17 - Echo
How much do you know about mirrors?
I duck my head underthe pillow and wrap it around my ears, but it’s no use. I can still hear them. I sit up, pissed off and hungover, and scream at the top of my lungs. “Will you two shut the fuck up! Get a divorce already!”
If they even hear me, which is doubtful, they don’t respond. They just keep fighting.
“Parents,” I mumble.
I’m still kinda fucked up from last night and need at least a whole day of sleep before I can function properly, so I lean over my bed, fish underneath it with a grabby hand, and search for the bottle of pills.
It’s not oxy—I kicked that shit, I really did. It’s something else. Something this woman was selling at the club a couple weeks ago. They don’t get you high, not the way I’m used to anyway. They take you places in your sleep.
It’s like acid, but you’re not awake. She called it the dreamwalk. Says it’s spiritual and shit.
It’s an OK trip, I guess, but not something I’d do more than once or twice a year. No one wants to sleep while they’re partying.
But I’m not partying right now and sleep is theonlything I want.
So I shake two out into my palm, grab a stale can of soda, and down them.
Downstairs, my mother is crying now, which means the fight is almost over. They fight like this so much, there’s a pattern to it. They don’t even realize that fighting is a part of them now.
I side-eye my bedroom door. I will never be like them. I will do anything—whatever it takes—to stay free. Because if they weren’t married, they wouldn’t stay together. And they’re not here for me. That’s a joke. They stopped paying attention to me when I was thirteen. My mother made me get a job cleaning houses with her so I could buy my own school clothes and food.
It’s not me that keeps them stuck in this rut.
It’s thepattern. And the familiarity of it.
I’m not gonna get stuck. I won’t fall into this trap.
I will never…
My eyes openand all I see is the ceiling of a cave. It’s not one of those moments where one has to try and remember where they are. I fully understand where I am. It’s just one of those moments where one needs to pause and reflect on how they got here.
It was my parents.
I’m the one who took Lucia’s dreamwalk pills, that’s a fact. But I wouldn’t have done that if someone had cared about me. If someone was looking out for me, I wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.
I know Josep is gone, I feel his absence. And smell it too, which is weird. I hadn’t realized that deficiency had a smell.
My internal monologue makes me chuckle out loud. Deficiency? Internal monologue? Did the blood make me smart? Because I’ve never used those words in a sentence in my life.
I think about this for a moment. Intelligence, and the lack thereof.
Before Lucia, I was not a smart girl. Which, now that I think about it, was why she chose me. I mean, really she chose my boyfriend, Boyd. But he was dumb too.
I was malleable. She could shape me.
And look—I chuckle again—she did.
I’m here. The concubine of evil. The Darkness itself has taken me as its partner.
“Oh, come on, Echo. You don’t really believe that, do you? Please tell me you’re not that stupid.”
I sit up, then get to my feet and face Lucia. “This ismycave now.”
She shakes her head as she studies her fingernails. “No, sweetie, it’s not.” She looks up at me with that penetrating glare she has. “He’s using you.”
