is going to come after me. Melody used to before the thing with Via happened. Then she realized I was never going to confide in her about what was bothering me. Bailey tries to talk to me sometimes. It majorly sucks when that happens. Bails is so sweet, but she has zero life experience, and everything freaks her out. Dad…Dad will always be there for me, but I can’t tell him anything about his precious wife. He loves her too much to see past the blinding glow she casts on him.
I slam the door, but the walls are thin, and I hear a chair scraping across the floor. It pains me that I know who it is without looking. Only one person in this house hasn’t given up on me, and that’s because he never believed in me in the first place.
“Leave it, Penn,” I hear my mother say, and I can practically envision her taking a generous sip of her wine. “That’s just Daria being Daria.”
In the book Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk, there’s a scene where the narrator realizes, after eating most of a lobster, that its heart is still beating. Living under the same roof with the Followhills is a little like that. You’re being eaten and picked apart, but your pulse is still there.
Talk.
I frown at the unanswered message I sent her an hour and a half ago.
I’m lying in my perfect bed, in my perfect room, in this perfect gingerbread house, where everyone is so deeply flawed, they can’t even stand each other. Who would have thought pristine, gorgeous Daria Followhill was the black sheep of her family?
The worst part wasn’t that Mel ignored Daria’s existence. It was that she was casual as fuck about it. As if her daughter was an annoying fly.
Mel is batshit scared of her daughter, who acts like anything but her daughter, and Jaime is tired of choosing sides. And Bailey is in the middle of this mess, gathering some bomb-ass material for her future therapist to work on.
Earlier this evening, when I washed the dishes and Jaime towel-dried them, he asked if I wanted to join his friends and their boys for a camping weekend. I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea because Daria was already feeling fifty shades of messed up about Bailey and me monopolizing her parents’ time. The funny thing is, I don’t want their time. I just want their fridge. Bed’s nice, too, I suppose. Especially when their daughter’s inside it.
“Since when do you care about Daria’s feelings?” Jaime frowned at a plate he was drying. He couldn’t hide the delight in his voice.
“I don’t,” I confessed. “But your daughter’s got ammo for miles on my ass. And as she is very trigger-happy, I don’t want to be in her line of fire.” This part was bull wrapped in a lot of shit.
Jaime stared at me skeptically.
“Are you bullshitting a bullshitter, Scully? You don’t care if you go to war with Daria. You don’t even care if you go to war with Russia. You’d still show up. Probably in these jeans and your holey shirt, and maybe a cigarette.”
“Daria could tell people I live here.” I half-shrugged. She wouldn’t. I don’t know how I know that, but I just do. She’s not that much of an asshole unless explicitly provoked. Even then, she is more about the bark than the bite from what I’ve seen. She thinks she’s the Antichrist when, in practice, she’s more like Mary Magdalene. She’d watch Christ getting crucified without lifting a finger, but you better know she won’t be happy about it. No, sir.
“And if she did? You don’t need a scholarship,” Jaime gritted. “I’ll pay for your education.”
“Sir, I really appreciate your generous offer, but for the millionth time, I ain’t about to take your hard-earned money.”
“It’s not that hard-earned, boy. The good thing about money is that when you have enough of it, it creates itself.”
But it’s not just my Southern upbringing or basic morals. It’d be weird to explain how my ass landed at Notre Dame all of a sudden. My friends would stab me in the balls if they found out I’ve been living in this sick crib and kept it from them.
“Besides, you’re using it now,” he countered.
“Because I have no choice. Well, I do, if you consider homelessness a choice.”
We wrapped it up, and I went back to my room, waiting for Daria to initiate something. She didn’t. When it became