Page 62 of Pretty Nightmare

I was too much of everything to just about everybody. Except Ana.

In Ana’s eyes, I was just right.

She might be the only person on this godforsaken planet I trust with my whole heart.

Not trust to keep me alive in a sticky situation. That would be McKay.

Not trust to implement big ideas on a grand scale. That would be Adam.

Not trust to challenge my worldview. That would be Indie.

But trust with my heart and my feelings. Trust with the truth.

And that’s why I’m here. I need some truth right now.

Because somewhere along the way I took a wrong turn and got lost. And I have an idea of how I might get back on track, but I would like a trusted advisor before I move forward.

Yesterday’s incident with Indie—what she did to Nathan, what she tried to do to us… that was too much.

It was the last straw for me. A fucking wake-up call. Pay attention, Donovan. Things are happening here, right in front of your fucking face, and you’re missing them.

And it’s so much easier to miss things. So much easier to ignore all those warning bells ringing in your head and red flags waving in front of your face. Because if I admit the bells are ringing and the flags are waving… well, then I’d have to do something about it.

I can’t ignore it anymore. I have to do something about it.

I have known for a long time now that what we were doing with Indie was wrong. And I tried to get out. I kept my distance, I lived my life, I moved on. But they—she, and Adam, and McKay—they aren’t the kind of people you just walk away from. I don’t have any words to explain that feeling or my connection to them, but I was always the outsider there. I was the one only ever half in. The one only half there. The missing one.

I don’t even know if I like Adam. McKay, he’s… whatever. I tolerate him, I guess. And I do like Indie. She feels a lot like a best friend (with occasional benefits). A childhood friend, I guess.

Because wasn’t that what she was to me? My childhood friend?

I don’t care what the IQ tests say, a fifteen-year-old genius is still nothing but a kid.

I was a fucking teenager when I got involved with this program. And I cannot, for the life of me, make sense of that.

I’m not ready to admit that I’m not invested in these people. In Adam, and McKay, and Indie. Because they are a huge part of my life. And you don’t just throw that away because you’re having a crisis of conscience. I know McKay and Adam love Indie. And we were all in the room when we came up with the plan to keep her alive and try to give her as normal a life as we could.

But I have to face facts here—the whole thing was in-fucking-sane.

I feel bad for leaving McKay to clean up the Indie mess. Especially after he called me and said she was missing. Again.

But I had this compulsion after I left her upstairs—all sweaty with leftover rage and drugged out of her fucking mind—I just needed to get the fuck out of there and clear my head. Stop breathing the air there. That place is like a drug. It’s hell dressed up like the garden of Eden. And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t stay away so much in the early years because I was obsessed with school. Fuck school. I never gave a shit about school. All that was just a job. Something I was ordered to do.

I stayed away because… that place.

Old Home.

I mean, I’m just gonna be honest here. The people inside that house are a good enough reason to keep your distance. But there’s more to it than that.

The swamp and the woods.

The snakes and the gardens.

The way things creak in that place. And the way they don’t.

All of it unsettles me.

Every time Adam called me back, I had this overwhelming compulsion to get the fuck out of there as fast as I could. And when I pulled away, I had this equally overwhelming feeling that my entire life with them was nothing but an overwhelming compulsion that I had no control over from the beginning.