care. A sick feeling washed over me and settled in my stomach. “You’re coming into womanhood and you don’t want that extra weight to settle in unflattering places.” I just nodded slowly. Three pounds felt like too much to me. I already barely ate. Ugh. But mom wasn’t finished, she continued with “Did you dye your hair again?”
Her question caught me off guard. “Um, no, not since I dyed it back.” I touched the end of my golden red hair and then held it up to the light. Before Sam I had gone through this super rebellious phase and dyed it black. It wasn’t so much this desire to get in touch with myself as it was to send a big F you to Nix and my mom. Of course it backfired when Sam crashed his car into the streetlight. But at the time I had felt pretty badass.
Now I knew better. Pissing off Nix and my mom only intensified their efforts to break me. The new game plan, to simply slip away in the dead of the night, was my only hope.
“It looks darker. Oh, god, I hope this isn’t how it stays. You probably ruined it when you dumped all that black poison on it.” She took a step forward and grabbed a chunk full of my hair. Her fingers closed around a fistful of it, near the roots and she yanked it toward her. I winced a little when biting pain shot across the base of my neck and up to the crown of my head.
“Ow, mom,” I whispered.
“Oh, did I hurt you?” she let go of my hair with so much force I stumbled backward. “Did I hurt you Ivy? God, you’re so pathetically fragile,” she waved her arms around as if to demonstrate the whole of me. My heart constricted into a tight ball in my chest. This wasn’t the first time she made this speech, nor would it be the last. Still, the wounds were always fresh, always just as painful. And the worst part about everything she was saying, was that it was all true. “Do you know what I was doing at your age, Ivy? Do you have any clue? I wasn’t running off for six months of spa treatments, that’s for goddamn sure. I had my priorities straight. I believed in my future. I was loyal. I have no idea how you are even my child. I was Nix’s choice too once, his trophy. I’ve been where you have, but the difference between me and you is that I treated my responsibilities with respect. I became the person I was supposed to be. I embraced my destiny. I need to get your sister back, she will know better. She will be better.”
Angry tears pricked at my eyes, hot and ready to spill over. “This? This is who you were supposed to be?” I gestured at her with my hands now, at her black silk pants, and lavender halter top, at her outrageously expensive shoes, to her Cartier necklace and earrings. “I don’t want your destiny; I don’t want your responsibility. It’s so sick and disgusting that I can’t even stomach what you do. And I hope to God, Honor never comes here, never has to live through what I’ve lived through. I hope she never sees what kind of monster you really are.” The words were out before I could stop them. Our faces registered the shock at the same time. And while I stood there staring at her dumbfounded, she recovered first by slapping me across the face.
The sound of her palm hitting my face resounded loudly between us. My mouth kind of hung open stupidly, while the tears finally slipped out the corners of my eyes to my cheeks and then dripped carelessly off my chin. I brought a shaking hand up to my face and held it gently against the still stinging skin.
“Don’t ever speak like that to me again,” she growled in a hoarse voice. “How dare you.”
I closed my mouth with a clap of teeth hitting teeth, but I refused to apologize. This might be the dumbest thing I had ever done, but I wasn’t going to apologize.
“Go to your room,” she snarled viciously at me. “I’m calling Nix. I’m sure he will be so happy to hear how his therapy worked out for you.”
My chin trembled as her words hit me, the full realization of what I’d done finally settling over me. Damn it. So