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“Isabella, please don’t be like this. Paul had brought me some great news today and you’re ruining it.”
“I’m ruining it? Today was my day, Dad, not Paul’s.” I could barely keep my voice steady when I spoke. I was too angry. I was too upset. I could feel my emotions rushing around in circles, until they became dizzy and too overwhelmed to continue. I couldn’t understand why my father thought it was okay to say that I was ruining my own day. He had no right.
I stayed out until I was sure that my father would be in bed and then I headed home. Nobody had tried to call me since I’d spoken to my dad and I was glad of it, but I still hadn’t fully calmed down. I was glad to see that my father’s bedroom light was on when I walked up the driveway and onto the porch. The door had been left open and I pushed it lightly, so that I could creep in through the small crack without forcing out the long, agonized creaking sound it made when it hit the halfway point of being opened.
The icy wind from the afternoon had been unrelenting in its quest to freeze my inner core and, at first, I could feel no difference in temperature when I walked in. My hands were too numb and my body shook too violently to realize that it had started to warm up. I walked over to the kitchen and pushed the door open, expecting to find the room in darkness, but the light was on and Paul was sitting back at the kitchen table, where I had found him that morning.
“Oh, goody, you’re still up,” I said sarcastically as I walked over to the kettle and put it on to boil. My hands were still numb, but I could feel a faint prickling of pins and needles, which meant that they were coming back to life, however slowly it might be.
“Always a pleasure to run into you,” Paul said dryly without looking up.
“I’m surprised you’re still here if you’ve got all that money,” I said as I poured the boiling water into a mug.
“Why would I leave my family just because I have money?” Paul asked as he lifted his head and gave me a confused look.
“Well, I know I would.” I shrugged as I spoke and walked over the table and sat down. I didn’t really want to talk to Paul, but I wasn’t ready to go to bed yet and the kitchen was my favorite room in the house. There was something about the refurbished wood units and large oak table that made it feel so much cozier than the other rooms in the house. I think, though, that perhaps it might be because the kitchen is the last room in the house untouched by my stepmom. When she moved in, she had insisted on white-washing the whole house, so that it had a neutral flow to it, but I’d kicked up such a fuss about the kitchen that my father had forced her to leave it alone.
“Well, that’s because you hate most of your family,” Paul said with a smirk.
“I don’t hate my family. I hate the imposters in my family,” I corrected him.
Paul laughed for a moment. “Are you meaning to say that I’m an imposter?”
“I think we both know that’s what I’m saying.”
“You know, I feel really sorry for you, Isabella,” Paul said with a sigh. There was a deep, unsettling truth to his voice that caught the hairs at the back of my neck and made them stand on end.
“I can assure you that you’ve got no reason to pity me,” I said sourly and with a scowl.
“Oh, but there is. You’re so closed-off and isolated that you push away the people who care about you. You call me an imposter, when I was the only person to watch you get your diploma. You know, I didn’t actually tell your dad about my news; he found out from one of his friends who’d read about it in the newspaper. I came down to your graduation today so that I could ask him to not mention anything to you until tomorrow. I wanted this to be your day. I wanted you to be happy, and yet, you think of me as an imposter.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to find fault in his words. I wanted to find the lies behind the truths, but there were none. I could tell from the way that his ocean spray eyes held onto mine as he spoke that he meant every word. “So, what am I supposed to say? Thanks?” I said bitterly because he’d caught be off guard and I didn’t know what else to do.
“I don’t expect you to say anything, but if you fancied dropping the attitude for one god damn minute, Isabella, that would be great,” Paul said and then he stood up and walked out of the room before I had a chance to reply.
*******
Chapter Four
I had a rough night’s sleep on the night of my graduation. The things that Paul had said to me were playing over in my mind as I drifted off and I think that they tampered with my dreams. It wasn’t that I had a nightmare. It wasn’t that my dreams were particularly bad in the sense of what I could see. It was the way that I felt when I was having them. It was like this overwhelming, heavy guilt had taken over my body and I was drowning against its power.
I woke up with a start and in a pool of sweat. My hair seemed glued to my back with dampness and I felt cold with the frosty air that was brushing against my wet skin. I pulled the covers off me and pushed myself out of bed. I knew that I wasn’t going to get back to sleep, and although it was still early and the sun had barely made its appearance in the sky, I decided to make a start on my day and take a shower.
The shower felt good as it washed away the poor dreams of the night before and the disappointment from my graduation. I kept my eyes shut for a long period, so that I could focus on the way the large droplets of water bounced off of my back and released the tension that had been making me feel stiff. I’m not sure how long I spent in the shower, but by the time I got out, the sun had risen a distance into the sky and I could hear the sound of footsteps moving throughout the house.
I had no plans for my day, but I knew that I didn’t want to stay in. The sun outside of the window looked as though it was promising a fairer day than the one that had come before it, so I pulled on a black vest top and a pair of denim shorts before I headed downstairs to the kitchen. As soon as I hit the stairs, I could hear the shrill voice of my stepmother as she gossiped on the phone. I tried to block out her high-toned voice, but it was impossible.
I was glad to find that she was in the sitting room, though, and the wall between that room and the kitchen was quite thick. I pushed open the door to the kitchen and walked in without taking note of whether anybody else was in the room or not. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but I felt sluggish from the poor quality of sleep I’d had. I walked over to the coffee maker and pulled out the jug to fill up a mug.
“You look rough,” Paul said, nearly making me jump out of my skin.
“Didn’t anybody ever tell you that it’s rude to sneak up on people?” I asked him with dead-set eyes.
“Well, I think if anybody were to know what it meant to be rude, it would be you,” Paul said with jest in his eyes that was only met with seriousness from mine.
“Do you aim to annoy me with every word that comes out of your mouth, or is it just a natural tale
nt?” I asked him sharply as I sat down at the kitchen table.
“I’d like to think both,” Paul said with a grin that infuriated me.
“You’re such an ass,” I replied quickly and then took a sip of my coffee before realizing that it was far too hot. I grimaced in pain as I took the mug away from my face and put it down on the table.
“I think that was karma,” Paul said smugly.
“I think you should shut your face,” I replied without looking at him.
“I see nothing I said to you last night has changed anything, then?”
“What did you think it would change?” I asked him curiously as I let my eyes glance up.
I’d known Paul since he was seven years old, but he’d changed a lot in the years that had passed since then. When he first came into my life, he was a sandy-haired boy with freckles and a gangly frame that seemed to catch him unawares more than it worked for him. That wasn’t the guy sitting in front of me, though. The guy sitting in front of me had grown into his frame well. His shoulders were broad, his stomach toned, and his legs long enough to ensure his height over any girl he might choose to be with.
He had these bright blue, ocean spray eyes too. If they were on any other person, I might have thought of them as attractive. They sparkled with this luminous aquatic feel to them that was broken by tiny flecks of white, as though the very waves of the ocean itself were caught within them. He was a good-looking guy, even I couldn’t deny that, but you really had to look to see it. He did no justice to his natural features with the baggy sweatshirts and jeans that he chose to wear all the time.
