Page 96 of Mad Girl

It felt so validating to hear someone say that.

When we drew apart, you brushed a lock of hair behind my ear. “Are you okay?”

My heart fluttered at the intimate gesture—at your gaze, unbearably close, still searching mine. I swiped the tears away and said, “I’m fine.”

But I wasn’t.

At dinner that night, long after you’d helped me clean the mess in my room, I waited for my dad to acknowledge what he’d done—to acknowledge my feelings, at the very least. When he didn’t, I brought the incident up myself.

“On my birthday, I asked you if I looked like her, and you lied. I look almost exactly like her, Dad. Why didn’t you want me to know that?”

Nic gently set down his fork and knife, took a generous swig of wine, then stared ahead for several silent, uncomfortable seconds. “Because it’s not important. You look like you, and you’re beautiful. How was school today?” he asked, picking up his cutlery.

“It’s important to me,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, “and you know that.”

With a sigh, he dropped the cutlery again, this time letting it clang against his plate. “The girl you saw in those pictures? She was a lie. But you,” he said, wrapping his fingers around my wrist. “You’re the truest thing I’ve ever known.”

See? This was Nic’s M.O.

Distract from the bad—the lies, the taking, the secrets—by filling my head full of this shit. You’re beautiful. You’re perfect. You’re all I ever wanted, you know that?

He thought he could keep me afloat with love when what I really needed was a life raft. Something reliable to hold onto. An explanation. A reason for all the secrecy.

The truth.

And you couldn’t have possibly understood what was happening, Casey, because at that point in time, I prided myself on hiding these things from you. But Nic understood, his gaze dropping to my clenched fist, knowing without seeing that I was digging my fingernails into my palm. I bet he even felt it with his fingers still circling my wrist. The trembling. The hurting. The barely suppressed rage.

In fact, Casey, that’s why he held my wrist. He knew better than anyone what I was capable of.

“When I don’t speak to you for the next couple of weeks,” I said, voice deep and foreboding, “this is why. Your behavior today. The mess you left in my room. The lying.”

When he controlled and evaded and took, this felt like the only power I did have. The power to hurt—him as much as myself.

Nic met my gaze head-on, grim acceptance writ large upon his face. He knew the price—had paid it many times—and he continued to take from me, anyway.

I snatched my wrist from his hand and excused myself from the table.

Upstairs, I took the remaining picture of my mom from its temporary hiding place—underneath my mattress—and moved it to its new hiding place: a stuffed bunny from my childhood. The oatmeal-colored one, named Tessy, who wears a baby blue dress with a white Peter Pan collar. My whole life, she’d sat on my bed, taking up residence amongst my pillows. But I didn’t just keep her around because nostalgia had made it difficult to let her go. I mainly kept her around for the incision I’d made in her back. Behind the dress. Where a strip of Velcro held the linen fabric of her dress together.

It’s where I hid the pack of cigarettes that time. When Nic had tried to prove me a liar about the nanny.

During Nic’s search of my room that day, he’d tossed Tessy—and with her, the pack of cigarettes—to the floor.

I felt confident he’d never find the picture of my mom there, either.

Two weeks later, I still wasn’t speaking to my dad—or John.

A few days after the picture incident, John had come by the house to apologize. But I was angry at him for telling my dad about the pictures instead of handling the incident on his own, so I stormed off and left him in the kitchen with you. When he texted me some bullshit apology the length of a novel later, I left him on read.

After school one day, while you were busy preparing our afternoon tea, I remembered leaving him alone with you and said, “Hey. I keep meaning to ask. What did you and John talk about that day he dropped by to apologize?”

“Oh,” you said, turning from the stove. “Random stuff, really. What courses I’m taking. What I like to read. What sport I played in school. Things like that.”

“Was it awkward?”

“I assumed it would be when you left us alone together”—you gave me a look—“but he’s very easy to talk to. So, no, it wasn’t awkward at all. I enjoyed talking to him.” My heart melted as you turned back to the stove. Your phone chimed, and you lifted it from the counter, frowning down at the screen. “Do you happen to know what’s going on with Michael?”

My stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”