“June!”
“Yeah, Mom.”
“Well, well. Let’s start with the first thing.”
“What first—”
“If you slept at Amelia’s why did Jordan bring you home?” she yelled, pointing at me.
Hell. That’s what waited for me.Mom, it’s not what you think. Mom, I was walking home, and Jordan just happened to offer me a ride. Mom, aliens took me while I was doing homework and dropped me right at Jordan’s house, more specifically in his son’s bed.Any excuse would be more bearable to her ears than the truth. So I decided to use another strategy.
I put my backpack on the table and put both hands on my hips.
“So let me get this straight, your daughter disappears, and you didn’t call the police?”
I watched her raise an eyebrow, before waving a giant brush at me.
“Ah! So now it’s my fault?” she screamed sharply.
“I disappeared for twelve hours, and my mom didn’t report my disappearance. Interesting.” I continued to taunt her, stroking my chin.
“Don’t start, June!”
“You didn’t have time because you have an exhibition to organize, and judging by your hairstyle, preparing for an event was more important than looking for your missing daughter.”
“Look, young lady, I wasn’t born yesterday.”
She came threateningly close to me with that infernal brush.
“Okay, put down the weapon and we’ll talk,” I conceded, putting my hands up.
“June, I’m serious. Tell me where you were. Don’t make me ask Jordan.” I turned up my nose then my mouth.
“You look really pretty today, Mom. At least twenty years younger. Your rivals don’t have a chance. You have a lot of competition with Jordan, don’t you?”
“I told you, don’t start with me!” she yelled, now out of patience. At my old school, I was the head of the debate club, a quality that I never had much success with, seeing when it came to my mom because she was a tough nut to crack—a really tough nut to crack.
“You don’t understand the gravity of the situation, young lady! You’re never leaving the house again!”
Now she was serious.
“Besides, what kind of state are you in? Were you drinking? Were you smoking? Were you with”—her face contorted into a disgusted grimace—“boys?!”
And she said this like she just said the Antichrist’s name.
“And what do you care? Since you were with Jordan, I mean Melissa, yesterday, weren’t you?” Just saying that sentence made me excruciatingly irritated. My mom continued to talk to me, but I’d already stopped listening to her. I took my phone out of my pocket, and was surprised to see a message. It gave me the shivers.
It was him.
Hunter:Are you alive, or did Psycho April already chop you up and put you in the freezer?Psycho April.
I started laughing like an idiot.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, Mom.”
“Who are you texting?”
