And then another break, this time, another hour.
Beck
Hey, you think you could pick us up? We’re at the Biscayne Community Park and Trail
And if you could bring a towel, that’d be great.
“I’m surprised Beck even agreed,” Daisy muttered, reading the texts over my shoulder. “But I’m glad he found you. You freaked us out, Nell. You put so muchpressure on being perfect, and we… well. You freaked us out.”
Given the hateful look Beck had shot me at the picnic table, I was surprised, too, that he’d gone out to help look for me. For two and a half hours, apparently. And instead of texting Jamie to come pick me up, Beck did it himself. Like he couldn’t just walk away.
I looked up at my brother and my best friend, both wearing expressions of matching relief. Jamie’s had more anger in his eyes, sure, but it was obvious—Ihadscared them.
“I’m the worst,” I told them, reaching for Daisy’s hand, then Jamie’s. I winced as I smacked my lips together, once more tasting grit. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about what you’d think.”
“You gotta give us a pass,” Daisy said, picking up Jamie’s hand, forming a chain. “Us creative thinkers always assume the worst.”
Jamie’s hand looked stiff in hers for a moment before he gave in. “We’re too alike in that regard,” he muttered. “Neither one of us could talk the other off the ledge.”
“Hey, I tried, but you wouldn’t stop crying.”
“I wasnotcrying?—”
“He totally was.” Daisy smirked at me. “It was very dramatic. You’d better feel loved, Eleanor Brighton.”
I didn’t feel loved—I felt awful. For Daisy, for Jamie, and for Beck. It was a good thing their hands held me in place, because at that moment, I wanted to disappear.P-U-S-I-L-A-N-N-I-M-O-U-S. Was it a verb? An adjective? A noun? Whatever it was, I felt it.
“Was Beck okay?” Jamie asked as we all got back into the car. He didn’t care as much about the mud, which was mostly dried now. “He looked…”
“Upset,” Daisy finished from the front seat.
I scratched at the mud on my skin. “I’m not really sure,” I said honestly.
Fun.It’s an easy word to spell. Why is it so hard for life to feel it?Beck had sounded so lifeless when he’d said it. It reminded me of a different time.I’ve never wanted to explode, but I have wanted to disappear.
I closed my eyes in the backseat, wishing I could dissolve into the leather. I’d shower when I got home, wash everything off, but the grime from the evening would still remain. It’d seeped through my skin already, stirring in my bloodstream. Mom would probably yell at me, and maybe Dad would be behind her, the two of them on the same page for once, but I didn’t care.
For the first time ever, I didn’t worry about their impending disappointment.
I was too busy worrying about someone else.
CHAPTER 18
G-R-O-U-N-D-E-D.
Neither Jamie nor I had ever been grounded before in our lives. Destelle had been a few times, but I barely remembered it. I hadn’t even known what a grounding entailed, honestly, only that it was a different sort of brand on my skin, similar to the mud.F-A-I-L-U-R-E.
Maybe falling in the mud had broken something in me, because even when I’d walked through the door, covered in dried mud, I only thought of what Beck had said.It’s okay.
Mom hadn’t even seemed surprised to see me dirty from head to toe. Instead, she’d just given me a flat, no-nonsense look. “You’re grounded,” she’d said. “I have your phone, and Iwillhave your phone until your birthday on Saturday. Jamie is driving you to and from school, and you’re to stay in the living room or the dining room untilafter dinner. No TV, no laptop, no Daisy. Nothing. You’re lucky I’m not canceling the birthday party, Eleanor.”
I’d wondered what she knew. What Dad had told her. She hadn’t confronted me on any of it, and I’d been too afraid to ask. “Okay,” I’d said, and went to shower.
The joke was on me, though, because Mom had one chore waiting for me as the perfect punishment—cleaning the entire house for my sister’s potential arrival.
She probably snickered at the irony.
I’d made it to Wednesday. Two days of washing sheets after school, scrubbing the bathrooms, and vacuuming the floors. Two days of dusting and mopping and going to bed smelling like bleach and detergent. Two days of quiet, because Mom was working late on a big case, Dad never came out of his room, and Jamie was busy with his nose stuck in a book.
