Page 122 of Apparently, I’m Trouble

She wouldn’t answer my calls or reply to my texts. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About the way it ended.

Constantly thinking about her made me feel like I could crawl out of my skin. I couldn’t eat; I couldn’t sleep. I was exhausted, and I couldn’t turn it off.

And I couldn’t do anything about it, because Mia was right. We couldn’t be together if Kira didn’t want us to be. But knowing that didn’t make this hurt any fucking less.

I backed away from the kitchen, giving them privacy as I scanned the rest of Rochelle’s home, looking for my sister. My eyes were aching, and it didn’t help that all I could see were boxes. Piles upon piles of brown cardboard boxes. My sister had a lot of stuff, and apparently, she needed all of it with her in Oakhaven.

“Where are they?” her familiar voice ground out. “Stupid fucking–”

“Rochelle?”

“Here they are!”

I walked into Rochelle’s bedroom and found more boxes labeled ‘kitchen’ stacked by her bed. She stood in front of an open box, proudly holding a stack of plates, then stomped by me and into the hallway, yelling, “Got them.”

I wasn’t sure why she insisted that we have dinner at her apartment instead of mine. She had the most space, sure, but she’d also packed away more than half of her life. She just spent half an hour looking for plates; we should probably have done this somewhere else.

“Why didn’t we go out if we were just going to order pizza?” I grumbled.

She shot me a sharp look over her shoulder. “Because I don’t feel like going out.”

“It would’ve been easier.”

“Not if we end up running into one of my victims.”

“You should stop calling them that. They’re grown men.”

She set the plates next to the stack of pizza boxes resting on the dining table. “I can’t wait to get out of here. I never want to see another fucking artist again.”

Miles swapped confused glances with Kira, and I told them, “Aunt Rochelle is just… excited to be moving.”

“Why are you moving again?” Kira asked as she sat beside Miles.

“I need the change,” my sister answered. “You know what that’s like.”

“But we just got here,” Kira complained softly.

We moved to New York just over six months ago, but for me, so much had happened in that short space of time that it felt like I’d been here for years. Kira must not have felt the same.

Rochelle folded her arms on the back of the chair next to me. “I know, and I’ll miss you both, but there’s nothing left for me in New York.”

“That’s what you said about Oakhaven,” I muttered, and she pinched my ear. “Ow.”

“I wish you’d stay,” Kira went on. “You could’ve homeschooled me.”

Rochelle straightened. “What–? No, I couldn’t. What would make you think that I could?”

I sat too. If Rochelle was about to go on one of her tirades, I wanted to be seated for it. Then again, I was so tired, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take in anything she said anyway.

“I don’t know, but it’d be better than being at South Bronx.”

“No, it wouldn’t be,” Rochelle said. “Kira–” she finally sat too “–I know it feels like the end of the world when people spread nasty things about you. But it isn’t. The end of the world would be… relying on your flaky aunt to homeschool you.”

Kira lowered her gaze to her plate, and my gut twisted at the look on her face. She might have been in a new relationship with Miles, but the joy from that couldn’t make up for what she was dealing with at South Bronx.

“I don’t want to be there right now.”

“I know, and I know the way you found out about your dad–” she elbowed me and ignored my soft grunt of pain “–and your teacher wasn’t great. But you can’t let any of it stop you from getting that spot your mom wanted for you.”