The Year I Became Isabella Ande - Jessica Sorensen Page 0,15
is, or hell, just tell me her favorite book.” Silence stretches between them, and she adds, “You don’t know shit about your daughter. But I do. I know she draws her own comics, and while I don’t always understand them, I know a talented artist when I see one. Did you know she writes her own blog? She’s pretty clever, too. Plus, on top of that, she’s a straight-A student . . . but I’m sure you know all this already, right?” Sarcasm drips from her voice like thick globs of honey. “I mean, she is your daughter.”
The silence that follows makes my stomach churn as reality crashes down on me. I always knew my father wasn’t that interested in me, but the fact that he has no damn clue what makes me tick hurts like a blow to the jugular.
“You know it’s hard for me when it comes to her,” my father says, speaking more calmly. “And there’s circumstances that—”
“I don’t give a shit about the circumstances,” she snaps. “When you chose to keep her with you, you chose to be her father. If you couldn’t handle what that entailed, then you should’ve let her come live with me like I offered. But no, you decided to take her in and treat her like shit.”
I jerk back from the door. “What the hell?” I say louder than I mean to.
Indigo captures my arm and tows me back down the hallway, making a beeline for the front door. I don’t know if my grandma or dad heard me, but the bedroom door is still shut by the time Indigo drags me outside. She only releases me when we’ve crossed the parking lot and reached the tree area across from the apartment.
“Holy shit.” I run my fingers through my hair as I pace back and forth across the grass. “I don’t get what just happened. I don’t . . . none of this makes sense.” I place my hands on my hips and hunch forward as my stomach burns. “Keep me? He chose to keep me . . . I don’t understand.” I peer up at Indigo, who has a cigarette between her lips and a lighter in her hand. “Do you know what any of that was about?”
She cups her hands around her mouth and lights the cigarette. “I’m not positive, but I have a few theories,” she says, a cloud of smoke circling her face. “But they’re just theories based on shit I’ve heard my mother and father talking about.”
Still woozy, I squat down and inhale deeply. “What are the theories?”
“I’m not sure I should tell you,” she says, eyeing me warily. “You already look like you’re about to hack your guts up.”
“I feel like I’m going to hack my guts up.”
“Here.” She crouches down in front of me and offers me her cigarette.
I scrunch my nose. “I don’t smoke.”
“I know, but a drag or two might help you chill out.”
The smoke burns my nostrils as I take the cigarette from her hands. My fingers shake as I lift the end to my lips and inhale. “Holy shit, that burns,” I say through a fitful of coughs as my lungs drown in smoke.
Indigo laughs in amusement as she removes the cigarette from my hands. “Sorry. I probably should’ve warned you first, but I thought going in blind might make it more exciting for you.” She sits down in the grass and takes a few drags as I catch my breath.
Once I no longer feel like a ninja used my lungs as a punching bag, I settle in the grass beside her. “I wanna hear your theories. In fact, I need to hear them; otherwise, I’ll come up with my own. And my head is full of all sorts of crazy.”
She sighs heavily. “I was hoping the whole smoking thing would distract you from that.”
Shaking my head, I pick at the grass. “How can I think of anything else, when it sounds like I was . . . adopted?”
“Is that what you think that was about?” she asks, squinting at the highway in front of us.
“Um, yeah.” I massage my temples as my head pulsates. All this time, I knew I didn’t quite fit in with my family, that I was an outcast. Different. And yeah, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I was adopted, but the thought was never out of seriousness. “What else could it be?”
She grazes her thumb across the end of the cigarette, scattering ashes