any kind of extra-curricular activity can be a burden on a compromised system. You’re just not used to—”
“Mom, stop.” She shoves the thermometer toward me. I push it away. “Stop!”
She blinks. “Vandy, stop fighting me. You’re flushed and agitated, something’s wrong!”
I lurch from the table, chair clattering over behind me. “Nothing’s wrong, Mom! For once in my life, everything is right! I’ve got friends. I’m involved at school. My grades are slipping because I’m not sitting around with nothing to do!” My voice echoes off the vaulted ceilings. “And Reyn doesn’t make me uncomfortable. He makes me…” Her eyebrows knit anxiously, but I keep going, “He makes me feel right, Mom. He makes me feel good about myself. He’s the only person who makes me feel strong!”
“What are you talking about?” She shakes her head, exasperated. “We’ve given you every support you’ve ever needed. Every resource!”
“You have.” I nod, laughing bitterly. “And each and every one of those is built to enable and keep me under control. But Reyn? He’s the only one who doesn’t treat me like an infant.”
Her mouth purses angrily. “Because he’s careless.”
“No,” I say, backing away.
She insists, “He’s a careless, angry, confused boy.”
“That’s not true! You don’t know anything about him.”
Her eyes narrow. “How much are you seeing of him? Because it’s one thing for him to be Emory’s friend, it’s another for him—”
I know then and there that I can’t tell her the truth, and it hurts. Any other girl my age could talk to her mother about this feeling growing inside of her chest, so big that it can’t be contained. She’d be able to be happy about it, to share that joy.
Reyn and I are alone in this.
My mom and Emory will never understand what we are to one another.
“I’m not,” I say quietly, voice flat. “Just… just with Em. I just wanted to make it clear that he’s not bothering me.”
She blinks, the cognitive dissonance, the false reality she’s created where I’m happy being alone and protected, shifts back into place. And with the same ease, I do the same thing. “You know, maybe I do feel a little worn out. I think I’ll head to bed.”
“Good idea,” she says with a tight, approving grin. My mother may want to dig out the truth in her reporting, but she definitely doesn’t want it at home.
I go to my room like a good girl, but that’s not me anymore. Honestly it never was me, but the last few weeks have made that simple fact real. Concrete. I try to think back to that nervous girl who started the school year, but it’s as fuzzy as back when I was using. It’s lost to the life I lead now, the one filled with shine, excitement, and a touch of danger.
The one that gives me the courage to sneak out of my room on a Thursday night and break into my neighbor’s house.
I’m a pro now, grabbing the letterman jacket, locking my bedroom door, and then slipping out the window to the small overhang. My heart pounds as I ease off the edge and I drop to the ground, but even though my landing is stumbling and sloppy, I still have both my feet beneath me. There are so many things I didn’t think I could do—or would ever do—yet here I am, creeping across the space between our houses, digging the McAllisters' spare key out of the wilted, potted fern beside the door.
Fall is officially here and the night air is cold. I tug Reyn’s jacket around my shoulders. I’d worn it all day, feeling bold in my outfit that matched the other girls. It’s an antiquated notion, but it still holds up. Wearing the jacket is a visible sign of Reyn marking me as his own. People definitely noticed. Emory waved off questions at the lunch table, grumbling about my outfit and Reyn doing me a service, but I think almost everyone, save my brother, knows what’s going on. Sydney’s eyes followed me across the cafeteria. She was dying to know why I was wearing it, but her bitterness is what drove us apart. Let her keep guessing.
Suddenly I’m out of fucks to give.
I enter the side door, into the dimly lit house. I know I could have just called, and Reyn would have happily invited me in, but as it turns out, like him and my brother, I have a thing for risk. Maybe that’s why I got into the car all