But she held up her hand, cutting off whatever the hell I was about to say.
I shut my mouth.
She was leaving me.
Leaving us.
“SHUT. UP.” I punched the sides of my head with both fists, wishing I could crush my own skull.
“Who are you talking to?”
It was part question, part accusation. Disgust filled me, leaving an acidic taste in my mouth. I had to get out of there. I didn’t want her to see me like this.
Broken.
Tangled up in my own head.
Unable to stand being in my own skin.
Without another word, I got up and walked around, gathering up the rest of my clothes. My jaw ached from clenching my teeth so hard. When I was dressed, I picked my coat up off the floor and shrugged it on.
“Tyler.”
I couldn’t look at her. “Take care of yourself, ‘lee.” At the door, I stopped and took a deep breath, looked back over my shoulder one last time.
She was stunningly gorgeous standing there with her horror-stricken face and lush body, the table protecting her from the monster in her kitchen. “This isn’t on you,” I told her. “It’s okay. I really do get it.” With one last look, I burned her into my mind.
And then I let myself out of the apartment.
I didthe only thing I could do. Went home. Went back to school. To therapy. Went on with my life.
My therapist, Dr. Bord, was worried about me. Hell,Iwas worried about me. But maybe this was a good thing, in a way. As she so liked to remind me, Ailee may be the light of my dark life—or was—but I’m the one who had to keep that light burning. I had to want to get better for me, not for anyone else.
I didn’t care if I got better.
What the hell did that even mean, anyway? How the fuck did anyone get better from this?
Willow was worried about me. She wanted to call our parents. Maybe have them come up. But after I all but threatened to disappear out of her life if she did, she finally relented. I would call them when I was ready, and not a damn minute before. My foster mom, especially, would feel guilty about all of this. I didn’t want that on her. She was a great mom. It wasn’t her fault I’d turned out like this. I’d probably be even worse if it wasn’t for her and my dad.
When that plan didn’t work, Willow wanted me to come stay with her. I shut that one down real quick. Snickers and I were just fine here on our own. We’d managed to survive this long, and I didn’t need my big sister hovering over me all of the time. I needed the solitude of my own home.
So, I could stare at the walls in peace.
I fell into a routine. School three times a week. Therapy twice a week on my off days. Check-ins with my sister every night. Or, at least, every night I was me. On the nights I wasn’t me and didn’t call Willow by the specified time, she would call my phone and figure out where I was. We shopped for groceries together on the weekends. Sometimes, I woke up on Monday morning with a fridge full of oranges and little else.
I went through it all on automatic pilot.
On the advice of Dr. Bord, I left my alters notes, trying to open the lines of communication between us. I asked them to fill me in on what happened and where we went and what we did when someone else was “fronting,” so I wasn’t waking up in strange places in a panic because I’d just lost three or four days. Reminders to pay the fucking bills. But mostly, to make sure Snickers was fed and let out. I wrote down his routine, and my schedule with school and therapy. I applied for aid to help me stay afloat while I made it through school.
And I survived.
I didn’t want to, but I did.
Willow popped over every few days to check on me, despite the nightly phone calls. I didn’t mind that much. It was better than having her over my shoulder twenty-four/seven, and I knew she was just worried.
“So, what are you going to do about school?”
We were on the couch, watching some bullshit television show. Neither of us really paying any attention to it. “What do you mean?”
