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“I’m really sorry about everything that happened. I still feel like it’s my fault.”

I brought her to where I live, figuring it was safer than Weslyn. Rachel has no idea where my apartment is—intentionally. After Emma kicked my ass at pool, she asked to come back here to listen to a band I told her about.

Of course, I couldn’t keep it light.

“It’s not,” she promises. “It really had nothing to do with skipping school and spending the day with you. In the end it was about the truth, and I just didn’t want to see it.”

Emma moved out. Or is officially moving out of Decatur Street next week. She’s been staying at Sara’s.

“What do you mean?”

Even if Emma couldn’t confront her fear that day on the cliffs, she did confront the truth.

“She doesn’t love me. She never did. There’s nothing that’s ever going to change that.”

That’s a hard truth.

“What about you?” I take a seat in the armchair across from her. “How do you feel about her?”

Emma considers this. It’s not easy to admit you don’t care about the one person the world tells you you’re supposed to love.

“I don’t know. I always thought I loved her. I mean, she’s my mother. But…I don’t know.”

Genetics don’t earn love. Or loyalty. Or obedience.

“What if you didn’t think of her as your mother? Just as a person you know,” I propose. “How would you feel about her?”

“That I don’t like her.” She confesses without a second to consider it. “She seems funny and nice on the outside, but when you get close enough, you realize she’s selfish and manipulative and, well, a bit unstable. So I guess… maybe I don’t love her either.” She strangles her hands, the confession hitting her hard. “Wow. That’s messed up.”

“Tends to be our unavoidable theme.” I grimace in apology. “Sorry. We can’t seem to avoid the depressing, can we?”

“I think it’s because we both understand what it’s like. It’s not easy to talk like this with other people because they don’t know. They don’t know what it’s like to be hated by the people who are supposed to love you.” Emma blinks slowly, fighting to stay awake. She repositions herself so she’s curled up at one end, resting her head on her arm.

Her words still echo in the room, ricocheting off my chest.

It’s impossible to convey what it’s like to be raised in a house built on lies and secrets. I couldn’t even tell my own mother, though I’m convinced she was aware of what he did to me. That’s hard for me to admit, even now. In the end, I saw more than I wanted to see. I tried to keep the violence away from my mother and Ryan. But she slept with that man every night. She knew what he was capable of. And he didn’t escape unscathed. The scars on my own knuckles prove it.

I couldn’t protect anyone. Maybe I never have, even when I was convinced I was doing the right thing.

“What is it like?” I ask Emma, curious how she’s dealt with it. She flutters her lids open. “For you, I mean, what’s it like?”

She lets out a wisp of a laugh. “It makes me stupid.”

“What?” I need her to explain. “I don’t understand how you can say that.”

Emma stares off at the lights of the harbor reflecting off the rippling water.

“I close my eyes to the truth. I refuse to see what’s happening, convinced that I can handle whatever it is—believing that I’m strong enough and will recognize when I’m not.

“But in order to really see it, the truth, I have to admit how much I’m hated. And who wants to think they deserve that much anger? To be despised so much… to have someone wish you’d never existed.”

She pauses in her reflection.

“I shut it out. I choose not to see. I never ask for help. I even try to convince everyone that it’s not a big deal. They don’t know. No one really knows how bad it is because I won’t let them.” She repeats. “It makes me stupid.”

Emma lies to herself as well as everyone around her. A thread of hope. I never had that. I wait for everyone to give up on me, convinced I have nothing to offer them other than my fists.

“How do you do it?” I ask, staring at the same dark horizon. “How do you get through it?”