The Glass Queen (The Forest of Good and Evil #2) - Gena Showalter Page 0,168

a million times before.

Like the time she’d wanted to attend the art exhibit at her school, where her papier-mâché globe had been on display. Like the time her Girl Scout troop had gone camping. Like the hundred times her friend Jenny had called and asked if she could stay the night. Finally, Jenny had stopped calling.

Pressure building...can’t fail this time...

I faced my mother. She still had her back to me and hadn’t abandoned the stove. In fact, she was forking the noodles one at a time, testing their flexibility as if the chore was the most important thing ever. We’d done this same dance before. She was an avoider, and she’d just hit her stride.

“Forget the monsters and what you have and haven’t seen. Today’s my birthday, and all I want is for us to go to my sister’s ballet recital like a normal family. That’s it. That’s all. I’m not asking for the world. But if you don’t have the guts, fine. If Dad doesn’t, whatever. I’ll call one of my friends from school and we’ll go without you.” The drive into the city was at least half an hour, so there was no way we could walk. “And you know what? If you make me go that route, you’ll break Em’s heart and I will never forgive you.”

She sucked in a breath, stiffened. I’d probably just shocked the crap out of her. I was the calm one in the family. I hardly ever lashed out, rarely went mental. For the most part, I accepted and I rolled.

“Alice,” she said, and I gritted my teeth.

Here it comes. The refusal. Tears of crushing devastation burned my eyes, splashed onto my cheeks. I scrubbed them away with the back of my hand. “Forget about my lack of forgiveness. I will hate you for this.”

She glanced back at me, sighed. Her shoulders sagged in defeat. “All right. I’ll talk to him.”

* * *

All through her performance, Em glowed. She also dominated that stage, kicking butt and not bothering with names. Honestly, she put the other girls to shame. And that wasn’t sibling pride talking. That was just plain fact.

She twirled and smiled and utterly dazzled, and everyone who watched her was as enraptured as I was. Surely. By the time the curtain closed two hours later, I was so happy for her I could have burst. And maybe I did burst the eardrums of the people in front of me. I think I clapped louder than anyone, and I definitely whistled shrilly enough to cause brain bleeds.

Those people would just have to deal. This was the best. Birthday. Ever. For once, the Bells had attended an event like a normal family.

Of course, my dad almost ruined everything by continually glancing at his wristwatch and turning to eye the back door as if he expected someone to volley in an H-bomb. So, by the time the crowd jumped up for a standing O, and despite my mad rush of happiness, he’d made me so tense my bones were practically vibrating.

Even still, I wasn’t going to utter a single word of complaint. Miracle of miracles, he’d come. And all right, okay, so the miracle had been heralded by a bottle of his favorite whiskey, and he’d had to be stuffed in the passenger seat of the car like the cream filling in a Twinkie, but whatever. He had come!

“We need to leave,” he said, already edging his way to the back door. At six-four, he was a tall man, and he loomed over everyone around him. “Grab Em and let’s go.”

Despite his shortcomings, despite how tired his self-medication had become, I loved him, and I knew he couldn’t help his paranoia. He’d tried legitimate medication with no luck. He’d tried therapy and gotten worse. He saw monsters no one else could see, and he refused to believe they weren’t actually there—or trying to eat him and kill all those he loved.

In a way, I even understood him. One night, about a year ago, Em had been crying about the injustice of missing yet another slumber party. I, in turn, had raged at our mother, and she had been so shocked by my atypical outburst that she’d explained what she called “the beginning of your father’s battle with evil.”

As a kid, my dad had witnessed the brutal murder of his own father. A murder that had happened at night, in a cemetery, while his father had been visiting Grandmother Alice’s grave. The event had traumatized