My mother’s eyes went flat and cold, as if all the anger had been drained out in one cruel siphon. She didn’t move, didn’t even lower her palm from her stinging cheek, just stared at Lillian in shock.
Lillian shrank in on herself, mouth working, then she backed up until the backs of her knees hit the sofa. “I didn’t mean—” she started, but her voice was a strangled croak. She pressed a fist to her mouth, eyes fixed on the red bloom spreading across my mother’s cheek.
I watched, paralyzed. My body wanted to fly at Lillian, to shield our mother from more, but the rest of me just stood there, wooden, like I was watching actors on a sound stage.
My mother recovered first, turning her back on us both, her steps stiff and unsteady. The kitchen light caught the wet tracks on her face, and for a moment I saw her not as a monster, but as a woman undone by her own life, her daughters grown wild and bitter.
Lillian’s breathing quickened. “She started it,” she muttered, almost childlike, but the words dissolved into a dry sob. She sank to the carpet, fingers clutchingat her temples.
From the kitchen came the crash of glass, my mother shattering a cup, maybe on purpose, maybe not.
I realized I was holding my own breath.
The house shuddered with silence. I crept past Lillian toward my room, trying not to disturb the air.
I could still feel the echo of Caiden’s hands on my skin, the heat and shame of it lingering like radio static.
At my desk, I opened my sketchbook and tried to let it out the only way I knew how.
But all I could manage was a pathetic tangle, a wild, unfocused bramble instead of the careful portraits I used to make.
My wrist ached from the pressure, but it didn’t dull the noise inside my chest. I tore the page out, crumpled it in my fist, and shoved the sketchbook away.
The walls stifled me. I needed air, the kind that froze your skin and made your lungs remember how to work.
I grabbed my cardigan and slipped outside, letting the front door whisper shut behind me.
I didn’t have a destination. My sneakers found the sidewalk, then the sloping curve of the street, then the dirt path that wound past the soccer field and into the old park.
A single swing creaked in the empty playground, chain links singing a metallic lullaby to no one in particular.
I wandered aimlessly, brushing my fingertips along the ridged bark of an elm. The world was locked in a gray half-light, neither day nor night. I felt invisible, a ghost in my own life.
That’s when I saw him. Dante, alone, hunched on a half-rotted bench with his elbows on his knees, watching the puddles at his feet.
A cigarette dangled from his lips. The glow of it caught the last scraps of sunlight and set his shadow flickering on the ground.
He looked up, his expression startled for a heartbeat, then softened into something almost apologetic. “Hey,” he said, voice rough. “You okay?”
I nearly laughed. The answer was written all over me, and he could see that. My lips parted, but nothing came out.
Dante flicked the cigarette away, grinding it into the gravel. “You can sit, if you want.”
I hesitated, then folded myself onto the bench, keeping a careful slat of distance between us. The silence buzzed.
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and spoke without looking at me. “Is it your mom again?”
“Always.” The word came out small, like a cough. “Or my sister. Or both. Or some other fucking cosmic joke.”
He nodded, slow and grave. “You want to talk about it?” His voice was low, respectful of the dark.
I wanted to. I wanted to spill every broken thing in my chest onto the mud and let it rot there, feeding the worms.
But I just shook my head. “I don’t know how.”
He let that hang for a minute. A breeze whipped a strand of hair across my face, and I tucked it behind my ear, suddenly aware of how hunched and childish I must look.
The breeze enveloped me, and I wished I could float into it, fly away into some other reality.
