“A friend of yours? Mom, why can’t you just take care of me. I mean... I’m your daughter. Don’t send me away,” she whispered, falling against her bed. She had just gotten home, and it was only noon. Carry and her had gone to the mall with a couple of their friends, checking out the latest selection of tapes that they had gotten in at the music shop.
She had rushed upstairs, excited to show Alexis the new cassette she had gotten, only to find her mother sitting on her plush bed, hands folded in her lap and her eyes staring at the pale pink walls of Jamie’s quaint room.
Now, with her mother rising calmly to her feet and gesturing to a suitcase Jamie hadn’t noticed, she really couldn’t believe that this was happening. “Is this because I got a B on my AP calculus test?” she blurted out, praying that this was just a joke, an event to scare her into doing better at school.
Her mother’s coiled hair stayed in place as her head shook, elegant eyes cooly regarding Jamie. “No. Take your suitcase down stairs. There is a car waiting outside for you.”
And then she left, her soft perfume permeating the air as if she were a bad stink leaving behind a bad mark. Wasn’t that too true, though. Her throat closed up, and she reached for the suitcase blindly. Her mother wasn’t joking around. Her father was behind this, she was sure of it.
Ever since that episode with her mother trying to take her away, he had treated them both with apparent disdain, had even gone so far as to hurt her mother in front of her face, and then round on Jamie. It had happened once, but it would forever be in her mind.
Suddenly, she recoiled. Was her mother on board with this because if Jamie left, she wouldn’t be harmed? Was Jamie’s departure a type of...cure, for her mother? Her heart almost jumped out of her throat. If it meant making her mother happy, then she would do it.
She didn’t deserve what she had to go through because of Jamie’s presence in their household. Now that she knew the reasons her mother was sending her away, it didn’t seem so...bad.
But as put the suitcase by her door and went to fill her backpack with anything her mother had missed. She grabbed her journal and her headset, a couple of her favorite books, and then slung it over her shoulder with mute pain. Maybe she would come back, maybe her father would realize he missed her.
Even as the desperate thought crossed her mind, she knew it wasn’t probable. If anything, he would send her farther than Colorado and across the seas. She tried to make light of it by thinking that she would get a chance to meet some hot Italian boys, but it didn’t work.
With a heavy heart, she started her way downstairs and ignored the condemning eyes of her father and the indifferent eyes of her mother.
The wheels of her suitcase clicked along the tile as she pulled it, slowly and painfully. The doorman, Frankie, was watching her with pitiful eyes and so were the rest of the staff. The only ones who didn’t seem to care were her parents. How much was that a downer? she thought numbly, pausing at the door.
“No goodbye?” Jamie asked, hating how her voice cracked.
“Why should I say good bye to someone that I will not miss?” her father said with a cold hatred. Jamie’s mouth parted on a gasp at the hurt that coursed through her. He had made snide remarks, but none as hurtful as that. Even Frankie made a sharp intake of breath.
There was a tense, suspense-filled silence, in which the entire staff stared at parents as if they just wanted to...
“I quit,” Frankie said, his old voice disgusted as he threw down the hat he had been forced to wear since working at their house.
“So do I!” someone else called out. After that, a chorus of voices were ringing in the room till her father, red in the face and seething, snarled and lunged at Jamie.
“You are nothing but a nuisance! Get out of my house, you devil child!” And then she was thrown out of the door. Her father would have slammed it shut had Frankie not been there, holding it open for all of the maids and cooks. Their house was large enough