she ended up staying for the rest of my break. She said it was because she wanted to show Adam everything, and have home-cooked food, but I knew she was trying to be a buffer between Mom and me. For the next couple of days I tried my best not to get under Mom’s skin. I helped out around the house more than I would have, and volunteered to get groceries.
I was constantly checking my phone for any message from Stryker. I was curious about the effect of my little note on him. I’d been about to leave him one on paper, but he was sacked out on the couch and his chest was exposed, so I figured it was only fitting that I draw it on him as payback for the times he’d drawn stuff on me. He almost woke up a bunch of times, but I was able to complete it. Somehow.
I had a long chat with Lottie one night when Kayla and Adam had gone out, and I didn’t feel like being the third wheel again. Dad was still under the weather, so Mom was busy nursing him and I was holed up in my room.
“Still haven’t heard from him?” she said.
“Nope.” I’d filled her in on the note, and she thought it was hilarious.
“Well, he’s alive, according to Trish. She’s talked with him a few times.”
“Has he…has he said anything?”
I could hear Trish’s voice in the background answering.
“Nada. He’s being like a clam with a pearl. The penis effect and all that.”
I sighed. “Got it.” I hadn’t expected anything less. When Stryker didn’t want to talk about something, there was little you could do to get him to open up. That was fine with me.
“So, you ready to get back to normal?”
“If by normal you mean losing Law and Order bets and eating our weight in ice cream, then yes, I am ready for that.” So freaking ready.
I could almost hear her rolling her eyes. “At least your mother hasn’t grilled you about your boyfriend’s favorite books and then made conclusions about him based on those books.”
At least her mother hadn’t made her boyfriend so uncomfortable that he stormed out. Not that Stryker was my boyfriend.
“True. Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Bye, roomie.” Will and Trish must have been playing a game because I could hear both of them yelling in the background.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Lottie shouted at them. “Sorry, I have to go help judge which is more sympathetic, pirates or volcanoes. I swear, these two are going to kill each other over a game of Apples to Apples. Bye, roomie.”
She hung up and I was left in silence in my empty room. I twirled my phone in my hand, restless.
My bare walls were really pissing me off for some odd reason. I looked around and found a cup full of markers. I grabbed a pink one and stared at the wall right across from my bed. Mom was going to have a coronary if I drew on my walls.
I made one little dot. Ha.
Then I made another, and another. I connected them with a swirly line and kept going, making more lines and more swirls. It was very similar to the design Stryker had drawn on my hand. I added some circles in between, moving the drawing from one side of the wall to the other, and then down to the floor. Once the design was done, I felt like it needed something. I turned on my iPod and looked for some of the music Stryker had given me, searching for one song in particular. “Endlessly”, by Green River Ordinance. It was softer than most of the stuff Stryker listened to, which was why I thought it was so odd when he gave it to me.
Slowly, I wrote random words on the wall. “Love” and “Happiness” and “Beauty” and “Fun” and “Surprises” and “Music” and “Laughter” and “Magic”. I just wrote what came to mind, and it wasn’t until I’d written “Love” over and over that I realized these were all the things I wanted out of life. My wall had become some twisted version of a vision board. I’d thought those things were totally stupid, but somehow seeing the words written out like that made sense.
“Oh my God. Mom is going to murder you.” I paused in the act of finishing a letter and looked over my shoulder to find Kayla gaping at me and my newly-decorated wall.