down into the pillow.
"Raine, can I talk to you a minute?" Granddad shouts from the back deck.
I excuse myself from Lenore's daily cooking lesson as Lauren teases me. "Ohh, you're in troubbbbble," she giggles, cupping her hand over her mouth. I can't help but laugh because Lauren's laugh is contagious.
"Maybe you're the one in trouble," I tell her. "Maybe Granddad is warning me of a smackdown coming your way." She gasps and yanks on Lenore's sleeve. "Mama!"
"He's just joking around with you, Lauren," Lenore assures her. "You two are worse than a brother and sister, you know that?" Over the years, Lauren and I have become like brother and sister, except she's old enough to be my mother. She's here all the time now since the special school she used to go to closed due to financial problems. I think she's better off here with us, anyway. I don’t think she liked that place much. "What's up, Granddad?" I ask, slapping the top of the sliding back door on the way outside. "Or should I ask what I did this time?"
"You know, kid. I don't know when you became such a wiseass, but you remind me a whole lot of myself," he says through laughter. "Come on over here and have a seat." He pats the cushioned wooden bench beside his lounging chair. This can't be good. He never asks me to sit down when he needs to tell me something. Granddad is the type of man that needs to look a person in the eye and hold their shoulder firmly in his grip while raising a brow throughout his worldly advice or lecture.
I take a seat and lean forward, resting my elbows on my legs. "Okay, so what gives?"
Granddad pulls in a loaded breath and rests his hand on my knee. "I got some bad news today."
Thoughts race through my head but nothing solid enough to guess what kind of bad news he could have gotten. The only people he gives a damn about are me, Lenore, and Lauren, and they both seem fine. "Okay…"
"Well, you know how I've been getting those headaches and dizzy spells for the past few months?" I don't like where this is going.
"Yeah, the ones I told you to go to the doctor for?" Granddad doesn't like doctors, therefore, he avoids them like no one I've ever met. "Did you finally listen to me?"
"I did," he says shortly.
"So then, what's going on? What's causing them? Did they give you some kind of meds?"
He looks at me for a long minute, then his eyes cast downward. "I actually went a couple of weeks ago. They ran some tests. All that stuff I can't stand. Then they made me wait until today for the results. Isn't that inhumane?"
"Granddad?" He's stalling. It's bad. He stalls when he can't find the words to say what he needs to say.
"Well, it turns out I've got a tumor the size of a small orange living in my brain," he says, pointing to the top of his head.
My heart turns cold, like I swallowed a cube of ice, and it's lodged inside my chest. "Well, can they fix it?"
"I waited too long," he says, shamefully.
"What? What do you mean? You're still here. It can't be too late to try and get rid of it, right?"
"It spread, Raine."
Everything inside of me tightens like a rope being tugged on from both sides. "What are you saying?"
"They gave me a month, tops."
I stand up as the rage fuels through me, angry at no one, yet angry at everyone at the same time. "You can't leave me," I say, selfishly. "You're all I have. Don't you know that? This is why I told you to go to the goddamn doctor a million times. You wouldn't listen to me. Now what? Now you're going to go and leave me, just like you promised you would never do." I'm going to regret every word coming out of my mouth in a month's time, but right now I don’t care. I can't control myself.
