Page 259 of Mad Girl

“Casey,” I rasped, squeezing your hand—I was touching you! Touching you for the first time in eighteen months! Your skin touching my skin!—but I couldn’t focus on how great that felt due to the steady, ringing pain in my head. “Don’t be mad.”

“What should I be, then?” Your voice sounded wrong. Flat and furious and wrong. “You did this to get back at him, but he’s not here, is he? He isn’t having to look at you right now. I am. Me.”

“He didn’t come?” My heart dropped. “He wasn’t here?”

“No,” you said. “Only me.”

“But I thought he was sorry,” I cried—no, wailed, the anguish twisting its way through my gut. “I thought he missed me. It was…it was…it was all…”

Just a dream.

I couldn’t finish for the sobs racking my body, and the sobbing only made the pain scream louder, and it wasn’t the good pain. It wasn’t the kind I ever liked or craved. It was the terrible kind, the kind that splits you wide open and breaks you.

I thought my heart had already been broken by my dad—at least a couple of times—but it hadn’t been. Not really. And that’s when I knew: I’d wanted him to be there. Wanted him to miss me enough to show up. Wanted to hear his voice and know, despite everything I’d done, he still loved me the same. Not less.

You began shushing me and telling me you were sorry, and you were crying, too. I know you were, because when you pulled my hand to your mouth, I felt them. Your tears. Seeping through my fingers and trickling down my palm.

Some commotion occurred. The guard’s voice. Vera’s voice. Talking over an unfamiliar woman’s voice. She needs a little something to help her calm down. You and Vera. Arguing. So much arguing. What happened? What did you say to her? What did you do? Little by little, the cries abated, my limbs loosened, and my eyes drifted shut.

And that was it.

Back to oblivion I went.

The morning after Halloween, I blinked awake, still in your arms. Above the coffee table, particles of dust swirled through the air, dancing in the golden rays of sunshine that sliced through the room.

Someone cleared their throat.

My dad. Sitting in one of the wingbacks, one leg crossed over the other, chin resting on his hand. His gaze roamed over us: our limbs tangled, your hand on my thigh where the skirt had ridden up, your fingers across the garter strap, which—shit—hadn’t been reattached to the tights. I shoved my skirt down, knocking your hand in the process.

You stirred awake and lifted up, rubbing at your eyes. “Oh, shit,” you said, gaze going wide when you spotted my dad. We both scrambled to sit upright.

My dad had the strangest look on his face as he gestured between us. “What’s going on here?”

“We were watching a movie,” I said. “We must’ve fallen asleep.”

You squirmed beside me. “I’m sorry, Nic.”

“What are you sorry for, Casey?” he asked, cocking his head to the side, eyes narrowed.

“Just—um⁠—”

But Nic’s phone rang, saving us both. He answered it. “Whoa, Lib, hey,” he said softly. “Slow down. What happened?” Long pause. He pulled a face. “Hold on.” He got up, snatched the remote off the coffee table, and switched on the local news. “Yes. Just now.”

Together, we watched as all those campaign signs I’d defaced flashed across the TV. My big, black, bold letters looked especially harsh in the glaring light of day. They called it a Halloween prank.

“Shit,” I muttered. On some level, I’d suspected something like this might happen. With every stroke of black marker, I’d considered the possibility those signs might cause a spectacle. After all, I’d defaced at least fifty of them.

And then, to my horror, a video played on screen. A video taken from the camera on someone’s front porch. A video of me. In that white mask. Dressed in black. Hair down, dark ringlets around my shoulders.

I froze, eyes big as I gripped a sofa pillow.

My dad froze, too, gripping his phone.

He slowly turned to look at me, his eyes wide with alarm. Disbelief. Anger. So much anger.

My heart pounded as I held his gaze. Because this was bad. The third worst thing I’d ever done—after stabbing Michael and nearly blinding Sienna in one eye.

You hadn’t seen that mask the night before, but you must’ve recognized me, anyway. The hair. The outfit. The way I moved. You whispered, “Elliot, what the fuck?”