Page 30 of Cross + Catherine: The Companion

“Tell me where you’re going,” Catrina said, “and then you can go.”

“To a party,” Catherine said.

“A party in the city.”

“That’s what I said.” Catherine shrugged. “So, now you know where I’m going. I told you, like you wanted. Move, and let me go.”

Catrina didn’t move. “Your father doesn’t want you leaving the house. You’re supposed to be grounded because you snuck out three weeks ago.”

“Well, Daddy isn’t here, is he?”

“He will be, and what am I to tell him, then?”

Catherine stared hard at her mother, unmoved. “Honestly, Ma, I don’t give a shit what you tell Daddy.”

“Catty.”

What did her mother want from her?

Catherine didn’t know.

She didn’t have anything left to give.

“Please let me go, Ma. I just need to get out of this house.”

She needed to breathe.

She needed to feel something else.

She needed to do something else.

For a long while, the two women stared at each other. Neither of them said a word. A good couple of minutes passed before Catrina finally stepped to the side, and gave her daughter access to the front door.

“Be here when your father wakes up in the morning,” her mother said.

Catherine agreed.

She also lied.

It was just easier.

Catherine’s vision swam with all of the things in front of her. Dancing people, rooms and hallways, and the unfamiliar.

The unsafe.

After everything, she should know better than to be in a place like this, doing the things she was doing. Hadn’t her rape taught her that?

It never failed.

Even in the safety of Catherine’s own mind, her thoughts blamed her for what happened. Like a poison that wouldn’t stop spreading, her thoughts seemed intent on never letting her forget. No matter what she did.

Alcohol made her blood thick. Weed made her mind light.

When she was drunk or high, or both at the same time, then she no longer had to feel. Nothing that would hurt her, anyway. Nothing that would lead her back down a black hole of nothingness that constantly squeezed around her heart, and her mind. A black hole that left her empty, cold, and so alone.

She should have been working. That’s what she’d come here to do in the first place.

Funny …