until the door opened and slammed shut. It had been a long time since I was slapped. A long-ass time. Only now, I was smarter and would be keeping far away after that shit happened.
Chapter 10
* * *
Grant - 14 years ago
“I don’t want to go back.”
I rubbed Lily’s shoulders. “I don’t want you to go either.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “It’s just going to happen again. My mom is fine for a while, and then she stops taking her meds and disappears. Eventually someone realizes I’m living alone and calls the cops, who then call Social Services.”
Lily had been with us for more than nine months. She’d told me how when her mom would disappear, she had to steal food from the grocery store and sell shit from their apartment just to eat. She’d stopped going to soup kitchens because they asked so many questions about where her parents were.
“Listen, I want you to take this.” I held out an envelope with five hundred bucks stashed inside. “Just in case she disappears again.”
The tears she’d held back began to stream down her face. “I don’t need it. You’re going to come see me all the time, right? If she disappears, I’ll just tell you, and you can bring me something then.”
“What happens if she makes you move again, Lily?” They’d moved dozens of times over the last fifteen years. Me showing up at her apartment one day and finding it empty wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.
“I won’t go. How would you even find me?”
“If you move, you’ll write to me. Do you know the address here?”
Lily nodded and rattled off the house address.
I smiled. “Good. If you ever have to move, you’ll tell me in a letter. And I’ll come see you every week on Sunday—even if you move all the way to New York. I promise.” That probably seemed crazy, but I knew I’d find a way to do it. Lily and I were meant to be together. “Take the envelope. It’s not much. But you might need it for stamps. Or stuff for school.”
She hesitated, but took it. Once she figured out how much I’d shoved inside, she wouldn’t be happy. But she’d be back at her mother’s, and neither of us was going to be very happy anyway.
My mom knocked on Lily’s bedroom door. “Lily, sweetheart? Are you ready? The social worker is here.”
The look of terror on her face killed me. It freaking killed me. I knew from personal experience that going back home once you’d been removed rarely worked out. Yet the damn judges always wanted to put you back—as if mothers and fathers were entitled to have children, and they had to prove to the guy in the black robe why they were incompetent. Birth parents usually had to screw up a half-dozen times before they’d stop sending you back. The system sucked.
I motioned toward the door with my head and whispered, “Tell her you’re getting dressed, and you’ll be down in a few minutes.”
Lily did, but her voice broke. Mom said she’d meet her downstairs.
It was only a matter of time before my mother noticed I wasn’t around. Lily and I had kept our relationship a secret. We were afraid my parents would think it was a bad idea to keep two fifteen year olds who were in love in the same house. I mean, it was…but they didn’t need to know that. They also didn’t need to know that I snuck into her bed every night after everyone was asleep. That would most certainly freak Mom out.
“I don’t want to lose you,” Lily sobbed quietly.
I cupped her face and wiped away her tears with my thumbs. “Don’t cry. You’re never going to lose me, Lily. Not ever. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
We held each other for a long time. Eventually, though, we had to let go.
“I’ll write to you every day we can’t be together.”
I smiled. “Okay.”
“You don’t have to write back. I know you don’t like writing stuff. Just promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll write to me if you fall in love with someone else, and tell me all about her so I’ll know you’re happy and I should stop writing. Otherwise, I’ll never give up on us.”
I grinned and kissed her nose. “You got a deal. Works out pretty good for me. Because I’ll never have to write one damn letter.”
***
I’d never met anyone who had hallucinations before. My mom had been an addict, and she